A civil society infrastructure charity that carries out research to support the sector has announced its closure after being impacted by a “cycle of financial precarity like many other small organisations for many years”.

The Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC) has been operating for more than 50 years but says it will be forced to close in 2027 amid financial challenges including a shift from “cross movement to issue based funding”.

This has meant it has experienced a “mixed bag of expected and unexpected losses of support, alongside successes”.

“The ongoing financial uncertainty, cycle of redundancy risk and long-term capacity strain have all taken a toll on us,” added the charity.

“After much consideration of all possible options throughout 2026, our shared view as a staff team and Board, is that we don’t have what we need to carry on in the conditions we’d come to accept as ‘normal’, it said.

“We have made a unanimous decision to close PIRC, prioritising dignity, operational responsibility and legacy for our movements.”

It says that in its final few months of operating it will prioritise “work that offers support to grassroots narrative change practitioners, and ensuring that we archive our work so that it remains usable”.

Archive worked to support the sector after its closure will be an online resource library, including toolkits, reports and worksheets.

The charity doesn’t have an exact date during 2027 when it will close.

The charity was founded in the UK in 1973, originally as a British version of US network Public Citizen. For the last 15 years it has been focusing on “grassroots narrative change”.

PIRC’s planned closure comes amid mounting concern over the future of charity infrastructure after Directory of Social Change announced in October that it could no longer continue.

In November the leaders of four major charity umbrella bodies, NCVO, ACEVO, NAVCA and the Charity Finance Group, called for the launch of an independent commission into the problems facing charity infrastructure.

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