Proportionate evaluation means calibrating your monitoring and reporting requirements so that the burden placed on a grantee never exceeds the value the evidence actually generates. For small grants — typically those under £10,000 — that usually means light-touch check-ins, brief narrative updates, and a handful of agreed indicators rather than full logic models, external evaluations, or quarterly statistical returns.

The principle sounds obvious, but the gap between principle and practice remains wide. Evidence consistently shows that UK charities collectively spend an enormous number of hours filling in reports for funders, and that much of that burden falls on the smallest organisations, which are least able to absorb it. When a community group receiving a £3,000 grant must complete the same reporting template as one receiving £300,000, the mismatch does not reflect good stewardship — it reflects a system designed around the funder's administrative convenience rather than shared learning.

This guide sets out a practical framework for funders, grant managers and small charities to design evaluation that is genuinely proportionate to grant size.

Why Disproportionate Evaluation Harms the Sector

The mismatch between grant size and evaluation burden is not a minor inconvenience — it actively distorts who can access funding. NCVO's Power of Small project, which engaged with over 600 small voluntary organisations and funders across 2024 and 2025, found that application and reporting processes are "often disproportionately complex for small charities, limiting access to funding." The report recommended that funders conduct a thorough review of their requirements and ensure they are proportionate to the size of grants awarded (NCVO, 2025).

The consequences are systemic. When reporting requirements are heavy, small organisations face three choices: spend a disproportionate share of their grant on administration, comply poorly and risk damaging funder relationships, or simply not apply. All three outcomes are bad for communities, for diversity of the sector, and for funders who want to reach grassroots organisations.

Research from Evaluation Support Scotland's "Small and Simple" briefing for funders highlights that "proportionality is at the heart of good monitoring and evaluation practice," meaning evidence collected should be of real value to stakeholders — not collected for its own sake. The briefing specifically asked funders to consider "what is good enough evaluation for small grants?" rather than defaulting to one-size-fits-all frameworks.

What Proportionate Looks Like at Different Grant Levels

There is no universal threshold, but the following tiers offer a workable starting point.

Grant size	Suggested evaluation approach
Under £2,500	Brief end-of-grant narrative (one A4 page or equivalent form); one or two activity indicators (e.g. numbers reached, sessions delivered)
£2,500–£10,000	Short narrative report (two to three pages); three to five agreed output and outcome indicators; one site visit or check-in call optional
£10,000–£50,000	Structured mid-term and final report; logic model or theory of change; five to eight outcome indicators; funder or external review recommended
£50,000–£250,000	Full monitoring framework; quarterly or six-monthly reporting; independent evaluation at programme end
Over £250,000	Comprehensive M&E plan; external independent evaluation; contribution analysis or equivalent

These thresholds should be treated as starting points, not rules. A one-year grant of £8,000 to a tiny volunteer-led group warrants lighter-touch requirements than a three-year £8,000 annual instalment to a more established organisation. Context always matters.

The Cost of Evaluation Itself

One reason disproportionate evaluation persists is that funders rarely calculate what it costs grantees to comply. A formal external evaluation of a two-year programme typically costs between 5% and 10% of programme budget. For a £500,000 grant, that is a legitimate and manageable overhead. For a £5,000 grant, even 5% is £250 — which may represent the entire available admin budget of a micro-organisation, and an external evaluator for any meaningful scope would cost far more than that.

Evaluation Support Scotland's guidance for funders recommends a simple test: ask whether the evidence you are requesting could realistically be used to improve the programme, inform future funding decisions, or demonstrate accountability to beneficiaries. If the answer is no, the requirement should be removed or simplified.

Funders should also consider who bears the cost of evaluation that is not covered by the grant. When a £3,000 community grant does not include any allowance for reporting time, and the reporting takes 10 hours, the funder has effectively extracted value from the community for free — a practice directly at odds with principles of equity and trust-based philanthropy.

The Six IVAR Better Reporting Principles

IVAR (Institute for Voluntary Action Research) and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation convened funders and funded organisations from 2018 onwards to tackle "the problem of grant reporting." The resulting Better Reporting initiative identified six principles now adopted by over 100 funders through IVAR's Open and Trusting community.

The principles most relevant to proportionate evaluation are:

Ask for what you need, not what you might want. Define in advance what evidence would actually change a decision or inform learning, and only collect that.
Make it easy. Use short, clear forms. Accept conversation or call as alternatives to written reports where appropriate.
Use what you collect. If funder staff do not read or act on a report, the requirement should be dropped.
Build trust as a default. Assume grantees are using funds well unless evidence suggests otherwise, rather than designing systems to catch the rare exception.
Share learning. Aggregate and publish what is learned from grantees to create sector-wide value.
Review and improve. Treat your reporting framework as a living document and revise it regularly with grantee input.

These principles are consistent with the recommendations of NCVO's Power of Small report, which called for funders to "co-design simplified, proportionate application and reporting models" with small organisations.

Common Mistakes Funders Make

Even well-intentioned funders regularly impose disproportionate requirements. The most common patterns include:

Standardising on the largest grant tier. When a funder operates grants from £500 to £500,000, there is a temptation to use one reporting template for all. This almost always means small grants are over-reported and large grants are under-scrutinised relative to their risk.

Requiring annual reports on short grants. A six-month grant generating an annual report midway through the funded period and another at the end creates twice the administrative burden for no additional learning.

Asking for data that is never used. Charities frequently report demographic breakdowns that programme staff acknowledge they do not analyse. Collecting data that is never used wastes grantee time and erodes trust.

Conflating accountability with learning. Accountability (was the money spent on what was agreed?) and learning (did the intervention work?) are different questions requiring different evidence. Small grants often need accountability but rarely need the level of evidence required for learning.

Not allowing narrative substitution. Some funders refuse to accept phone calls, voice notes, or brief emails in place of written forms, even for the smallest grants. This excludes organisations where written English is not a first language or administrative capacity is minimal.

Designing a Proportionate Reporting Framework

A practical proportionate framework for small grants involves five steps.

Step 1: Define your learning questions. Before writing a reporting template, articulate two or three specific questions you want grantees to help you answer. Every field in your form should map to one of those questions.

Step 2: Agree indicators at award stage. Work with the grantee at point of offer to agree two to four indicators. Let them propose indicators that make sense given their context. Co-designed indicators produce better data than imposed ones.

Step 3: Set a word or page limit. A 500-word limit for a £3,000 grant end report is reasonable. A 3,000-word limit is not. Be explicit about what you expect.

Step 4: Offer multiple reporting formats. Allow short narrative reports, phone or video check-ins, or even photographs and testimonials where appropriate. Not every grantee writes fluently in English, and not every funded activity generates written evidence.

Step 5: Close the feedback loop. Tell grantees what you learned from their reports and what changes it prompted. This transforms reporting from a compliance exercise into a genuine exchange.

Technology and Proportionate Evaluation

Grant management platforms can help funders implement proportionate evaluation at scale without creating an administrative burden for themselves. Rather than building a single monolithic reporting template, modern platforms allow funders to configure different report forms for different grant tiers, set automated reminders calibrated to grant size, and aggregate responses across a portfolio without manual collation.

Plinth, for example, allows funders to configure workplan and KPI frameworks that match the scale of each grant, collect impact data directly from grantees through structured but flexible forms, and generate portfolio-level reporting without requiring grantees to duplicate effort. This means a funder can run both a micro-grant programme with minimal reporting and a larger grants programme with full M&E requirements — on the same platform, without the administrative overhead of managing two separate systems. You can explore these features at Plinth's AI grant management page.

The Regulatory Context: Charity SORP 2026

The revised Charities SORP (Statement of Recommended Practice), which applies to accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2026, introduces a tiered approach to impact reporting for charities. Tier 1 charities (income up to £500,000) need only provide a "summary of main achievements," while Tier 2 and Tier 3 organisations face progressively more detailed requirements (ICAEW, 2025).

This tiered structure provides a useful analogue for funders designing proportionate reporting. If the regulatory framework recognises that small charities should not face the same reporting obligations as large ones, funders' grant reporting requirements should reflect the same logic.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is proportionate evaluation in grantmaking?

Proportionate evaluation means designing monitoring and reporting requirements so that the evidence collected is genuinely useful and the burden on grantees does not exceed the value generated. For small grants, this typically means brief narrative updates, a small number of agreed indicators, and minimal form-filling rather than formal evaluation frameworks.

At what grant size should formal evaluation be required?

There is no universal threshold. As a general guide, formal evaluation (involving an external evaluator or a comprehensive monitoring framework) is usually appropriate for grants above £50,000 or for multi-year programmes. Below £10,000, a brief narrative report and two to four indicators is typically sufficient.

Can a funder require less reporting for trust-based reasons?

Yes. Many funders operating under trust-based philanthropy principles ask for minimal reporting as a matter of policy, viewing it as a signal of confidence in grantees. IVAR's Open and Trusting community includes over 100 funders who have committed to lighter-touch, more proportionate approaches.

How do I know if my reporting requirements are disproportionate?

Ask grantees directly. Conduct an annual review of reporting templates and ask: which data collected last year did we actually use? If the answer is "very little," the requirements are probably too heavy. NCVO's Power of Small recommendations suggest co-designing reporting processes with small organisations to identify and remove unnecessary barriers.

What should a proportionate report for a £5,000 grant include?

Typically: a brief narrative (300–500 words) describing what was delivered, who benefited, and any notable outcomes or challenges; two or three indicators showing delivery against agreed targets; and a short financial summary confirming spend. The whole report should be completable within two to three hours.

Does proportionate evaluation mean accepting lower-quality evidence?

Not necessarily. A well-designed, simple evaluation tool often produces more honest and more useful data than a complex framework that grantees complete under duress or misunderstand. Quality of evidence depends on relevance and honesty, not length.

How should funders handle grantees who fail to report?

For small grants, a friendly check-in call is almost always more appropriate than formal non-compliance processes. Many missed reports reflect capacity issues rather than misuse of funds. If reporting requirements are proportionate, non-compliance rates typically fall significantly.

What is the IVAR Better Reporting initiative?

IVAR's Better Reporting initiative is a set of six principles for grant reporting developed in partnership between funders and funded organisations from 2018 onwards. It is associated with IVAR's Open and Trusting community of over 100 UK funders who have committed to making grant reporting more proportionate, simple and useful. More information is available at ivar.org.uk.

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Last updated: February 2026

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Proportionate Evaluation for Small Grants