Putting it all in perspective

Howard Lake | 29 October 1997 | News

• Tagged with:
• Giving/Philanthropy
• Research and statistics

Just how big is fundraising in the UK? How many fundraisers are there?

The Institute of Charity Fundraising Managers’ Annual Report 1996-7 lists some impressive figures that show the dimensions of fundraising in the UK.

• The charity sector has an annual income of between £12 and £16 billion.
  
• There are 181,000 registered charities in England and Wales, and a further 26,000 in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
  
• The voluntary sector employs 466,700 people (1.5 per cent of the total working population)
  
• Almost 90 per cent of charity income and expenditure is accounted for by the top 10 per cent of charities.
  
• 46 per cent of all charity income is voluntary, and nearly 80% of voluntary income comes from the general public, who in 1996 gave £1,708 million.
  
• In the five years from 1991 to 1995 voluntary income increased in real terms by 26 per cent.
  

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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.