In the financial year 2005/06, the Charities Aid Foundation and National Council for Voluntary Organizations estimate that individual donors gave a total of £8.9bn to charity.
The Institute of Philanthropy, which analyses charity funding, says two thirds of us are casual givers, who donate from time to time, but one in eight gives regularly. The archetypal ‘committed giver’ is more than 35 years old, has had a college education, reads a ‘quality’ newspaper, and has an income of £56,000 a year. But while financial stability and an interest in current affairs helps, you don’t have to be well off to care, and almost three quarters of people who earn less than the average wage of approximately £24,000 a year, also give to charity.
It’s not just about donating money either, says private art dealer and philanthropist Frederick Mulder: ‘A tipping point has been reached over the past few years and people realize that it is about taking responsibility. There has been a big rise in volunteering. Organizations such as Pilotlight provide high-level volunteers. And companies such as Goldman Sachs, Body Shop and Richer Sounds build volunteering days into their working year.’
Choosing a charity to support, however, either with donations or time, is not as easy as it seems. Their aims and achievements have to be in sync with our own, and finding the right one takes effort, which can be discouraging. There are 170,000 registered charities in the UK and while some, such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, are household names and their goals are simple to understand, others struggle in obscurity, despite their services being just as valuable.
The Institute of Fundraising has found that the biggest charities are benefiting most from the growing generosity of major donors, with the obvious corollary that smaller organizations, many of which tackle specific problems in innovative ways, are, sadly, being ignored. Large donors, such as companies, will pay experts to help them choose where to give, but for individuals advice is rarely at hand. ‘Most decisions about giving are made in isolation,’ says Mulder. ‘When you get a letter or you’re stopped on the street by a “chugger”, you’re put in the difficult position of having to say yes or no.’
Canadian-born, Mulder’s early philanthropic activities in the UK included helping to found the UK’s first donor network, the Network for Social Change, a private organization which today helps its 100 members give £700,000 a year. Perhaps his greatest contribution, however, is to have created in 2002 The Funding Network (TFN) which helps willing donors choose a cause to support. Regarded as the first public giving circle in the country, TFN meets four times a year and supports social change projects and organizations by putting them in front of potential supporters at day and evening funding events. ‘The givers are mixed: lawyers, students, retirees. They might arrive with an idea of who they want to give money to and then change their minds,’ says Mulder. ‘The fact that you might want to support a different cause, or help in another way, is absolutely fine. There are so many ways to be generous.’
Mulder, whose wealth comes from selling original prints by artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Pablo Picasso, has long had a passion for social change but has also found some pretty original ways of raising cash too. Recently, he persuaded buyers and sellers of prints unable to meet on a price to donate the difference, and has given works of art to his clients and asked them to donate their value to charity. And, in an example of charity beginning at home, he resolved a land access dispute with neighbours in Hampstead by pooling his own money with theirs to support an Oxfam project that helped build 40 schools in Zambia, rather than wasting £100,000 on legal fees and a pyrrhic victory.
‘Often, transactions are not about the money. You can gain much more by turning them from conflict to cooperation,’ says Mulder.