# Top 100 family foundations gave £1.4 billion in 2008/09

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2010/11/10/top-100-family-foundations-gave-14-billion-200809/
- Published: 2010-11-10T13:29:39+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**The UK’s largest 100 family foundations donated £1.4 billion to charitable causes
in 2008/2009, according to the third annual Family Foundation Giving Trends 2010
report produced by the ESRC Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy and the
Pears Foundation.**

These 100 foundations accounted for 9% of all private giving to charities during
that year.

The amount they gave increased by 40% from 2005/06 to 2008/09; and even though their
asset values fell by 12% in that final year, their charitable giving dropped by 
just 0.2%.

## Advertisement

The top 5 family foundations by charitable expenditure were the Wellcome Trust (
£681 million), the Gatsby Charitable Foundation (£50 million), the Leverhulme Trust(
£45 million), the Wolfson Foundation (£39 million) and the Monument Trust (£35 million)

Between 2005/06 and 2008/09, the value of family foundation giving grew from £998
million to £1.4 billion.

Commenting on the report findings, Trevor Pears, Executive Chair of [Pears Foundation](http://www.pearsfoundation.org.uk),
said: “Family foundations have proved remarkably resilient at a time when state 
resources are stretched and other forms of giving are under pressure. The top 100
Foundations set an example of what passion, commitment and strategic thought can
achieve – but it’s not enough. We need hundreds more foundations and many more initiatives
which show philanthropy working at its best”.

He called on other wealthy individuals and families to “be inspired, step up and
usher in a new age of long term, committed giving.”

Cathy Pharoah, co-author of the report and Professor of Charity Funding and Co-Director
of the ESRC Research Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy, Cass Business
School, echoed his call, saying: “We’ve seen a number of new foundations coming 
into the top 100 recently, and I’d like to see the trend towards creating family
foundations grow in terms of scale, scope and ambition to meet the escalating needs
of society.”

Family Foundation Giving Trends 2010 is the third in a series of annual reports 
tracking trends in the giving of the largest 100 UK family foundations (by giving).
It includes tables of the 100 largest family foundations in the UK by annual charitable
spending, benchmarked against giving trends in the UK and US.

The full report will be launched on 16 November at an event at Cass Business School
in central London with representatives from some of the UK’s largest foundations.

www.cass.city.ac.uk