The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has been criticised over an allegedly “tone-deaf” video recruiting for associate director roles, just weeks after the infrastructure body axed most of its practical support team.
Two former staff members told Third Sector that concerns about the messaging used in the video had been raised internally, adding: “This doesn’t read like a simple comms misstep – it feels like a predictable outcome”.
The video, published on the NCVO’s website and YouTube channel, advertises the six new associate director roles the infrastructure body is hiring for.
It features clips of the £9.5m charity’s senior leadership team, including its chief executive, Kate Lee, who says: “We might be quite a small organisation but we are mighty.”
The NCVO, which employs 90 staff, has been criticised online for co-opting the “small but mighty” tagline that has historically been used by much smaller charities.
Some criticised the timing of the video, which was published just weeks after the infrastructure body axed nearly all of its practical support team – which ran its Small Charities Helpdesk – in favour of a digital-first model.
The small charities consultant Vic Hancock Fell criticised the video on LinkedIn, describing it as “offensive” to small charities and saying: “On what planet is NCVO small but mighty?”
Other charity staff and experts commented in agreement, including the interim chief executive of the Camphill Village Trust Paul Moore, who described the move as “tone-deaf”.
Hancock Fell told Third Sector: “Either NCVO is now referring to itself as ‘small but mighty’ because it genuinely believes it is – which shows how detached it is from the reality of small charities – or it knows it isn’t small but has decided to commandeer the phrase for its own advantage.
“By their own Almanac standards, NCVO are 90 times bigger than an actual ‘small charity’.”
She added the senior team “appears to have little to no experience working with smaller organisations, and the situation has been made worse by recent redundancies”.
Hancock Fell said: “This means NCVO no longer has any internal expertise on small charities, and with it, the internal pressure to prioritise them.”
In November 2024, Hancock Fell’s Fair Collective consultancy backed out of a project with the NCVO about the support small charities need from infrastructure bodies because of a difference in values.
Josie Hinton, one of the practical support team staff recently made redundant, told Third Sector the online criticism “highlights the importance of NCVO having a deep understanding of their small charity audience”.
She said: “This means employing people at all levels of the organisation that have worked in or with small charities. That experience and insight is invaluable if it is to effectively represent and support the sector.”
Two former staff members at the NCVO, who asked not to be named, told Third Sector in a joint statement: “Having seen the rationale for these changes internally, this doesn’t read like a simple comms misstep – it feels like a predictable outcome.”
The staff members said that with the practical support team gone, it was “much easier to misjudge something like this and not see how it’s going to land”, adding: “More broadly, it points to a wider loss of grip on the reality of the sector.”
The phrase “small but mighty” has been used routinely in internal calls for months, they said. “Seeing it repurposed in this context, after removing a core support function for small charities, is difficult to reconcile.”
The staff members said concerns about the messaging were raised internally prior to the video’s publication, saying: “The lack of clarity was there then, and it’s still there now.
“At this point, it doesn’t feel like answers are being withheld – it feels like the model itself was never worked through in enough practical detail.
“That’s why this has landed so badly. It feels like an organisation that has lost its grip on how it actually supports the majority of the sector.”
The NCVO refused to comment when contacted by Third Sector.