Charitable giving in the United Kingdom totaled a record £12.7 billion ($15.9 billion) in 2022, an increase of £2 billion ($2.5 billion) over the previous year, a report from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) finds.

The report, Charities Aid Foundation: UK Giving Report 2023 (31 pages, PDF), found that a spike in donations in the first half of 2022 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove the record-setting pace of giving, even while inflation and economic challenges strained household income. Despite the upward trend in giving, the CAF report noted that the share of people giving to charity in the UK (59 percent in 2022, up from 57 percent in 2021) continues to lag well behind pre-pandemic levels (65 percent in 2019).

Based on monthly interviews with more than 13,000 survey participants (adults 16 and older), the report aligned cost-of-living concerns with key changes in giving behavior, noting that 69 percent of households surveyed indicated the need to make cuts to their spending generally, while 17 percent were likely to manage expenses by cutting charitable donations and 24 percent had or were considering further changes such as reducing or canceling regular donations and declining to make one-off contributions.

“Worryingly, the extra giving we saw in 2022 was not the result of more people giving, but of more being given by the same number of people,” said CAF chief executive Neil Heslop. “At the same time, the drop in participation in fundraising events and volunteering, initially a necessity due to COVID lockdowns, now appears to be locked in.”

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