Brits like to think of themselves as a nation of givers. By international standards, they’re right. Since rankings began in 2009, the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has tended to put the UK among the world’s most generous countries. From church halls and food banks to office collections to Red Nose Day, altruism is woven into British life.
But things are changing for the worse. Fewer people are donating, and parts of the system that quietly pushed them into it have been allowed to erode. Charities worry that this Christmas, where they usually get their biggest haul, might be a disappointment.
Brits may be unusually saintly… or maybe we are particularly keen on recording our good deeds. Charity is uniquely formalised, catalogued and regulated here. Elsewhere, there may be just as many people popping round to feed their elderly neighbours or donating to their local community centre – but we are less likely to know about it.
Our first law that regulated charities arrived in 1853; the birth of the welfare state prompted more stringent shaping of the sector. Today the Charity Commission for England and Wales, along with equivalents in Scotland and Ireland, keeps a beady eye on all British do-gooding. We have about 185,000 registered charities – China, with 20 times the population, has 15,000.
The amount Brits give tends to nudge up slightly every year. In 2024 the figure was £15.4bn. Health and children are our favourite charities, and we like to donate to British causes – although £658m went to disaster relief abroad. But other countries are beginning to outpace us. In 2023, the UK fell out of the top 20 most charitable countries in the world – its ranking had been declining over the previous decade.
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The most obvious explanation is a rise in the cost of living. In 2016, 61% had made a donation in the past 12 months; last year that figure was 50%, likely because fewer have cash to spare. About 3.9 million people cancelled a regular donation last year. Instead, says Phillipa Cornish, CAF’s head of giving, we have “super-givers”, who make up some of the difference. These particularly generous people are mostly older, and are slightly more likely to be female. Retirees may have more spare time to get to know their communities, and might be “responding to greater need”, says Cornish.
The generational divide is stark. Younger Brits are less likely to give at all – the number that does has fallen by a third since 2017. Many say they can’t afford it but surveys show a sizeable share of under-35s saying that it “didn’t occur to them”, or that no charity piqued their interest. When older people decide not to donate, they are more likely to say they find charities hard to trust.
Geography matters too. Some of the differences across the country can be explained by the fact that richer people give more. Those in the highest socioeconomic bracket donate on average three times the amount of those in the lowest – wealthier south-east constituencies (outside London) outstrip those in the north. Control for income, though, and the opposite picture emerges. South-east donors are 15% less likely to give than those in the same income bracket elsewhere. To take one example, residents in the northern suburbs of Leeds have the same median income as those in Croydon – around £26,000 – but are twice as likely to give money.
Why is this? “It might be that people tend to trust local charities more,” says Cornish. Northern constituencies, she reckons, may have more of these – or closer-knit communities, making them more aware of local needs. London stands out for its relative stinginess, and this fits with its more transient population. Country dwellers are more likely to give to charity than those in the city, which matches the pattern too.
Britain could ask youngsters, southerners and urbanites to dig deeper. We could also afford to squeeze more out of our richest tier.
One study by Pro Bono Economics found that the highest-earning Brits are willing to give an extra £2.4bn to charity each year than they actually do. What’s the hitch? One barrier might be a British reluctance to mention money. In the US, rich philanthropists talk loudly about their charitable causes and donations may come with attractions, such as naming rights – heaping honour on the generous and putting pressure on Scrooges. This sort of virtue-signalling has never been in fashion in Britain, and it’s hard to import. America’s tradition of businessman philanthropists rose in the late 19th and early 20th century: Andrew Carnegie wrote about charity as a duty – the rich were honour bound to “return surplus wealth to the mass of their fellows”. For many in the US, then, charity is synonymous with black tie evenings in hotel ballrooms. In Britain, it means giving your friend £20 to run a marathon.
Corporate giving is another place where the UK falls short. Over the past decade, donations from FTSE 100 businesses have fallen by 34%. The trend dates precisely to 2013, when a change to the Companies Act removed the requirement to disclose charitable giving. The argument was that there was “no evidence” this would affect philanthropy. It did. Last year just 24 FTSE 100 companies gave at least 1% of their pre-tax profits away. Three-quarters do nothing to support charities.
Charities want more awareness about gift aid – a tax break that benefits them not donors – and make it fully digital and frictionless. There are also campaigns to make corporate-giving a normal part of responsible business rather than a discretionary extra. But social norms may matter most of all. People are more likely to give when others do. We should talk more about it.
Photograph by Vuk Valcic/Alamy Live News