Insight
25th September 2026
SORP 2026: Why Evidencing Impact Is No Longer Optional
For decades, charity annual reports have told funders, trustees and the public what activity took place: how many workshops ran, how many meals were served, how many calls were answered. From January 2026, that’s no longer enough.
SORP 2026, the new Charities Statement of Recommended Practice, applies to accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2026. It requires charities reporting under the SORP to demonstrate, proportionately to their size, the difference their work makes. Not just what happened, but what changed as a result. Larger charities must go further still, reporting how fundraising performed against objectives, including return on funds invested.
This applies to every charity preparing accruals accounts, which includes all charitable companies whatever their income. Smaller charities in that group aren’t exempt, they’re simply held to a proportionate standard. From 30 September 2026, non-company charities in England and Wales with income up to £500,000 can choose receipts and payments accounts instead, which sit outside the SORP, so the first question for many smaller organisations is which basis they report on. The threshold stays at £250,000 in Scotland and Northern Ireland. For charities of any size already stretched by falling donations and rising costs, that raises an uncomfortable question: can we actually evidence our impact, or have we only ever measured our activity?
That’s a question we help charities answer, and it’s worth getting ahead of now rather than at year-end.
