Christmas donations likely to remain healthy, says survey

Howard Lake | 10 December 2002 | News

According to surveys for the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) and the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), donations to charity have remained healthy this year, despite the global economic downturn.

The surveys, conducted by NOP, record an average monthly donation by the public of £11.86, almost as much as the 2001 average of £12.12. This suggests that charities can expect donors to give as generously this Christmas and New Year as they did twelve months ago.

Last year the British public donated a total of £6.76 billion to charity. Despite an uncertain economic climate, the average monthly donation from January through to October this year is holding up at the 2001 level. This revenue will help the many charities which have been hit hard by declining share prices and declining income from the National Lottery.

“We are still enjoying the same high levels of charitable giving that were recorded last year despite a faltering global economy,” said Stuart Etherington, Chief Executive of NCVO. “The public seems to be determined to find something spare for a good cause however gloomy the economic forecast

may be.”

NCVO and CAF are urging donors to think this Christmas not just about how much they can afford to give in these uncertain economic conditions, but how they give. The smarter,

planned methods of giving such as signing up to a direct debit payment are much more likely to provide charities with the opportunity to take advantage of newly available tax breaks, than traditional methods of giving like street collections.

Cathy Pharoah, CAF’s Director of Research, said: “Charitable tax breaks are becoming increasingly important to donors and charities. Last year alone

they boosted every tax payers’ donation by an average of £24.’

When the full results of the 2002 NOP survey of individual giving are published next year, CAF and NCVO are expecting many of the traditional patterns in British donor behaviour to have remained unchanged. Early indications suggest that women are still giving to charity more than men and their average donation is still higher.

People aged between 16 and 24 are least likely to be donors and their average donation is lower than other age groups. 45 to 54 year olds give the highest amounts. People from higher social classes tend to give more generously than people from lower social classes.

Medical research and children or young people are consistently the most popular causes.

Two thirds of the public said they gave money to charity in 2001 but a group of ‘elite givers’ give the most. ‘Elite givers’ donate £50 or more a month. Last year this group formed 8.4% of donors, or 5.8% of the whole population,

but between them gave well over half – 58.6% – of total donations.

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.