United Kingdom

Rank Foundation

The Rank Foundation was established in 1973 and has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom.

Key topics of the Foundation are relational philanthropy, place-based funding, and collaboration.

(Research) questions guiding their work are, among others:

• How does relational philanthropy operate in practice, and through which mechanisms does it shape relationships, decision-making, and outcomes between funders and funded organisations?
• How can national philanthropic funders effectively contribute to place-based programmes, and how do their roles interact with local actors and contexts?
• How do foundations that both fund and deliver programmes navigate the boundary between independent grantmaking and charitable service provision, and what are the implications for governance and legitimacy?
• How do power, accountability, and decision-making processes function between boards and advisory groups within philanthropic foundations?

The Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome Trust is a foundation and research-funding and knowledge organisation. It was established in 1936 and has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom.

Key topics of the Wellcome Trust are health, research, equity, solutions, and advocacy. 

(Research) questions guiding their work are, among others:

• Which emerging and cutting-edge research fields have the greatest potential to transform population health outcomes, and how can philanthropic funding support their development?
• What are the health impacts of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, and how can philanthropy contribute to advancing effective and equitable responses?
• Which knowledge and innovation gaps in infectious disease research represent critical opportunities for philanthropic intervention, particularly in underserved or high-need contexts?
• Where are the most effective opportunities for early intervention in anxiety, depression, and psychosis, and how can philanthropic investments support prevention and early-stage responses?
• How can researchers and research institutions leverage emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing to improve health outcomes, and what role can philanthropy play in enabling responsible and impactful use?

Introduction to Philanthropy Research in the United Kingdom

By Christopher Dougherty

Research on philanthropy in the United Kingdom is concentrated in a relatively small number of university research centres, sector organisations and government departments. Research tends to approach philanthropy either from the perspective of donors and philanthropists or from that of charitable organisations and beneficiaries.

The UK research landscape is complicated by its constitutional structure. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different regulatory and administrative arrangements relating to charities, fundraising and aspects of taxation. Consequently, philanthropic data may come from different sources, use different definitions and cover different geographical areas.

Important academic centres include the Centre for Philanthropy at the University of Kent, the Centre for Research on Entrepreneurship, Wealth and Philanthropy at Newcastle University, and the Centre for the Study of Philanthropy & Public Good at the University of St Andrews. Their research covers areas including major donors, philanthropic advisers, entrepreneurial philanthropy, foundations, social innovation and the relationship between philanthropy and the state.

Several practitioner organisations also provide essential data. 360Giving maintains a common data standard and grant database, while the Association of Charitable Foundations has historically produced research on major UK foundations. The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) produces the annual UK Giving Report on individual giving and research on corporate philanthropy.

HM Revenue & Customs provides another important source through data on Gift Aid, inheritance-tax relief and other tax incentives for charitable giving. Charity regulators in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland also collect financial information through charities’ annual returns.

Overview of Giving in the United Kingdom

Giving by individuals

The principal estimate of individual giving comes from CAF’s UK Giving Report 2023, based on a nationally representative survey of 13,140 individuals conducted during 2022. The data indicate that 32% of individuals donated during the period measured, with a mean donation of £60, approximately €70.

Among the causes measured, children were supported by 23% of respondents. International aid and health research were each supported by 21%, older people by 17%, food banks by 16%, nature-related causes by 14%, religion and disability-related causes by 11%, and health care by 9%. Animal causes were particularly prominent, supported by 28% of donors.

Total lifetime giving by individuals was estimated at approximately £12.7 billion, or €14.893 billion. Religion received around 14% of this total. International aid also accounted for approximately 14%, while health care accounted for 10% and health research for 7%. Animal-related causes received an estimated 10%.

Three main sources are used to understand individual giving: CAF’s representative surveys, annual returns submitted by charities to national regulators, and HMRC tax-relief data. None provides a complete picture and the datasets cannot currently be linked.

Gift Aid illustrates the scale of tax-incentivised giving. In 2022, HMRC transferred approximately £1.34 billion in Gift Aid to charities. Because Gift Aid represents 25% of eligible donations, this corresponds to approximately £5.36 billion in underlying donations—around 42.2% of the total individual giving estimated by CAF.

The data also indicate a broader shift in giving patterns: a shrinking share of the population is responsible for an increasing proportion of total donations, although the distribution of supported causes has remained relatively stable.

Bequest giving

Charitable bequests are an important component of UK philanthropy, although comprehensive administrative data are not available because most charities report bequests and lifetime donations together.

HMRC data provide a lower-bound estimate. In 2022, £670 million in inheritance tax was relieved as a result of charitable giving. Based on the 40% inheritance-tax rate, this implies at least £1.675 billion in charitable bequests, excluding estates below the inheritance-tax threshold.

A broader estimate comes from Legacy Futures, which combines data from major charities with administrative, demographic and economic information to model the entire UK legacy market. In 2022, charitable legacy income was estimated at approximately £4 billion, generated by around 140,000 individual bequests. This represented growth of 6.5% compared with the previous year.

Health-related charities received approximately 39% of legacy income, followed by animal charities at 16%. Development, conservation and disability organisations each received around 7%, while armed-forces and children’s charities each accounted for approximately 3%.

The available data provide a relatively strong picture of the size and destination of charitable bequests, but much less is known about the demographic characteristics, motivations and family circumstances of the people making them.

Corporate giving

Reliable data on corporate philanthropy are considerably more limited. Charity annual returns do not distinguish corporate from individual donations, while HMRC does not publish comprehensive statistics on charitable deductions claimed by companies. Corporate gifts may also be recorded as ordinary business expenses rather than specific charitable deductions.

CAF provides the principal available estimate through its research on companies in the FTSE 100. For the period covering 2022–2023, average reported giving was approximately £19.7 million per company among those represented in the data.

Total giving by FTSE 100 corporations was estimated at approximately £1.85 billion, equivalent to €2.169 billion.

This estimate requires caution. The data may include estimated cash-equivalent values for non-monetary contributions such as employee volunteering, and it is unclear in some cases whether transfers from companies to their own corporate foundations are included. The figures also cover the FTSE 100 rather than the whole UK corporate sector.

Foundations

Foundation giving is particularly difficult to isolate in the UK because there is no legal or regulatory distinction between an operating charity and a grantmaking foundation. Charities can both run programmes and make grants, and their annual returns do not provide a sufficiently detailed national distinction between these activities.

Historically, the Association of Charitable Foundations reported on the 300 largest foundations. Its Foundation Giving Trends 2022 report estimated approximately £3.708 billion, or €4.348 billion, in grantmaking for 2020–21.

However, these data do not distinguish whether grants were financed from investment income, donor-directed pass-through funding or other income sources. Nor do they identify whether transfers form part of a foundation’s independent grantmaking programme. For this reason, the publication excludes the £3.708 billion estimate from its final calculation of philanthropic contributions.

A newer source is the UKGrantmaking initiative based on data shared through 360Giving. These records provide substantially better information on individual grants and their recipients. Participation is voluntary, however, meaning the dataset cannot yet be regarded as representative of all UK foundation grantmaking.

Consequently, no separate foundation-giving figure is included in the national overview.

Charity lotteries

The United Kingdom has a substantial charity-lottery market. Charities can operate lotteries under Gambling Commission regulations, ranging from relatively small society lotteries to large-scale operators.

For the 2022 figure used in the national overview, charity lotteries contributed approximately £422 million, equivalent to €495 million, to good causes.

More recent Gambling Commission statistics indicate continued growth. Large society lotteries subsequently generated around £1.1 billion in ticket sales, of which £461.5 million was contributed to good causes. This was 9.4% higher than in the preceding reporting period and 25.4% above the last pre-lockdown period.

These figures do not provide information on the specific causes, organisations or geographical areas receiving the funds.

The government-administered National Lottery is treated differently. In 2022, it distributed approximately £1.973 billion to good causes, but these allocations are excluded from the philanthropy totals because their distribution is administered through a government scheme rather than treated as private philanthropic giving.

Sources of Contributions in the United Kingdom

The publication estimates approximately £18.972 billion, or €22.548 billion, in philanthropic contributions from the categories that can be included with sufficient confidence. Individual lifetime giving is by far the largest component, followed by charitable bequests, corporate giving and charity lotteries. Foundation giving is deliberately excluded because the available data do not allow a sufficiently robust distinction between independent foundation grantmaking and other financial flows.

The underlying evidence remains uneven. Different parts of the UK operate under different regulatory arrangements, and data for Scotland and Northern Ireland are particularly limited. Smaller organisations are also less well represented in administrative datasets. As a result, approximately 35% of the estimated philanthropic activity discussed in the publication cannot be allocated reliably to particular causes.

The UK therefore has one of Europe’s largest documented philanthropic sectors, but its data infrastructure remains fragmented. Improved coordination among regulators, research institutions and sector organisations would be necessary to create a more complete and consistent national picture.

One source inconsistency should be noted when using the headline figures: the concluding table reports £4.0 billion in bequests as €4.991 billion, while the exchange rate printed with the table is £1 = €1.1727. The webpage figures above reproduce the publication’s own summary table rather than silently recalculating it.

Source

Dougherty, C. (2026). Philanthropy in the United Kingdom. In B. Hoolwerf & J. Vamstad (Eds.), Philanthropy in Europe: Mapping Research and Data on Donations by Households, Bequests, Foundations, Corporations and Charity Lotteries (pp. 345–366). European Research Network on Philanthropy.

You can download the full publication here: Philanthropy in Europe.