…but it might not be as bad as some feared. Here at NCVO Towers we are still hearing some mixed signals about what’s been happening to charitable donations, but you might be interested to hear that your better class of donor – those giving gifts of £1m a year or more – also appear to be fewer in number this year. This follows on from research we published earlier in the year that reported ‘normal’ charitable giving has fallen.
Beth Breeze of Kent University and the ESRC Centre for Charitable Giving (CGAP) has produced the latest edition of the Million Pound Donors report with Coutts. This is suggesting a fall in the value of major donations from £1.6 to £1.4 billion – a £213 million fall which equates to a 13% drop. This is not a million miles away from UK Giving, which reported an 11% fall in the value of gifts from the rest of us.
Putting aside my cynicism about these genetically modified donors for a moment, Beth’s research does highlight how important they are: it needs 100 rich people to make up this shortfall, based on the median donation of £1.9 million. Based on the figures from UK giving – where the median gift is £10/month, and therefore £120/year – it would need one and three quarters of a million new donors giving at the median rate to make up the shortfall in major gifts. And I wonder why so many fundraisers attend the raising funds from the rich conference…
You can follow Beth’s blog here, which includes an entry about her experience of attending the raising funds from the rich conference.
Karl Wilding served as NCVO's chief executive from September 2019 to February 2021. 
