Cancer charities are the nation’s favourite cause to support, but children’s charities have fallen beneath animal charities in popularity, according to a report published today.
Facts and Figures: Favourite Causes, a free report published today by consultancy nfpSynergy, found that hospices and other health causes rounded out the top five favourite causes, as they have done since 2010.
It found that armed forces charities continued to grow in popularity, and were now at sixth place in the list.
As with last year, the report found that the public do not always give the most money to the causes they say are their favourites.
Other findings
"As highlighted in last year’s Facts and Figures report, the public do not necessarily donate the largest amount of money to their favourite causes. Despite cancer being the most popular cause by far, it does not attract the largest proportion of public donations; the cause that attracts the most individual donations is children and young people (30 per cent), ahead of medical research this year (29 per cent) for the first time."
"Our 2016 data reveals that most causes are fairly equal in popularity amongst males and females, with 2 notable exceptions. Both male and females picked the same top three causes (cancer, animals and children and young people); however, the data reveals that men are slightly more likely to favour armed forces causes. 21 per cent of men picked armed forces causes, as opposed to only 17 per cent of women. In addition, women continue to be far more likely to favour animal charities than men (40 per cent and 28 per cent respectively)."
"Looking at ten year trends, homelessness and social welfare have increased in popularity, rising from 12 per cent in 2007, to 16 per cent in 2016. This increase in popularity correlates with a rise in homelessness since 2010 and a surge in media coverage of food waste and hungeriv, both of which could have led to greater awareness of social welfare issues. The high level of austerity following the 2008 financial crisis and a subsequent reduction in social welfare provision under the current Conservative Government has meant that homelessness and social welfare have become pressing issues in the UK."
Methodology
In July, nfpSynergy asked 1,000 charity supporters to name as many of their favourite causes as they wanted, and also to give information on which charities they donated to and volunteered for.
