When I first started looking at this year’s data from our UK Giving Behaviours Tracker, it gave me pause. After the extraordinary giving years of 2022, 2023 and 2024 – defined by Ukraine, Gaza, the cost-of-living crisis and a public that kept showing up despite their own pressures – the 2025 numbers tell a quieter story. Total individual giving in the UK has fallen back to 2023 levels. Average gift values have softened. The emergency-driven surges of recent years have receded, and the sector appears to be at an inflection point.

But the more time I spent with the data – now in its fifth year, drawn from a nationally representative survey of 2,136 UK adults conducted in Q1 2026 – the more I came to see this as a recalibration. And inside, four donor groups are pointing the way to growth. They’re not new audiences, but groups whose generosity has at times sat at the edges of how we plan, segment and invest. Their generosity tells us they should now play a more critical role.

Starting with the context, according to the latest Charities Aid Foundation Giving Report, total individual giving in the UK fell to £14 billion in 2025, down from £15.4 billion in 2024. Our tracker concurs: average gift value has dropped from £169 in 2024 to £148 in 2025.

Despite this, we found that participation has held relatively firm — 88 per cent of UK adults reported a donation in 2025, against 90 per cent the year before. The British public hasn’t stopped giving. They’re giving a little less, in slightly different ways, to slightly different things. That’s a fundamentally different problem from disengagement – and, critically, it’s more solvable.

The challenge isn’t that people have lost their willingness to give. It’s that too many of our fundraising models haven’t kept pace with how people now live, spend, and engage. The organisations that close that gap will be the ones that embrace pivoting and evolution.

1. Mid-value donors, who deserve a proper programme

If there’s one finding I want every fundraiser to sit with: households earning £50,000–£74,999 are giving an average of £179 a year, and those earning £75,000–£99,999 are giving £256, which means they’re maintaining their average gifts. Donor participation has held steady across income bands, too, though it’s no surprise that donation values have dipped for lower-income households where the budget is most under pressure.

This is a mid-value moment. Too many charities still operate with a cliff edge between mass-market direct response and major donors, with very little structured stewardship for the donors in between. That gap is where some of the most loyal, highest-potential supporters are sitting – and where a large chunk of fundraising growth will come from, as long as we engage them in a way that meets their needs, as well as demonstrate the ongoing impact of their donations.

2. Younger donors – showing up in places we don’t always look

There’s a persistent myth that younger generations don’t give. The data simply doesn’t bear that out. Donors aged 25–34 and 35–44 are giving the most by value – £184 and £186 respectively, well above the national average of £148. And 71% of 18–24-year-olds told us they're planning to donate in the next 12 months – the highest intent of any age group. Some of that is likely driven by causes like Gaza – issues that younger audiences see unedited through their feeds, in real time. For this generation, compassion hasn’t faded, and our findings show they are keen to make a difference and be part of a community of collective help. The opportunity for us is to keep close to what they care about, find authentic links to your cause, and make it easy to follow through. 

Gaming and livestreaming have grown significantly among under-35s since 2022. In the 18-34 bracket, one in seven – 14 per cent – had given through a game or live stream in 2025. In the 35–54 group, seven per cent had done the same. These aren’t fringe behaviours anymore; they’re mainstream channels that most charities haven’t yet built fluency in. If we want younger donors to grow with us, we have to meet them on the platforms where their attention, community and disposable income already are.

3. Donors of faith, whose generosity continues to lead the sector

Donors of faith give an average of £202 a year, compared with £84 from those who say they have no religious affiliation. British Muslims in our sample remain the most generous subgroup, giving £263 a year – roughly three times the average gift of non-religious donors.

Faith-motivated giving is one of the most durable, values-led forms of generosity in the UK. It’s also one of the least understood by mainstream fundraising teams. The opportunity isn’t to ‘tap into’ these communities – it’s to engage with the depth of motivation, ritual and trust that already drives their giving, and to design authentic experiences that honour it.

4. Ethnic minority communities, who are giving more and intend to give more

Ethnic minority communities now represent nearly a fifth of the UK adult population – around 10.9 million people. On average, donors from these communities give £217 a year, compared with £138 from donors who self-identify as White British. They also report higher intent to continue giving in the next 12 months: 66 per cent versus 59 per cent.

Despite this, ethnic minority donors remain consistently underrepresented in many charities’ supporter bases, communications and creative. We’ve recently launched a new planning tool at Blue State to help charities engage ethnic minority communities more authentically, and we’re actively looking for test cases – if your organisation wants to be part of that, please get in touch. There’s more on it in the full report.

A handful of wider findings won’t surprise anyone close to UK fundraising, but the data adds useful definition.

Trust is not a given. UK charities retain a clear trust advantage over international organisations – 63 per cent of donors say they trust UK charities completely or somewhat, against 42 per cent for international counterparts. But 21 per cent of respondents are neutral on UK charities, rising to 29 per cent for international ones. That’s a sizeable pool of undecided supporters: an opportunity, certainly, but also a reminder that trust has to be earned and re-earned, not assumed.

Local causes are reasserting themselves. Health and medical research, animal welfare, children and young people, mental health and homelessness continue to attract the largest share of donations. International causes still command higher-value gifts on average (£252) but have fallen significantly from their 2024 peak of £341 – a pattern I’d attribute, at least in part, to reduced global crisis coverage. National causes, meanwhile, are seeing average gift values rise. Giving is consolidating closer to home.

2025 is a difficult year to make sense of. The easy reading is that the sector is in retreat. I don’t believe that’s the right reading. What I see instead is a public that is still profoundly generous, but increasingly selective – about which causes they trust, which channels they use, and which organisations make giving feel relevant to the lives they’re living.

The charities that adapt – by building proper mid-value programmes, by investing in younger and more diverse audiences, by experimenting with new giving formats, and by engaging faith and ethnic minority communities with the depth they deserve – will be the ones best placed to grow from here. The fundamentals of generosity in the UK are healthier than the headline figures suggest. Our job is to design fundraising that’s worthy of them.

If you’d like to dig into the full data — broken down by age, income, ethnicity, religion, cause area and region — you can download the report here. And today, 7th May, from 12–1 pm (UK), I’ll be joining Fundraising Everywhere for a free webinar exploring three strategic shifts I think every fundraiser should be planning around right now: unlocking opportunity audiences, growing mid-value donors, and ethical giving. Register or watch the recording here. I’d love to see you there.

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