Large-scale philanthropy defies economic downtown
Two recent reports, now in their third year, have demonstrated that the UK’s wealthiest individuals are committed to providing long-term commitment to tackling some of the challenges faced by society in the current climate of austerity.
The Family Foundation Giving Trends 2010 report, from the ESRC Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy (CGAP) in collaboration with the Pears Foundation has found that the largest 100 family foundations gave £1.4bn to charitable causes in 2008/09, amounting to nine per cent of all private giving. Furthermore the amount they gave has increased by 40 per cent in the three years between 2005/06 and 2008/09 with only a 0.2 per cent drop in real terms during 2008/09. This was in a year during which their asset values fell by a real 12 per cent.
The theme of large-scale philanthropy being leveraged by the government with incentives to have a greater impact was picked up by Beth Breeze in the Coutts Million Pound Donors Report 2010.
This reports that the collective value of all donations worth £1m or more has climbed to £1.548 bn – although this is still £70m less than the £1.618m recorded in 2006/07 (the first year of the report).The average (mean) value of a million pound donation (MPD) was £7.7m, up from £7.4m in the previous year but still below the 2006/07 mean value of £8.4m.
Half of the MPD donors were individuals who either gave directly or through their personal trust or foundation. Individual donors were found to be more than twice as likely to give MPDs through foundations than directly. Around 39 per cent of MPDs came from professional foundations, in other words where the funding settler was no longer around to direct the grant-making decisions.
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