Highlights
It is clear that civil society organisations face increased pressure to meet rising demand for support and services at a time when costs of service delivery have increased. Public finances are constrained, and the size of the need is more than funders can meet. To rise to this challenge, grantmakers from across sectors need to be as effective as possible, maximising the impact of their support by ensuring it is directed to the communities and causes that need it most.
UKGrantmaking will support funders and the wider sector to respond to these challenges. By providing data and insights about grantmaking made by UK-based institutions, and bringing that information together across sectors, we can all be more informed, effective and strategic in our decision making.
Here are just some highlights from the data and insights to be explored across the platform.
Over 13,000 UK grantmakers provided grants to the value of over £20 billion
Our research has identified in 2022-23, data on grantmakers in the UK, providing grants over £20.1bn after accounting for those grants identified as being granted to other funders (£296 million) for onwards distribution (known as regranting) which are likely to have been double-counted. Significant grantmaking segments such as local authorities and devolved governments were not included within our analysis, as comprehensive data could not be sourced (see our methodology section). It will be a priority to include this data in future editions to UKGrantmaking. Estimating the contribution of local authorities and devolved governments at £1bn, we assess that the total value of UKGrantmaking could be over £21bn.
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The vast majority of grantmakers are small, distributing under £1m a year in grants
82% of grantmakers had a zero or unknown grant spend despite being active organisations, which is likely to represent a high number of charitable trusts who are recorded on regulator registers as grantmakers, but are under the threshold for recording returns. Excluding small grantmakers with unknown grant spend in the data, the majority of grantmakers (56%) distributed grants under £1m a year.
Large falls in grantmaking recorded for National Lottery distributors and central government departments
National Lottery distributors reduced grantmaking overall by 13%, from £2.7bn in 2021-22 to £2.4 bn in 2022-23, which is a real terms fall of 21% when adjusted for inflation. However, rates of growth/decline varied greatly between individual distributors. Grantmaking by central government departments had a larger decrease from £4.1bn to £3bn, a decrease of 26% (one third in real terms).
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The largest 300 foundation grantmakers increased grant spending in real terms by 3%
The trust and foundation grantmakers represent the vast majority (93%) of known organisations in the overall profile of UK grantmaking and 31% of the overall grant amounts distributed. Across the largest 300 foundation grantmakers, grant spending rose by 14% – a real terms (when adjusted for inflation) increase of 3% to £5.2bn.
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The largest 100 funders providing grants to individuals decreased grant spending in real terms by 2%
Around 2,000 grantmakers in the UK provide grants to individuals of an estimated £400m each year. The largest 100 of these organisations gave £274m in grants to individuals, a 7% increase in giving from the previous year – but a real terms decrease of 2%.
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The majority of grants recipients in data published using the 360Giving Data Standard reported income under £1m
87,000 grants published using the 360Giving Data Standard were awarded in 2022-23. The majority of recipients were small – over 77% of those awarded grants reported income under £1m. Recipients of grants most commonly supported children and young people, and grants awarded were most commonly for a year or less and for under £10,000.
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Community foundations provided £175m of grants, a real term increase of 6%
There are 47 accredited community foundations in the UK who vary greatly in scale – the smallest providing grants to the value of £0.5m and the largest to £23.4m. Overall, grantmaking increased by 16% to £175m, which is a real terms increase of 6%.
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Charity recipients of grants registered in and operating only in London received just one third of the amount of grants provided to all charities registered in London
One of the challenges in understanding the grantmaking picture is the difficulty to identify where grant funded work is being delivered and people are supported compared to where the recipient of the grant is located. Using data published using the 360Giving Data Standard, we estimate that 56% of grants received by London registered charities are provided to organisations that operate in London only – and that only a third of the total grant amount is granted to London-only organisations.
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Next steps
These are just a few of the insights to be found within UKGrantmaking. Take your time to explore the data for your own needs.
If you are a funder who hasn’t published using the 360Giving Data Standard before but want your grants to be included in the next edition, 360Giving provides a wide package of pro-bono support to help you. To get started you can register for one of our upcoming introductory workshop sessions, take a look at our online guidance, or schedule a 1-1 publisher support call with our team.
If you’ve been inspired by this analysis and you want to find out how you can use 360Giving data in your work, sign up for an upcoming workshop on using GrantNav, our search engine for 360Giving data. You can also book a 1-1 data support call if you require specific advice about 360Giving data.
As well as being a resource for the data we do have, UKGrantmaking is also an opportunity to highlight what we don’t yet know. We will work to increase the comprehensiveness of the data available for future annual editions and explore what other insights might be possible with the data available. Read about our challenges and learnings from our first year of UKGrantmaking in the Methodology and data section.
To support our development of future editions of UKGrantmaking, your feedback on the approach, content, how it could be improved or suggestions for the future is essential. We welcome suggestions for amending issues with the data or segmentation allocation and if you have any questions not answered within UKGrantmaking, submit your questions to our FAQs.