REPORT: Taking Stock and Facing the Future

The infrastructure and resources of the UK migration and refugee sector

Migration Exchange, April 2020

Migration Exchange

“Taking Stock and Facing the Future” is a review of the UK migration and refugee sector, commissioned by Migration Exchange. It is the most comprehensive assessment of the sector ever conducted. The report was initially planned to be published in July 2020. However, it is being released earlier with the hope to support informing the response to the changes and challenges introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The review illustrates a detailed profile of the sector and the funding landscape in early 2020. This includes an analysis of the sector’s income, resource allocation, capacity, financial resilience, geographical spread, and focus of work. In parallel, it provides an analysis of the funding landscape and the overall nature of grant making in this field. Taking the views of both sector organisations and funders, it evaluates the health of both the charitable sector and the foundations sector in this field, including their strengths and weaknesses. Looking ahead, it sets out the key future priorities, and internal and external challenges and opportunities for the UK migration and refugee sector. Building on this, it provides concrete recommendations to maximise and strengthen the impact of the sector over the coming decade.

To prepare this report, the research team has conducted a survey of 130 NGOs and 16 key trusts and foundations as well as 26 in depth interviews with the CEOs of NGOs and 11 in depth interviews with grant makers in this field.

This report could be a useful resource for a wide range of audience including foundations who are interested in supporting the UK migration and refugee sector as well as charitable organisations actively working in this field.