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Fewer people plan to cut back on giving

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 26 Feb 2010

Less people are planning to cut back on their charitable giving now than at any point since the UK dipped into recession, according to new research.

The number of people who say they plan to give less to charity in the near future has dropped to below 10 per cent in January from a peak of more than 30 per cent in May last year, according to research carried out by CCBfastMAP and released by the agency DMS.

Nearly 15 per cent of the public had expressed an intention to cut back on their giving levels in November 2008, just as the UK was slipping into recession. While people are still not planning to increase their giving on the scale they were back in late 2008, over the past three months the number of people reporting that they will give more has been slowly but steadily rising.

However, although people are not cutting back as much on their giving, they are also not spreading their gifts as widely as they were pre-recession. Nearly 35 per cent of respondents said that they would be ‘not at all interested’ in donating to a charity they were not already supporting, compared with about a quarter before the recession.

Unsurprisingly, the proportion of people planning to buy charitable goods increased during the height of recession panic, but as of January stood at just under 10 per cent – still significantly higher than in 2008. Donor likelihood to participate in raffles has also steadily increased over the period of the monthly survey, which began tracking in November 2008.

The questions are asked as part of CCBfastMap’s monthly online omnibus and the answers are representative of the UK population by age and gender.  Each month at least 800 individuals answer the question about whether they are likely to give more, likely to give less, or for it to stay about the same.

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