Charities around the world are facing unprecedented demand for their services, but many warn that shrinking government grants and growing competition for limited resources are threatening their long-term sustainability.
According to the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), nearly four in five nonprofits surveyed globally reported an increase in requests for support. However, three in five said achieving financial sustainability was a “key concern.”
The findings are part of CAF’s World Giving Report: Charity Insights, which draws on the experiences of more than 3,000 charity leaders across 27 countries.
“Funding is the most pervasive challenge for charities around the world,” said CAF CEO Neil Heslop. “And with ongoing and escalating social division, conflicts, climate change impacts and huge numbers of people displaced, charities that are relied on to offer relief—such as those working in health, poverty alleviation and humanitarian aid—are particularly affected by increasing demand for their services.”
Read more about what motivates people in the UAE to give to charity. Download the full report here.
Several dozen nonprofits from the UAE and Saudi Arabia participated in the survey although not enough to provide a full dataset for a standalone report.
In line with global trends, the organisations that did respond also indicated rising demand for their services. However, most expressed greater confidence in their ability to meet these needs compared to peers in other regions.
Moreover, just over half of the UAE and Saudi respondents said they were confident in the diversity and resilience of their funding, contrasting with the more pessimistic outlook seen elsewhere.
Government involvement in the charity sector was viewed most positively in the Asia-Pacific region, and least positively in Europe.
In Saudi Arabia, for example, several respondents cited the government’s Vision 2030 goals, which include increasing the nonprofit sector’s contribution to 5 percent of GDP and engaging one million Saudis in volunteering.
Key challenges identified by nonprofits in the UAE and Saudi Arabia included recruitment and retention of staff and navigating regulatory frameworks.
Despite these hurdles, more than half of respondents said they were very optimistic about the future of their organisations and the overall health of the sector.
The report is being launched at a side event during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. It follows the earlier release of CAF’s World Giving Report: Donor Insights, which focused on global giving behaviours, and ranked Egypt, the UAE, and Qatar were ranked in the top 10 for generosity.
Read more about generosity and motivations for giving in Saudi Arabia here.
