The Christian development charity Tearfund is cutting its internal policy work as part of restructuring activity that will mean about 10 per cent of its staff have been made redundant over the past year.
The charity told Third Sector that it expected to make about 40 people redundant in an ongoing restructure prompted by falling unrestricted income and significantly higher operating costs.
It said this was in addition to 74 people who had already been made redundant in the current financial year to the end of March.
The charity said the total number of job losses represented a reduction of slightly more than 10 per cent of its global staff.
Tearfund employed an average of 1,057 people in 2022/23, its accounts showed.
It reported record income of £85.4m in the year to the end of March 2023 but said today that this was mainly due to restricted income from emergency appeals.
“At the same time, we raised less unrestricted income than we expected and what we are seeing across the sector suggests this trend will remain,” the charity said in a statement.
It said its financial circumstances meant it had to make some “really difficult choices”.
Tearfund said it was “regrettably moving away from high-level policy work and focusing on more locally-led influencing”.
It said it would instead work to equip churches and communities to advocate for local changes.
“Tearfund is making a strategic restructure of some parts of the organisation in order to reduce our unrestricted spending,” it said.
“This is a result of changing patterns of income and significantly higher operating costs globally, driven by inflation.
“We care deeply about everyone who works for Tearfund and want to look after them well and we also have a responsibility to be good stewards of our supporters’ money and ensure that we are set up to continue our life-changing work around the world.”