Plain English Guide to SORP 2026 Impact Reporting

If you’ve seen headlines about SORP 2026 making impact reporting mandatory and felt a flutter of panic, here’s the honest version: for small charities, the new requirement is genuinely light. This guide explains what’s actually changing, what you need to do, and where the real reporting challenge for small charities still lies. 

What is SORP 2026?

The Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) sets out how UK charities prepare their annual reports and accounts. The 2026 edition was published in October 2025 and applies to accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2026. The headline change for most small charities is that the Trustees’ Annual Report must now include impact reporting: an explanation of not just what your charity did, but what changed as a result. 

The three tiers, and why yours probably has it easy 

SORP 2026 scales its requirements to charity size: 

Tier	Annual income	Impact reporting requirement
Tier 1	Up to £500k	A summary of your main achievements during the year
Tier 2	£500k to £15m	A review of performance against your aims and objectives
Tier 3	Over £15m	Full impact reporting plus sustainability reporting

Most UK charities, and almost certainly yours if you’re reading this, are Tier 1. And the official guidance for Tier 1 is reassuringly plain: a few paragraphs summarising your main achievements, with a story or two. A beneficiary quote, a volunteer anecdote, a simple description of what changed because of your work. That’s it. 

You do not need new software, a consultant, or an outcomes framework to comply. If your trustees’ report already says something honest and specific about what your charity achieved this year, you’re most of the way there. Many well-run small charities have been writing exactly this for years; SORP 2026 simply formalises what the Charity Commission already considered good practice. 

When does it start?  

It depends on your accounting year: 

• Calendar-year charities (year ending 31 December): your 2026 report, typically filed in early 2027, is the first one affected. 

• April year-end charities: your April 2026 to March 2027 report, typically filed in late 2027, is the first one affected. 

So there’s time. Nobody is filing a SORP 2026 report tomorrow.

Some genuinely good news hiding in the same reforms 

Alongside SORP 2026, reporting thresholds change from 30 September 2026, and they move in small charities’ favour: 

• Independent examination is only needed above £40k income (up from £25k) 

• A qualified examiner is only needed above £500k (up from £250k) 

• Simpler receipts-and-payments accounts are allowed up to £500k income (up from £250k) 

For many small charities the overall compliance burden goes down, not up. 

Outputs vs outcomes: the distinction worth understanding 

The one genuinely new habit SORP 2026 asks of trustees is the shift from describing activity to describing change: 

• An output is what you did: “We ran 40 weekly youth sessions with 65 regular attendees.” 

• An outcome is what changed: “Two thirds of regular attendees told us they feel more confident, and school attendance improved for the group we track.” 

The regulator wants the link between your activities and their results to be honest, meaningful and accessible. Not impressive. Not statistically bulletproof. Honest, meaningful and accessible. For a Tier 1 charity, one good beneficiary story that shows real change is worth more than a page of numbers. 

How to write a good achievements summary 

When you sit down to write those few paragraphs: 

1. Pick two or three achievements that mattered, not everything you did. The strongest reports are selective. 

2. Show change, not just activity. For each achievement, add one sentence on what’s different for the people you serve. 

3. Use a real voice. A short, direct quote from a beneficiary or volunteer does more work than any statistic. 

4. Be honest about the hard parts. If something didn’t work, saying so (and what you learned) reads as credibility, not failure. The Charity Commission has been clear it wants meaningful engagement, not a tick-box exercise. 

The real challenge isn’t the writing. It’s having the material. 

Here’s the part the compliance guides skip. Writing four paragraphs is easy if you have the material in front of you: the quotes, the numbers, the moments that showed your work landing. It’s miserable if you’re starting from a blank page in March, trying to remember what happened last spring, digging through old emails and asking colleagues “didn’t someone say something lovely about the Tuesday group?” 

And for most small charities, the trustees’ report is the lightest version of this problem. The heavier version happens all year round: every funder wants their own report, in their own format, on their own schedule, and each one sends you back to the same scattered pile of evidence. SORP 2026 adds one more document to a stack that already exists. 

The charities that find all of this easy share one habit: they capture evidence as it happens. A quote gets noted the day it’s said. A photo gets saved where it can be found. Survey results land somewhere organised, linked to the outcome they demonstrate. When reporting time comes, whether it’s for a funder or for the trustees’ report, the material is already there and the writing takes an afternoon. 

That habit needs a system, but the system matters less than the habit. A well-organised folder structure can work. So can a spreadsheet, for a while. The point is to stop treating reporting as an annual archaeology project and start treating evidence as something you collect all year. 

About Outcome Proof 

Outcome Proof is a simple tool built around exactly that habit, for small charities. You set up the outcomes you care about, capture evidence against them all year (quotes, numbers, photos, notes, from your desk or your phone), and when any report is due, the material is organised and ready.

A Tier 1 achievements summary can be written in Word, and if the trustees’ report is the only one your charity produces, that is a fine place to leave it. Outcome Proof earns its place further along, once the same evidence is being asked for by the trustees and by three funders on three different schedules, and the collecting has to happen months before anyone asks.

Sources and further reading: GOV.UK guidance on changes to charity accounting and reporting, ICAEW on Charities SORP 2026, and the Charities SORP-making body’s reflections on the 2026 consultation. Information correct as of June 2026; check current guidance for your charity’s specific circumstances.

If year-round evidence capture sounds like the habit your charity needs, you can try Outcome Proof free for 14 days. No setup fees, no sales calls, cancel anytime.