UK giving fell by 4.2 per cent last year, says report

05 Mar 2019 News

Overall giving to UK charities fell by 4.2 per cent in 2018, on a year-on-year basis, the latest study from the Blackbaud Institute for Philanthropic Impact has found.

But online giving in the UK has increased by 5.5 per cent, the report said.

The findings, published in the Blackbaud Institute's 7th annual Charitable Giving Report came from an analysis of 9,029 worldwide non-profits’ incomes in 2018.

The Blackbaud Institute is the research arm of Blackbaud, a US-based software company.

Some 311 UK organisations are tracked by the index, which measures trends across Blackbaud's clients around the world. 

It found that in the US, giving increased by 1.5 per cent and online giving increased by 1.2 per cent. In Canada overall giving increased by nearly 2 per cent and in Australia overall giving increased by 4 per cent. 

Worldwide trends 

In 2018, the overall percentage of giving that came from online sources reached a high of 8.5 per cent. In 2017, 7.6 per cent of giving was online. This trend has recently turned upwards more sharply; over the four years between 2013 and 2017 online giving grew by 1.2 percentage points, but in just one year after that it had increased by another 0.9 percentage points. 

The report noted that smaller organisations were more likely to raise a higher percentage of their money online. Organisations with an income of less than $1m saw on average 13.4 per cent of fundraising come from online sources, while for organisations with an income of over $10m it was 4 per cent. 

Steve MacLaughlin, vice president, product management at Blackbaud and senior advisor at the Blackbaud Institute, said: “The 2018 Charitable Giving Report shows the continuation of the longest sustained period of charitable giving growth since the last recession. Online giving is entering a new phase in which mobile and other digital channels continue to change how donors engage with non-profit organisations, while donor-advised funds continue to grow in response to supporter preferences and changes in incentives. As charitable giving in the United States sees a return to previous trends after two years of significant growth, it’s imperative to look at overall giving increases since 2016.”

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