May 2011

The Government’s long-awaited Giving White Paper is due to publish on Monday (May 23rd) and the weekend’s papers will be full of news on the state of philanthropy in the UK. So how is philanthropy? It is alive and quite well  - though many believe it could be much, much better. While Philanthropy UK carries many reports, including some this week, that show by some measures giving has increased, the level of giving as a percentage of national income refuses to budge and has hovered around the 1% mark for a number of decades.

The creation of a new fellowship of philanthropists aimed at improving the effectiveness and amount of community giving and boosting donor networking has been announced by Community Foundation Network (CFN) which will fund it from a £750,000 gift from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to mark its 50th birthday. The fellowship – currently called Time to Give –aims to involve over 1,000 people through the development of donor networking, education and

A year on from the Prime Minister’s launch of the Big Society programme an independent, cross party commission is calling on government to “fill in the blanks” on Big Society and for banks to go further in their support of it. It also points the finger at the business sector for what they call ‘tokenistic’ corporate social responsibility strategies that are ‘more about marketing than making a difference’.

 A new survey into the charitable habits of ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI) by J.P. Morgan Private Bank, shows only 7% are happy with their giving habits. Other revealing findings show over three quarters of respondents give regularly charity, with a further fifth (21%) saying they give irregularly, and an overwhelming 50% saying they give more than 5% of their total net wealth to charitable causes.