More than three-quarters of British pubs did some kind of fundraising for charity last year, a level of activity which the industry body PubAid estimates could mean up to £101m of pub pounds for charities.

In a survey conducted by PubAid, 77 per cent of pubs said they had engaged in fundraising in 2010, raising an average of over £2,140.

Local, veteran and health charities received the lion's share of what PubAid suggests could be a total of £101m worth of donations being funnelled in to charities via British pubs. The top recipients of pub fundraising were Help for Heroes, air ambulance organisations, Cancer Research UK, RNLI and the Royal British Legion (Poppy Appeal). Quiz nights and musical events were the most popular fundraising activities.

While the results, borne from a sample of just under 1,500 pubs, were welcomed by British Institute of Innkeeping chief executive Neil Robertson at the organisation’s recent annual meeting, 2011 seems like it could bring even better news for pub fundraising.

“Even if the economy stays flat, customers will still spend 9 per cent of their disposable income on eating and drinking out,” said Robertson.

Many more pubs expect to fundraise from these loyal consumers this year. Nine out of ten (91 per cent) of respondents indicated they would like to fundraise in 2011 and 15 per cent of those who didn’t fundraise last year said they failed to simply because the idea hadn’t occurred to them.

As in any business, supporting charities for pubs was not an entirely selfless exercise. More than half of those pubs which fundraised last year said that it had brought more in business and 82 per cent said it helped demonstrate that they are part of their local communities.