“the degree to which an organisation is able to sustain its projects, products or services financially.”

In trust fundraising terms, funders want to understand how reliant a charity is likely to be on their support and on other funders in the long term.  

More and more, funders wish to help charities move away from a 100% voluntary funded model (or ideally, away from a model which relies on too few sources).  The reality is that many charities will always be reliant on voluntary income and that diversifying into trading or high volume / low value individual giving is unlikely.