New report: UK’s richest donate almost £8 billion to charitable causes

• If high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) donated 1% of their investible assets, it would mean an additional £12 billion for charities
• Education is most popular cause for wealthy, with 56% supporting, compared to 4% of UK public
• CAF is calling for government-led national strategy to increase charitable giving

The UK’s wealthiest 1% donate £7.96 billion to charitable causes, according to a new report from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF)1. CAF’s High Value Giving report explores how the UK’s wealthy currently give and highlights the potential for donations from this demographic, a group for which current data is limited.  

The UK’s high-net-worth individuals give the equivalent of 0.4% of their combined £2 trillion investable assets, according to the research.2 These donors gave an estimated £7.96 billion in 2023. The wider UK public donated an estimated £13.9 billion to good causes in the same year, equating to 1.6% of their income, according to CAF’s separate UK Giving research.

CAF’s analysis finds that if each of the UK’s estimated 536,673 millionaires were to donate 1% of their investable assets, this could mean an extra £12 billion for the charity sector. The total donation from HNWIs would increase to an estimated £19.9 billion. When combined with giving from the general public, total giving from individuals would reach £33 billion. 

According to CAF’s High Value Giving report, the donors who give the highest proportion of their wealth are, on average, 63 years old, and are more than twice as likely to have inherited their wealth. Women are over-represented in the group of the most generous donors, making up nearly three in ten (29%), compared to 19% of the high-net-worth population.

Over the next 25 years, an estimated £5.5 trillion is expected to transfer from the post-World War II generation to younger generations in the UK, dubbed the Great Wealth Transfer. The next generation are predicted to be the most significant charitable donors in history.  

CAF is calling on the Government to deliver a national strategy for philanthropy and charitable giving to bring together a co-ordinated and cross-government approach to boost giving in the UK, including from high-net-worth individuals.

The new report reveals that causes supported by the UK’s wealthiest are significantly different to those supported by the rest of the public. The most popular cause for wealthy donors is education, supported by six in ten high-net-worth individuals. However, only 4% of the rest of the population choose to donate to education, compared to 28% who donate to animal welfare, the UK’s most popular cause. Similarly, while a quarter (26%) of high-net-worth individuals donated to arts and culture, just 3% of the public choose to support this cause. 

Common reasons CAF’s high-net-worth clients provide for donating to charities include a desire to support causes that align with their personal values or experiences, and a sense of responsibility they have given their level of wealth.

Edward Garrett, Head of Private Clients at the Charities Aid Foundation says:

“The UK has a strong history of philanthropy, which has been behind some of our most important innovations and funds crucial charitable services throughout our country. But there is cynicism towards philanthropy in the UK, perhaps more so than other countries.

“There is considerable untapped potential for philanthropy to contribute towards tackling local, national and global challenges. Donors, particularly among the next generation, are increasingly considering their giving as part of the spectrum of capital they can invest within the broader impact economy. The Government can take steps to harness this and renew Britain's culture of giving to strengthen civil society for the future, with high-net-worth individuals and professional advisers playing a leading role.”

Notes to Editors

1. High Value Giving is part of CAF’s Inside Giving, a series of reports examining the giving landscape worldwide, including UK Giving, Corporate Giving: the FTSE 100 and beyond, and the World Giving Index.
2. The Charities Aid Foundation commissioned Altrata, a company with significant expertise in wealth and the owners of Wealth-X, to produce estimates of the size of the UK’s wealthy population and philanthropic giving by these individuals. To complete the research, Altrata gathered publicly available information about the philanthropic activity of around 3,000 wealthy people in the UK, before applying its proprietary wealth modelling to project those findings to the whole UK wealthy population (in this case, people with investable assets of £1 million or more). The results have given us an estimate of the total philanthropic giving by this group in 2023.