10th edition of The Guide to UK Company Giving published
Howard Lake | 30 April 2015 | News
The Directory of Social Change has published the 10th edition of The Guide to UK Company Giving, containing details of 400 UK companies which donate a total of £658 million.
The companies featured make cash or in-kind contributions, or both, to charities and community projects. Each company is listed with details on its:
* community involvement programmes
* in-kind giving
* employee-led support
* CSR policies and practices
Companies’ cash donations are down
Although the total of £658 million is an increase of 9.9% since the last edition in 2013, the value of total cash donations has dropped considerably, down by 21% to £369 million in the same period.
However, DSC points out that calculating total cash donations has become more difficult as new reporting requirements introduced in 2013 mean that companies are no longer required to declare these in their annual report.
Top 25 companies dominate cash giving
The top 25 most generous companies contributed 67.6% of cash donations. In 2013 it was almost exactly the same proportion, 68%.
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Corporate grantmakers
The 2015 edition includes for the first time details on corporate charities, where grantmakers are associated with a company. Around £200 million of all the corporate cash donations in the UK featured in the guide were made to these charities.
Donations to these charities account for about £200 million of the total cash donations in the UK made by the companies featured in this publication.
DSC’s Denise Lillya urged companies to return to declaring their cash donations to charities. She said:
“Companies in some numbers are returning to previous unenlightened times by choosing not to declare the one thing they can’t put a spin on, the hard cash they give to community and voluntary organisations. This is a disappointing and backwards step in transparent reporting and seems to have no logical reasoning or justification”.
Top 10 UK company cash donors
1. Lloyds Banking Group – £53.7 million
2. Tesco plc – £25.4 million
3. Goldman Sachs International – £22.1 million
4. Santander UK plc – £17 million
5. HSBC Holdings plc – £14.5 million
6. Shell (UK Limited) – £11.8 million
7. FIL Holdings (UK) Limited (formerly Fidelity Investment Management Limited) – £10.2 million
8. Barclays PLC – £9.1 million
9. Berkeley Group plc – £9 million
10. Marks and Spencer Group plc – £8.4 million
The 512-page Guide to UK Company Giving 2015 can be ordered from the Directory of Social Change for £80.
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.