Just read CAF’s annual giving report? Don’t Panic!

CAF’s annual giving report shows that total giving went up in the UK last year, to stand at ￡12.7bn, compared ￡10.7bn in 2021.

Yay!

But here’s the bad news.

Giving hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels.

The rise in total giving is due to the same numbers of people giving more rather than new people becoming donors.

The cost-of-living crisis is beginning to bite, and CAF’s figures reveal that 17% of people said they would cut donations to help pay other bills. Further, 5% of people reduced regular donations, and 10% didn’t make a one-off donation they’d been intending to give.

Both Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and corporal Jones form Dad’s Army (a British cultural icon) can offer sound advice when faced with these stats.

Don’t panic!

Whenever a report like this comes out, it always pays to look behind the figures – which means reading the whole report critically and not just relying on the headlines.

First, people don’t always do what they say they will do and not all of those 17% will actually cut back their giving, or if they do, perhaps only reduce it by very little.

Also, if you look at these figures from the other end, 95% of regular donors did not give less and roughly 90% of people did make that one-off gift. That’s something quite substantial to build on.

Charities need to ask themselves three things.

First, how many of their donors are likely to stay part of the majority cohort that continues to give throughout the cost-of-living crisis?

Second, how many of their donors are likely to be part of the minority that stops giving, and why is that?

Third, what can they do to keep their donors giving and prevent them from stopping giving?

Donors most likely to reduce or stop giving entirely are those who are the least engaged with and connected to the cause and the charity. That’s what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

So the way to keep them engaged is to continue talking to them, and to step up that engagement if you are not.

But just as there was at the start of the pandemic, there have been calls for fundraisers to ease back on asking people to give – because asking people who might be struggling financially would be insensitive. (The CAF report reveals that the 67 per cent of people who can recall being asked to give during 2022 is lower than 2019, when it stood at 73%.)

Stopping fundraising would be a mistake.

Fundraising communications are one of the key ways in which charities can increase the touchpoints they have with their donors, and research shows that each of these touchpoints increases donors’ commitment to the charities they support.

Carrying on fundraising increases your chances of making sure your donors remain part of the majority of givers rather than become part of the minority who have stopped giving.

And a further thought – though people say they will cut back their giving, this doesn’t mean they’ll stop their giving entirely. They’ll almost certainly remain donors to some charities. Don’t you want to be one of those charities?