Major donors, trusts and companies made fewer £1m-plus donations in 2009/10 than in the previous four years on record, according to an annual tracking report released today.
There were 174 donations valued at £1m or more made in 2009/10, bringing in a not insignificant total of £1.3bn. However, the Coutts Million Pound Donor report showed that this was the smallest number of donations, and the lowest total value of £1m-plus gifts since the report began tracking such donations in 2006/07.
The £1m-plus market peaked in terms of number of gifts in 2008/09 when 201 of these high-value donations were made, and reached a total value high of £1.6bn before the recession, in 2006/07.
Maya Prabhu, head of UK philanthropy at Coutts, which put the report together in association with the Centre for Philanthropy, Humanitarianism and Social Justice at the University of Kent, said that while numbers were down, it remains vital to celebrate those donors giving at this level.
“The fall in overall donations witnessed in this report reflects the undulations that we would expect to see across levels of giving in a longitudinal study,” Prabhu said. “Not only is it consistent with figures emerging from other studies for UK charitable giving, it mirrors the general sentiment in the economy and financial markets in the year 2009/10, the impact of a fall in wealth creation events and of philanthropists increasing the length of their decision-making process by becoming more strategic.”
Trends remained steady
But while the volumes were down, certain trends remained steady. Higher education was again the most popular destination for the donations and around half of these gifts were banked in trusts and foundations rather than directed straight to charitable activity.
International development saw a spike in interest from these donors, who yet again favoured the nice round sum of £1m as the most common gift. The majority of £1m or more gifts in 2009/10 were made by high net worth individuals, who accounted for around 60 per cent, or £782m, of the total amount donated by the group.
Some institutions, including higher education and London-based cultural and heritage institutions, received multiple £1m-plus donations. The total 174 donations in 2009/2010 were shared among 154 organisations.
Over the four years the study has covered, the researchers have identified 757 £1m-plus donations, worth a total of more than £6bn.
Report author Beth Breeze, of the University of Kent, said: “Before we started this annual study of million-pound donations, there was no clear understanding of the scale, role and significance of the largest philanthropic acts in the UK.
"That was an important gap in our knowledge that needed filling, because we need a proper understanding of current levels of support in order to make robust plans for developing this much-needed source of income in the future.”
