Mind the Giving Gap - Unleashing the potential of UK philanthropy
Each year, members of the UK public voluntarily donate nearly £20 billion of their own funds to help make possible the work of tens of thousands of charities, employing hundreds of thousands of people and providing services, opportunities and communities to millions across the country. This generosity has long been a part of British culture, and that has never been more evident than it was during the pandemic.
Yet there is a growing threat that such generosity of spirit is fading in Britain. Data from a range of surveys suggests that the proportion of people giving to charity has been shrinking for a number of years, with one ONS source suggesting that the proportion of households donating regularly to charity fell from 32% in 2000 to just 26% in 2018.
The falling participation in philanthropy, the decline in average giving by the wealthiest, and persistently unclaimed Gift Aid have combined to create a three-fold ‘giving gap’: one which could be worth close to £3 billion a year for the country’s charities. We estimate that:
- Closing the participation gap and restoring the proportion of the public that give regularly to 2000 levels could raise up to £1.4 billion a year for charities
- Closing the generosity gap among high earners so that everyone in this group donating below 1% of their income raised their giving to that level could raise up to £1.4 billion a year for charities
- Closing the Gift Aid gap so that a greater proportion of Gift Aid to charities was claimed could raise up to £380 million a year for charities.
The Law Family Commission on Civil Society have detailed a range of potential policy options in this paper – not designed, at this stage, to serve as recommendations, but rather as jumping off points for further discussion. To that end, across the coming weeks we will be working closely with policymakers, sector representatives, academics, economists and businesses to identify the most effective policy proposals for narrowing the giving gap, and to pursue making them a reality.
