North of the border
In search of the Scottish pound – Cathy Pharoah and Mark Pincher report on the fundraising challenge in Scotland
The recession has brought significant challenges to fundraising in Scotland. Previous experience shows that fundraising trends follow those in the wider economic environment. With somewhat sharper falls in Scotland’s GDP growth than for the UK economy as a whole, Scottish fundraisers have faced a particularly harsh climate, which is by no means over. Latest reports from the Lloyds TSB Scotland Business Monitor [1 ]show that Scotland’s tentative recovery stalled in the last quarter, possibly because of the severe winter. Fundraising charities will be looking very carefully at the balance of their income from different sources. While donations from individuals and companies may have taken the first hit from the recession, as public sector spending cuts loom many fundraising strategists will be coming full circle back to private donations as a growth area. A timely illustration is the recent announcement from the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland that its settlement with its founding bank, which was an early casualty of recession, has now been re-confirmed. With private fundraising likely to face an increasingly competitive environment, this article aims to provide a new in-depth analysis of the diversity of the income base, focusing for the first time on Scotland’s largest 50 fundraising charities. An additional perspective is derived through comparing patterns among the top 50 fundraising charities in Scotland with those in England and Wales.
Author: Mark Pincher
Mark Pincher is data editor and development manager for Caritas Data.
Author: Cathy Pharoah
Cathy Pharoah is co-director of the ESRC Research Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy (CGAP) at Cass Business School.
www.cass.city.ac.uk/philanthropy
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