Individual Giving in Scotland
Individual Giving - Donations, legacies and fundraising
This paper pulls together key facts about the individual giving landscape in Scotland and UK, using a range of data sources including the Scottish Third Sector Tracker and CAF.
Individual giving is an essential source of income for many charities and voluntary groups and helps fund an enormous range of activities. Here we highlight some headline figures, with a focus on key trends post COVID-19.
We hope the information on current trends in donations and fundraising will provide useful benchmarking info for boards, managers, and community fundraisers.
Summary
Individual giving via donations, legacies and fundraising was worth £1,133 m to the Scottish charity sector in 2021. The value of individual giving doubled over the last decade, in part thanks to time and effort invested by charities and voluntary groups in things like new funding strategies, funding sub-committees, recruitment of fundraisers and profile raising.
However, we saw a downturn in fundraising income particularly in 2021, primarily because of COVID-19 and the cancellation or postponement of small and large fundraising events. Donations income also fell, particularly in 2022 - this appears to be less linked to the pandemic, and more due to the Cost-of-Living crisis impacting on people’s ability to give.
As a result, difficulty fundraising has been one of the top challenges reported in the Scottish Third Sector Tracker over the last two years and seems to be a growing area of concern. In Spring 2023 over a third of the Tracker panel said that ‘Difficulty Fundraising’ was one of their top challenges.
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