Pandemic sees the UK's fortunes tumble
The UK has dropped out of the ranking of the world’s most generous countries for the first time as the effects of lockdowns on charity fundraising took hold.
Data gathered for the Charities Aid Foundation’s (CAF) World Giving Index reveals the UK has tumbled from 7th to 22nd place.
CAF’s index is a global survey which has interviewed more than 1.6 million people since 2009 and asks each of them three questions: have they helped a stranger, given money or volunteered for a good cause over the past month?
For this edition, data has been included for 114 countries, representing over 90% of the global adult population. The rankings produced are not based on the amounts given or the number of volunteer hours spent.
The UK has been a stalwart of the top 10 list since it began in 2009, but 2020 saw it falter dramatically.
However, the country did maintain its top 10 ranking when it came to donating money to charity (7th overall), but the number of people reporting that they had done so saw its biggest year-on-year drop, signalling that lockdowns affected all three gauges of generosity – the ability to volunteer, to help a stranger and to donate money.
The number of people who reported donating money fell from 67% in 2019 to 59% in 2020; those who said they had helped a stranger dropped from 60% to 43% and the number who said they had volunteered fell from 34% in 2019 to 22% in 2020.
The survey found that the world’s most generous country is Indonesia, which also topped the list in 2018. It is followed by Kenya and Nigeria.
This year’s survey highlights the impact of lockdowns on charitable giving in several major economies, which have all seen sharp falls in the rankings, including America, Canada, Ireland, and the Netherlands. Only Australia and New Zealand, where the survey was undertaken in the weeks before the first wave of the pandemic took hold, maintained their top 10 rankings.
Other key findings were:
- Several countries have moved up the rankings and make their first appearance in the top 10, including Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Kosovo – but whilst their overall giving scores have increased somewhat, their rise up the Index is driven by the relative decline of other countries.
- Communities around the world mobilised to help fellow citizens as the pandemic took hold, resulting in the highest overall ‘helped a stranger’ figures since the index was first launched in 2009. More than half (55%) of the world’s adults – or 3 billion people - reported helping someone they didn’t know in 2020.
- Similarly, more people globally donated money in 2020 than had done so in the last five years (31%). Levels of volunteering in 2020 are broadly unchanged at the global level.
Neil Heslop, chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation, said: “This year’s World Giving Index makes for sombre reading as it lays bare the lost potential to support charities that was the result of the UK’s lockdowns.
“We know that lockdowns saved lives and protected the NHS, but for the thousands of charities that rely on fundraising events, on spontaneous cash donations and on an army of volunteers, the shuttering of the economy has left a black hole in their finances estimated at more than £10 billion.
“It is time now, as we begin to recover, to put that right and we will do our part to help get vital funds to charities so that they are able to not just survive, but thrive once again.”
Daniel Fluskey, head of policy and external affairs at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, added: “These figures remind us once again of just how important fundraising is to charitable giving in the UK. While throughout the pandemic we have seen many individual examples of the UK public’s willingness to give and help one another, so much of the traditional fundraising that inspires charitable giving has been on hold this year meaning that people have not had the same opportunity to donate.
“As we emerge from lockdown it is really important that we support charitable fundraising so that those organisations can rebuild to deliver the work they do that benefit so many causes at home and abroad.”
Firstly Charitable donations are massively important to the people who need it. I personally feel that our country is very generous with its donations and should continue with its donations ONLY when the books have been balanced or significantly improved on our home shores first. This may seem like a hard approach but as a country we ourselves are in unprecedented times with millions of people in hardship. If we fall down the rankings of the best charitable countries then so be it. We have to put this country first and its residents first as we are the people working hard to generate the "country pot". We have to look at how our Aid & charitable donations are being used. The following statement found on the internet states - At the end of December 2021, UK General government gross debt was £2,382.8 billion, or 102.8% of Gross domestic product (14.6% above the average of the EU member states at that time) - ( not sure how accurate this is ) If you scaled these figures down and applied it to many businesses and how they operate - they would be "bust" - The sad fact and reality is that at this present time Great Britain is BUST and our "cloth has to be cut accordingly" We are not saying that Great Britain will not help with Aid and charitable donations but how can we as a country continue to increase national debt and still give money away? We have to find ways to help these countries but at the same time stimulate jobs in great britain - for example if were shipping bottled water - The bottles should be made in Great Britain and so on. We may already be doing this kind of thing but the public need to hear it so they understand where our charitable aid is going and who it supports including this country. The following statement again i do not know how accurate the information is but it states the following Spending on the NHS in England 9 JULY 2019 Total health spending in England was around £129 billion in 2018/19 and is expected to rise to nearly £134 billion by 2019/20, taking inflation into account.
In 2018/19 around £115 billion was spent on the NHS England budget. The rest was spent by the Department of Health on things like public health initiatives, education, training, and infrastructure (including IT and building new hospitals). This would have been at the start of Covid and i would expect if the data is correct that the figures are now way higher. So when working people have national insurance rises to combat these rising costs and see the cost of living increasing daily and take home pay decreasing, yet the country are still giving money away - the average working person does not understand unless we are open and honest with them and explain it. Finally i would like to reiterate that i am personally in support of Aid & Charitable Donations to other countries but feel we must not forget our own country is in need of some TLC & AID.