Nick Hurd has this morning confirmed that the long-awaited giving summit will take place in May this year.

Speaking at Action Planning’s tenth annual conference, Funding the Future, the minister for civil society said the summit will be an opportunity to report back on initiatives to encourage giving.

Plans to host a giving summit were first mooted in the Giving White Paper, developed by the Cabinet Office and published last May. It had originally been scheduled to take place last autumn as a one-day conference, and the white paper proposed it lead on to a year-long campaign to promote payroll giving to employers. It had also been suggested that the summit place an emphasis on opportunities around mobile giving. 

Hurd spoke in general terms about the May summit today: “On one level as a nation we are very generous, but it is a very small number of people who do most of the giving,” said the minister.

Eight per cent of the country do 47 per cent of the giving, he said.  

“The poor give proportionately more than the rich,” he added. “So the focus must be on widening the base of people who give and making [giving] easier.”

A Cabinet Office spokeswoman told civilsociety.co.uk that no further details about the summit are available at this time.