Hundreds of individuals and charities have joined the Back Britain’s Charities campaign, launched following the release of a study which reported a 20 per cent drop in giving, despite senior fundraisers questioning the figures and methodology of the report.

NCVO confirmed that as of this morning, there are 815 signatories to the campaign to encourage more financial support of British charities and fundraising, 403 of which are organisations. The campaign was launched yesterday following the release of the UK Giving report, which found a £2.3bn real terms fall in individual giving to charities in 2011/12.

That figure, however, was quickly disputed by the Institute of Fundraising, the chief executive of which said that fall did not represent the common experience of his organisation’s members, many of which reported an increase or stability in their individual giving income.

At the launch of the Institute’s revised single code of practice yesterday, the Institute's chair Mark Astarita said that the figures required a “long hard look”, and had only one member of an audience of about 50 fundraisers admit to a drop in income of the proportion reported in UK Giving. “I think we might have noticed if it was down by 20 per cent,” said Astarita, also director of fundraising at the British Red Cross, which has doubled individual giving income in the past four years.

But NCVO head of policy and campaigns Karl Wilding told civilsociety.co.uk that while he was himself surprised by the figures the UK Giving survey brought up, “we have checked it, we have checked it, and we have checked it again” and that he stands by the trends represented by the annual survey. He said he had actually been more surprised that the study had shown increases in giving over the past two years, given the very real pressure on household discretionary income.

The Institute is the sector’s centre of expertise for fundraising and surrounds itself with the best fundraisers in the country, Wilding said, “so it is more likely they are going to hear from fundraisers who are managing their income through these tough times.”

However, given the figures are a mean Wilding said it was natural that there are charities reporting both better performance than reported by the study and charities which are performing far worse. The experience of the Institute’s members, and the experience of giving in the UK as a whole, he said, are not incompatible.

Wilding said that the debate around the figures highlights the need for more investment in research into philanthropy and fundraising in the UK. Other than NCVO and Charities Aid Foundation, which co-produce the UK Giving report, he said no one is investing in high quality research, which could help to develop a series of giving indices which might be used to create a more robust and coherent picture of philanthropy. “It would be better for everyone if we weren’t the only ones doing it,” he said.

A review of the top ten charities in Britain by voluntary income finds that none have suffered a drop in income in the range reported by the UK Giving report, but neither are all increasing their fundraising totals. While income for some of the top ten is heavily variable based on legacy wins, the picture is one of relative stability for many of the super-large charities; five of the top ten increased fundraising, three saw a decline in fundraising income and two others were essentially flat.

These large charities, however, account for a significant proportion of giving as a whole and do not reflect the experiences of smaller charities, some with far less sophisticated fundraising capacity. These figures below also relate to the most recent public records on income, which does not necessarily correlate with the 2011/12 time frame which the UK Giving report covered. However, the performance of the largest charities can provide something of a bellwether for the fundraising sector at large. 

How the top ten fundraising charities performed

1. Cancer Research UK – FLAT - Total income up 2 per cent, but fundraising down from £433m to £432m
2. RNLI – UP - Voluntary income rose 1.4 per cent to £148m
3. Macmillan Cancer Support – UP – A 10 per cent rise in voluntary income to a record £141.3m
4. British Red Cross – UP – Voluntary income rose 10 per cent to £131.5m
5. NSPCC – DOWN – A significant £12.9m fall in voluntary income within the year
6. Oxfam – DOWN – Voluntary income fell 7 per cent to £129.7m
7. Comic Relief – UP – Latest accounts, for 2010/11 show a massive spike in income from £59m to £101.6m, but this often reflects the alternate years of Sports Relief and Comic Relief, the latter of which traditionally raises significantly more
8. RSPCA – FLAT – While individual giving contributions rose 11 per cent, a fall in legacies meant total voluntary income stood at £100.7m in the calendar year 2011, down from £101m
9. Salvation Army – UP – Latest published records, for 2010/11 show voluntary income at £97.91m – marginally higher than the £96.75m of the previous year
10. British Heart Foundation – DOWN – Fundraising income rose by £200,000 to £38.2m in the last financial year, while there was a small drop in the charity's substantial legacy to £53m from £54.9m. Total voluntary income, therefore, stood at £91.2m, down slightly from the previous year which stood at £92.9m.