Every year we gather data on what influences charities when choosing digital freelancers, agencies or suppliers, particularly in the context of values, diversity and inclusion.
This year we changed the scale in this question to track what is influential, versus what is important, which is what we measured last year. This should give us more meaningful data on what is driving change in charities’ behaviour when choosing suppliers, rather than what they value in principle. However, this does mean that making comparisons with 2025 data is not possible. The data below should therefore be treated as a new baseline. We had high numbers of charities that either did not know or said these factors were not applicable, so we have removed these from the responses in order to arrive at the figures below, as this gives us data from the charities that are actively working with suppliers.
Most influential factors
The top 5 factors that are either very or somewhat influential for charities are:
- Their values and ethics (93%).
- Socially responsible business model (85%).
- User research and co-design approach (84%).
- Commitment to diversity and inclusion (79%).
- Meaningful involvement of people with lived experience (76%).
It’s encouraging that all of these areas are so influential for charities, with values and ethics influencing more than 9 out of 10 charities when deciding on suppliers and more than three-quarters looking for meaningful involvement of users with lived experience.
