Insights
We explore the facts that define fundraising in 2024, including how the cost-of-living crisis has affected donors, the latest trends in fundraising events, the ways fundraisers are embracing digital, and so much more
Fundraising doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Fundraisers have to be plugged into the latest fluctuations in the economy, react to changes in the zeitgeist, and be mindful of ever-evolving forecasts for the future.
In recent years, the charity sector has been changing rapidly, with half of charities (48%) believing that the pandemic has changed fundraising forever and 86% of charities worrying about the impact that rising living costs are having on the people who use their services.
To help fundraisers tackle the challenges of the sector today, we have constructed an overview of fundraising facts in 2024, looking at how our changing economy is affecting donors and charities alike, as well as exploring trends in digital fundraising, grant funding, fundraising events, and more.
Skip to: Facts about fundraising and the 2024 cost-of-living crisis
Skip to: Facts about digital fundraising in 2024
Skip to: Facts about fundraising events in 2024
Skip to: Facts about methods of giving in 2024
Skip to: Facts about charity donors in 2024
Skip to: Facts about grant funding in 2024
Skip to: Facts about match funding in 2024
Skip to: Facts about legacy giving in 2024
Skip to: Facts about fundraising through corporate partnerships in 2024
Check out the Cost-of-living hub!
The cost-of-living crisis is affecting charity service users and supporters alike and is presenting new challenges to charity fundraisers.
Charlotte Weatherley, the policy manager at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, comments: “Charities are facing a double whammy at the moment…Inflation means that demand for services is rising, and on top of that, those services are getting more expensive to run. So the need for donations, whether it’s a one-off or a regular one…It really has never been more important.”
When asked in 2023, 60% of the U.K. public found it harder to give to charity than they did six months prior, according to Enthuse’s Spring 2023 Report. In all regions of the U.K., more people are finding it harder to give than are finding it easier to give.
According to Charities Aid Foundation (CAF)’s ‘U.K. Giving Report 2023’, 17% of people said they would be likely to cut their charitable donations to manage with their bills.
Women and men were as likely as each other to state they would make cuts to their charity donations (16% and 17%), despite a higher proportion of women stating they were likely to have to make cuts to their overall spending (72% compared to 66%).
Enthuse asked donors how they felt financially compared to six months ago and found that Gen X and Baby Boomers (who are collectively 42–77 years old in 2023) were the most likely to answer that they felt worse off (68%). Despite this, according to CAF, 81% of adults over 65 said they had not made any changes to their charitable giving.
This demonstrates that those groups who feel under the most financial pressure aren’t necessarily the groups most likely to reduce their charitable donations. Though sometimes there is a correlation: according to CAF, the group most likely to say they would make cuts to their overall spending were aged between 35–54 (75% compared to 69% overall average). Accordingly, this group was also the most likely to change their charitable behaviours to manage their bills (22%).
Regardless of financial difficulties, the majority (70%) of respondents to Enthuse’s survey still intended to donate to charity within the next three months. Gen Z were the most likely to state they would donate (75%), followed by Millenials (73%), Gen X (69%) Baby Boomers (67%), and finally 65–80 year-olds (63%).
The cost-of-living crisis is impacting upon charities’ ability to both deliver much-needed services and to raise the funds required to do so.
On June 21 2023, the Small Charity Week team sent an open letter signed by over 900 organisations to the U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, calling for more financial support to charities and the voluntary sector.
The letter welcomes the £100 million that the government has committed to voluntary organisations working at the front line of the cost-of-living crisis, but notes that the money is yet to reach organisations, and “there is much more to do”.
It reads, “Unlike businesses, charities cannot increase prices to cover financial challenges. The tide of demand threatens to overwhelm small charities which make up 96% of voluntary organisations in the U.K.”
The open letter invites the Prime Minister to visit small charities and meet with the Small Charities Advisory Panel to “discuss sustainable solutions to ensure that we can continue offering lifesaving and life-enhancing support to the people your government serves”.
The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has also made a statement about the Spring Budget 2023: “We’re…raising concerns that there still isn’t enough local government funding to cover the cost of charities delivering public services. We don’t think planned increases in departmental budgets will be enough to keep pace with inflation.”
“Worryingly, two thirds of charities reported they were already subsidising underfunded contracts long before inflation hit double digits.”
Check out the digital fundraising hub!
Digital fundraising has been drastically rising since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when restrictions to all in-person interaction also meant a fall in cash and in-person charity giving.
According to CAF, 51% of charity supporters used cash to donate before the pandemic (2019), which fell dramatically to 29% in 2021. In 2022, this rose to 35%, which is still far from pre-pandemic levels.
Giving to charity through a website or app has increased from 20% before the COVID-19 pandemic to 26% in 2022, according to CAF.
Enthuse’s ‘Donor Pulse Report: Spring 2023’ found that 44% of the U.K. public donated to charity using online giving despite a fall in overall donations. The demographic of online givers skews towards the younger generations, with 56% of under-40s giving online compared to 35% of over-40s.
Despite the popularity of online giving, the 2022 Charity Digital Skills Report found that almost half of charities (49%) said they were “poor” at digital fundraising, and CAF found that only a quarter (24%) of charity leaders said they know how to make their online fundraising truly effective.
On the positive side, 49% of charities saw improving their online fundraising as a priority, which is more than double the proportion who saw it as a priority in 2021 (23%). Similarly, CAF found that in 2022, 51% of charities planned to do more campaigning via digital platforms.
Innovations and mainstream access to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as ChatGPT have made people in the charity sector and beyond excited by the possibilities of the technology. Some have suggested new uses of AI for fundraising purposes, such as fast-tracking the grant application process, streamlining the copywriting stage of fundraising appeals, and brainstorming and drafting donor communications.
On the other hand, some are concerned about the ethical and practical risks and limitations of artificial intelligence in the charity sector. Our podcasts ‘Will artificial intelligence revolutionise charity work?’ and ‘The rise of the content bots’ explore these topical debates from different angles.
According to CAF, 26% of donors gave to charity through a website or app in 2022.
In their ‘Donor Pulse Report: Spring 2023’, Enthuse found that there was an increase in the number of donations going through charities’ own websites as opposed to through fundraising platforms. The report found that these direct website donations were worth 22% more than those made through consumer giving platforms, with the average direct donation increasing from £32.25 to £41.37.
Enthuse draws a link between the number of people donating directly through charity websites and the number of people who remember the name of the charity they last donated to, stating that donors are 38% more likely to remember the name of a charity if they donate directly.
This is because consumer giving platforms do not make the charity’s branding clearly visible, they state – with a total of 49% of donors giving this as the reason why they can’t remember the name of the last charity they gave to.
“Gaming for good” fundraising has been on the rise for a number of years. The U.K. games industry is worth £7 billion, offering an opportunity for fundraisers to engage gamers towards a good cause.
Georgia Paton, Gaming and Streaming Manager at the British Red Cross, told us about a shift towards other kinds of online streaming in 2023. For British Red Cross’s Ukraine Appeal, one fundraiser streamed himself working in his forge all day for a week, others making glass art, others making miniature buildings, and more.
She said: “when people are fundraising on stream, people donate when the person is talking rather than when they’re playing the video game. So, we’ve got a new buzzword: the creator economy”.
The British Red Cross’s gaming and streaming strategy was put in place during COVID-19, meaning that the charity has been able to utilise the income stream to fund its responses to new disasters and conflicts as they have arisen.
Other charities embracing gaming and streaming fundraising in 2023 include the animal charity Blue Cross, the mental health charity Mind, and the health charity Teenage Cancer Trust.
The national movement of local charities, End Youth Homelessness, has produced a Gaming for Good 2023 Fundraising Pack, which may be useful for other charities to take a look at when designing their own gaming and streaming fundraising events.
In 2023, Insider Intelligence predicts that 20.8% of all retail purchases will take place online.
The Office for National Statistics has found that U.K. residents are spending substantially more than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. When the research was conducted in July 2022, however, online shopping was beginning to fall slightly.
Many charities have shifted their charity shops onto their websites, with a big example being the British Heart Foundation.
The British Heart Foundation has also used eBay to sell rare and unique items to buyers from all over the world. These include a record from The Beatles before they were famous, which sold for £9,400, an 18 carat Cartier Tank Francaise watch, which sold for £9,766.66, and a rare copy of the 1968 Beatles White Album, which sold for £2,350.
In 2023, charity income from fundraising events has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels, according to CAF’s ‘U.K. Giving Report 2023’, with 15% of donors reporting giving to charity in the last 12 months at fundraising events, compared to 23% who gave at fundraising events in 2019.
But things are looking optimistic, with more than two out of five members of the U.K. public (44%) stating they are likely to take part in a fundraising event in 2023, according to Enthuse. A further 12% are undecided about whether they will take part in fundraising events, which represents a potential opportunity for charities to get people involved in their causes.
Enthuse also report that all age groups want to get involved with fundraising events, but that Gen Z are most enthusiastic (61%), followed by Millennials (60%). Overall, 61% of under-40s expect to attend a charity event in 2023 while 31% of over-40s expect to attend.
The most popular fundraising events among all age groups of the public are those that also aid attendants’ personal wellbeing, those that are smaller, and those that involve socially driven activities (47%). This is followed by exercise challenges which contribute to health goals (45%), large group events such as fun runs and walks (30%), and distance races such as marathons and half-marathons (16%).
Women were found more likely to want to attend smaller fundraising events associated with personal wellbeing and social activities while men were more likely to want to attend exercise challenges, large group events, and distance races.
In 2022, the biggest mass-participation fundraising event was Cancer Research U.K.’s Race for Life, which raised £22.4 million. Next biggest was Macmillan’s World’s Biggest Coffee Morning, which raised £15.6 million, followed by Movember, which raised £12.5 million.
The national fundraising event Comic Relief raised over £34 million in March 2023 to support people struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, food poverty, mental health issues, and homelessness.
High profile fundraising events taking place in 2024 include Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day, The London Marathon, and the NSPCC’s Number Day.
According to Enthuse, the top three motivating reasons for people to attend fundraising events were found to be taking part in an activity as a team, information on the cause the charity is helping, and information on how the charity spends its income.
Specific motivating factors for distance running events were when the charity provided help training for the event and taking part in a famous event. Distance runners were also more interested than average in merchandise and rewards and receiving help in setting up an online fundraising page.
The power of celebrity involvement was also powerful among potential distance runners. While 22% of the public said they would donate to a cause and 19% would talk about the cause on social media if they saw a well-known personality getting involved with it, 39% of potential distance runners said the same. 32% of distance runners also said the involvement of a celebrity would influence them to actively raise money for the cause.
A range of barriers were stated as barriers for distance events, with almost half citing a lack of fitness (55%), over a fifth citing that they are not sporty (22%), almost a quarter stating that they don’t have the energy to train (24%) and 23% stating that they don’t have time to train.
Enthuse highlights the fact that although Gen Z is much more interested in distance events than other age groups, more than one in five in this age range (21%) say that the fact that none of their friends run, cycle, or swim is a barrier to taking part.
In 2022, the Massive Top 25 list of charity-owned mass participation events found that virtual events saw income falling on average by more than 50%, while in-person events saw a rise in income. Overall, the researchers found a reduction in Facebook challenges among the top 25 mass participation fundraising events.
Despite this, Dementia U.K.’s Dog Walking Challenge was the first Facebook fundraising event to appear in the Top 25 list for two years. The challenge involves supporters joining Dementia U.K. March Dog Walking Challenge Facebook Group, receiving a free Dementia UK t-shirt and dog bandana, and setting up their own Facebook fundraiser of JustGiving page. Participants could each choose the distance they wished to walk.
The event page provides all the necessary information for supporters and answers questions that they may have surrounding digital fundraising for the charity in the FAQ section.
It seems methods of asking for donations are still removed from in-person interactions with charities opting for more virtual methods of communication.
CAF reports that people were most commonly asked to donate via television (25%), followed by being asked to donate via social media (23%).
The number of people being asked to donate on the street rose from 15% in 2021 to 19% in 2022, however this is still not as many as were asked this way in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic (34%).
19% of people were also asked to donate to a charity by post, and 17% were asked to donate via email. 12% were asked for sponsorship by friends or family members in 2022, which is a decrease from 14% in 2021 and 19% in 2019. 10% were asked to donate through door-to-door collection, which although up from last year (8%) is still down from 2019 (13%).
Only 5% were asked to donate at work, and 5% were also asked to donate at a charity event, with both showing a decrease from previous years.
According to CAF, the proportion of people donating to charity by buying goods or a raffle or lottery ticket has been slowly decreasing since 2016. Although 2022 showed an increase in 2% from the year before, this has still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Research from the Benefact Group and the Centre of Economics and Business Research suggests that donating to charity leads to greater life satisfaction and more positive mental health outcomes.
But the number of people donating has dropped 5% since 2022, according to Enthuse. The drop is seen across all age groups but those in lowest income households have unsurprisingly been hit hardest in terms of the ability to give to charity.
In line with this, people are giving to fewer causes than in 2022, with the number of people donating to multiple causes dropping from 32% in 2022 to 27% in 2023.
The number of regular donations to charities has stayed stable at around 28% since Winter 2021. Half of people surveyed by CAF in 2023 said they give to charity “from time-to-time”, 15% said they rarely give to charity, and 6% said they never give to charity. Women were more likely than men to report frequent giving.
Frequent giving is also more likely the older a donor is, with two fifths (39%) of those aged 65 and over giving to charity regularly, compared to only one fifth (20%) of 16–24-year-olds. In line with this trend, 33% of 16–24-year-olds either “rarely” or “never” give to charity, compared to 10% of those aged over 65.
By region, the most likely to donate frequently are those living in the South West of the U.K. (31%), the South East (31%), and Wales (30%).
The CAF ‘U.K. Giving Report 2023’ found that the most popular cause in 2022 was animal welfare. This was only overtaken in March and April by overseas aid and disaster relief, likely because of the war in Ukraine.
When asked which causes they had donated to in the past four weeks, 28% of donors said they had donated to animal welfare, 23% had donated to causes related to children and young people, 21% had given to medical research, and 21% had given to overseas aid and disaster relief.
Animal welfare, children and young people, and medical research have all comfortably been the top three most popular causes since 2018.
Women were found to be more likely than men to support animal welfare charities, children or young people charities, and food banks, while men were more likely than women to support religious organisations and military and veteran charities.
Enthuse’s ‘Donor Pulse Report: Spring 2023’ found that giving to overseas aid has doubled since Spring 2022, likely due to a shift in attention to the ongoing war in Ukraine and the Turkey-Syria earthquake on 6 February 2023. 47% of people surveyed by Enthuse said they had either donated or were planning to donate to the humanitarian disaster caused by the Turkey-Syria earthquake.
Donations towards hospitals and hospices have continued to decrease, according to CAF. While in 2017, 23% of survey respondents said they had given to this cause in the past four weeks, 16% said the same in 2022. Donations to support homeless people, housing, and refuge shelters have also decreased from 20% in 2019 to 16% in 2022 despite reports that homelessness is on the rise in the U.K.
Enthuse also notes that support for mental health charities has faced a sharp drop of 6% since last year, with 16% of those surveyed giving to the cause in 2023.
Donors older than 65 were more likely than younger respondents to support charities providing overseas aid and disaster relief, with 24% donating to these causes compared to 15% of 16–24 –year-olds.
Meanwhile, these donors aged between 16 and 24 were more likely to have supported causes relating to homelessness and shelters in the U.K. (24% compared to 15% of those over 65) and human rights (14% compared to 6% of those over 65).
It has been estimated that in 2022, £12.7 billion was donated to charities. This is an increase of £2 billion from 2021.
CAF has found a trend of “fewer people giving more”. That is, the rise in total donations in 2022 was because donors increased the amount they gave to charity, as opposed to a higher number of people donating. They note that this rise may be due to charity supporters adjusting their donations in line with inflation.
The median donation has stayed consistent over the past several years at £20. CAF notes that the value of this has eroded in real terms due to factors like high levels of inflation in the U.K.
In 2023, grant funders are adapting to the changing economic climate and its impacts upon charities in the U.K., thinking about how they can make their funding go further.
On 7 June 2023, The National Lottery Community Fund announced that from Autumn, it will be doubling the amount of funding available to grassroots projects from £10,000 to £20,000, and doubling the term from one year to two years.
It will also be investing £15 million on a new programme to connect communities in order to tackle some of the U.K.’s biggest social issues as well as investing £9 million to boost climate action.
David Knott, Chief Executive of The National Lottery Community Fund, says: “the money we plough into grassroots reaches the most people and mobilises the most volunteers out of all our funding, and…we’ve listened carefully to different communities and stakeholders to understand where our grants can make the biggest impact”.
The grant-giving funder John Lyon’s Charity has announced that in response to the cost-of-living-crisis, it will aim to make its grants easier to apply for, larger, and available over a longer term. The charity gives grants to benefit children and young people in North and West London.
The charity’s CEO, Dr Lynne Guyton, says, “It has been a succession of one financial travesty after another for the sector– from austerity to COVID-19 to cost-of-living – and the reality is, we cannot fund every charity. However, our new strategy will help us focus our funds where they can have the most impact.”
To see the grant funding opportunities available to charities in 2023, see CAF’s short selection, and IDOX’s more exhaustive list of funding opportunities and sources.
Match funding is when supporters’ donations are matched by philanthropists, government investment, and foundations. In March 2023, we noticed an increase in calls to use match funding.
During the May 2023 Mental Health Awareness Week, the annual match funding campaign Kind²Mind was launched by the Big Give for the second time. In total, it raised £1,514,822 for a range of mental health charities. Alex Day, Managing Director of the Big Give, commented: “We are delighted with the response from our philanthropic donor champions who have really increased their commitment to this important campaign.”
According to Legacy Foresight, U.K. charities received a record £3.85 billion in legacy donations in 2022. The organisation forecasts that this income stream will remain resilient over the coming years despite economic challenges.
Ashley Rowthorn, Group CEO at Legacy Futures, comments: “While the forecast remains promising, this is not time for complacency. The charity legacy market is becoming increasingly competitive with more organisations entering into this space and, despite the volume of legacies increasing, the average gift is likely to decrease, at least in the short term.”
“Charities will need to understand market conditions, how these are affecting their supporters, and be relevant in their fundraising to secure legacy income for the future.”
Research released in May 2023 commissioned by Remember a Charity has found that solicitors and professional Will-writers are playing an increasingly important role in legacy giving, with almost one in four (24%) of U.K. Wills handled by U.K legal advisors including a donation to charity. This has increased by 8% since 2014.
The research also identified the common barriers to legacy giving believed by these legal professionals: that people want to give their full estate to their family (83%), that they have difficulty choosing which charity or charities to support (38%), and that it may cause or lead to a dispute (38%).
In terms of the relationship between legal firms and charities, 56% of those who have acted or assisted in legacy giving said they found charities easy to deal with, while 13% said they didn’t find charities easy to deal with, with the top reason being too frequent communication from charities.
On 12–5 June 2023, Glastonbury Festival and the social media company TikTok teamed up to raise money for the festival’s charity partners, Oxfam and WaterAid. The partnership encouraged TikTok users to use the live gifting function, with unique gifts being developed for the event. TikTok matched the value of every gift sent to each of the charities.
Elior Doani, Social Media Manager at WaterAid U.K., said: “We’re grateful to the TikTok community who already engage with our content and support our cause and are excited to see how creators get involved in sharing these unique new gifts.”
The joint charities involved in the festival, Oxfam, WaterAid, and Greenpeace, commented: “During the Festival we provide a range of activities, from stewarding to loo cleaning and litter picking, to hosting incredible talent in the Greenpeace Field and selling sustainable merchandise such as water bottles. All of this raises a considerable amount for worthy causes.”
At the festival, the charities joined forces to collectively spread a hopeful message about climate change.
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