Tuesday, 2 December 2014

Charitable Giving - Public Generosity Keeps on Rising

If you subscribe to the notion that society is somehow going down hill then you might believe that people are becoming more selfish and less generous. However, if you take a look at charitable donations to the big TV charity fundraisers over time you'll see that donations keep rising year on year as the general public becomes more generous than ever.

For example, the first Children in Need event in 1980 raised just £1 million, whereas the eventual 2014 total is likely to be around £50 million (figures below show just the on-the-night total with the eventual 2014 figure yet to be calculated at the time of writing, hence the red column):

Source: Figures from Wikipedia
If we use an on-line inflation calculator to work out what 1980's £1 million total would be worth today it would be worth approximately £4.4 million in today's money, so we're approximately eleven times as generous as we were in 1980!

Meanwhile, Comic Relief has been going since 1988 when it raised £15 million, compared to the 2013 total of over £100 million:

Source: Figures from Wikipedia
Again, allowing for inflation calculated on the on-line tool, 1988's total would be worth about £37 million today, so we're nearly three times as generous than we were in 1988 by that measure!

According to statistics from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations charitable giving overall has risen from £9.4 billion in 2004 / 2005 to £11 billion in 2010 / 2011:

Source: NCVO

During this period the mean amount given per donor per month rose from £24 to £31 which, given that the period being measured was during a global economic melt-down, apparently didn't slow down the public's ever growing generosity.

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