Bill Bruty shares trusts analysis
Howard Lake | 7 April 2003 | News
Trust fundraising consultant and trainer Bill Bruty has shared some “startling results” from his analysis of some trust income figures.
Bruty shared his figures on the trust-fundraising e-mail discussion list. He reported that the majority of trust income will come from a small number of trusts.
Bruty analysed the trust income of 13 charities over nine years, concentrating specifically on the high value gift band, namely gifts over £5,000.
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He found that these high value gifts constituted around 85% of the overall income for each charity. These high value gifts had come from 310 trusts, and totalled £19,729. This compared to the £23.199 million donated from all trusts to the charities.
Analysing just the high value trusts found that once again a few trusts dominated the results. Just 67 trusts accounted for £15.006 million of the total income from high value donors, of £19.729 million.
Bruty was taking part in a discussion on how to set targets for trust fundraisers. Based on his reasearch he said he could predict that 64% of the total income will come from a ‘pool’ of 67 trusts, or “the usual suspects” as he put it. A further 21% of the income would come from a charity’s own unique high value trusts, ones that are not shared with other charities. The remaining 15% of the income would come from low value trusts giving under £5,000.
Bruty also looked at whether low value trusts could be persuaded to increase their gifts. He found that it is likely that only 5% of a charity’s active trust supporters would be able to upgrade to a gift level of £5,000. “Another nail in the coffin of the donor pyramid,” as he put it.
Bruty admitted that this dependence on such a small group of trusts had surprised him, even after 15 years of trust fundraising. In short, although there are an estimated 8,000 grant-making trusts, most charities rely upon a tiny proportion (0.8%) for two thirds of their income.
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.