Strategy pillar 4:
Be a sustainable and thriving organisation

Our five-year strategy

In 2024 the DEC embarked on a new five-year strategy. Our core mission remains the same: to raise funds to save, protect, and rebuild the lives of people impacted by major disasters overseas.

Working with our member charities and the Rapid Response Network, our activities are focused on four strategic pillars. Pillar 4 is focused on being a sustainable and thriving organisation. 

We will continue to invest in our capabilities, people and processes to ensure we are a sustainable and thriving organisation able to deliver effectively on our strategy. 

Sustaining and thriving

During this strategic period we are focusing specifically on:

• Supporting our people
• Embedding our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) commitments
• Evolving our financial and risk strategy
• Investing in our systems and processes 

Supporting our people

Our goal is to be a sector-leading employer of choice, protecting our strong organisational culture, investing in the development of our teams and supporting them to thrive.

This year we invested in our recruitment and onboarding functions to support the increase in staffing levels which were needed to enable us to deliver on our appeals and programmes.

ESG commitments

As part of our organisational commitment to ESG we will embed improved practices across the secretariat and the membership. To achieve this goal, over the five-year strategic period, we will build on the environmental and HR policy work already undertaken by engaging with member charities to create an overarching ESG roadmap and a governance framework before scoping and implementing our commitments.

Our ESG commitments include standards for energy usage and travel, for example, but also standards to be applied to external suppliers and to our member charities. We will also develop our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) policies and staff training, and will review our governance against the Charity Governance Code.

Evolving our financial and risk strategy

Our aim is to evolve our current approach to organisational financing and risk, creating a more sustainable organisation better able to withstand future unpredictability and meet regulatory and compliance requirements.

This will include evolving our organisational core costs model, revising our Reserves Policy, investing in financial budgeting, monitoring, and reporting, and establishing a new risk and compliance framework. During this financial year we began targeted fundraising specifically for the DEC’s core costs, raising £0.3 million.

We plan to improve the accounting processes around our core cost fundraising, ensuring that our systems are effective and efficient. We will revise our Reserves Policy, delivering a risk based approach and ensuring that reserve levels are dynamically managed. Supported by our new Reserves Policy and accounting system updates, we will refresh our long-term financial forecasting.

Investing in our systems and processes

During 2025/26 we will continue to review and improve our systems, infrastructure, and processes to ensure they are secure, robust, efficient, and used effectively by the secretariat.

Over the five-year strategic period we will improve our key business processes and systems to make them more effective and efficient. 

Funding the core work of the DEC

The DEC is unique. No other organisation does what we do, bringing together 15 leading UK aid charities, institutional stakeholders, broadcasters and the UK public to respond when disaster strikes. We are a trusted convenor of the UK’s leading aid charities, supporting collaboration, impact and shifts in power dynamics in the aid response. We also recognise a responsibility to strengthen our collective voice of all 15 DEC member charities, sharing our expertise and learnings to make sure we continue to improve our highly effective sector-leading humanitarian response.

Our ‘helicopter view’ means we are perfectly placed to strengthen our collective voice, whilst also undertaking innovative projects that strengthen and preserve the UK public’s willingness to donate to humanitarian disasters overseas. 

When there is no appeal, the DEC Secretariat continues to monitor crises, evaluate past responses and prepare for the next appeal. We remain ready at all times – at full strength, with our team, partners and practices fully tested.

We operate a highly efficient model, keeping costs to a minimum. Our annual costs cover our core team and maintenance of infrastructure, which is needed year-round to ensure we are always ready to launch appeals. These costs are part-funded by member charity contributions, with the remainder coming from a proportion of Gift Aid raised in appeals and legacy income.

Over this strategic period we are seeking to move towards a model whereby more of the operational work of the DEC Secretariat is funded privately, minimising the need to charge these costs to DEC appeals.