InclusiNews · Macro Brief 02

The squeeze nobody's
talking about.

Three signals are quietly compounding. None of them get headlines. All of them change how UK SMEs and CICs should be applying for money in 2026.

Signal 1 — Tier 2

Fiscal headroom is gone.

Spring Statement, 27 March 2026: "no new departmental upliftls". Existing pots get smaller envelopes for FY26-27, not bigger. Levelling Up Fund is wound down. UKSPF replaced EU structural funds at half the size.

Signal 2 — Tier 4

The big foundations are reshuffling.

Lankelly Chase wind-down nearly complete — £15m/yr being redistributed to peer foundations through 2025–27. Tudor Trust criteria refresh due Q2. The grant database you researched in 2024 is half out of date.

Signal 3 — Tier 5

The banks haven't moved.

Tide still rejects CIC accounts as of April 2026. Lloyds Bank Foundation's "Enable" capacity-building grant closed for Q2. The Tier 5 friction is structural — the corporate CSR layer is contracting while founders need it most.

What it adds up to

Consolidation around
fewer-bigger gates.

Same money. Fewer doorways. Larger tickets per doorway. The doorways that survive will be more selective, not less.

The wrong move

Apply cold to 30 pots.
Hope something lands.

Win-rates 8–15%. Average application 12 hours of work. Three months gone, nothing won. This is what most founders are doing in 2026.

The right move

Operate inside relationships.

Pick 2–3 specific gatekeepers. Foundation officers. Trustees. Local-authority commissioning leads. Build the relationship over 6 months. One warm conversation beats 10 cold applications.

Where to start this week

360Giving's Q1 dataset.

Find every funder who gave to a CIC like yours in the last 12 months. That list is your warm-pitch shortlist. Free. Public. Most founders never open it.

InclusiNews

Daily macro briefing.
The squeeze, mapped.

We track the wind-downs, the criteria refreshes, the bank inertia, the place-based pots — every morning. So you operate on signal, not on press releases.