A major new report from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has raised fresh concerns about the state of charitable giving in the UK, showing that total public donations fell sharply in 2025 as fewer people gave and average gifts became smaller.
CAF’s latest UK Giving report estimates that charitable giving totalled £14bn in 2025, a fall from £15.4bn the previous year.
The average monthly donation also fell, from £72 to £65, while only half of adults said they had donated in the previous 12 months.
When sponsorship is included, overall participation stood at 55%, continuing a long-term decline from 69% in 2016.
Over that period, CAF estimates the UK has lost around 6 million donors, with the sharpest decline coming during the pandemic and only a limited recovery afterwards.
The charity said the figures point to a deeper change in public attitudes.
Mark Greer, the managing director at CAF, said generosity in Britain had become “increasingly conditional, selective, and fragile”, rather than something people saw as a routine part of life.
He said the shift did not necessarily reflect an absence of compassion, but a growing tendency for people to weigh charitable giving against rising household pressures and wider social scepticism.
Mr Greer said charities could no longer rely simply on “habitual generosity or goodwill,” warning that the country has now reached a stage where donors and non-donors are present in almost equal numbers.
He also said this year’s findings showed the limits of relying on a smaller pool of committed supporters, with total giving now falling after several years in which larger donations from loyal donors had helped sustain headline figures.
CAF’s report offers a detailed breakdown of why people still give.
Emotional connection remains the strongest factor, with 78% of donors saying they gave for emotional reasons, most commonly because they care about a cause.
More than half (53%) said giving helped them feel connected to a cause beyond their own lives, while others pointed to personal experience (35%) or a sense of duty (32%).
The research also sheds light on what prompts generosity.
Recommendations or encouragement from friends, family or colleagues (17%) were found to be especially influential, far more effective than charity emails (3%).
Personal experience of a cause (10%) and regular giving mechanisms such as direct debit (14%) also remained important drivers.
Among the causes attracting the greatest support in 2025, health charities received the largest share of donations overall at £2.08bn, followed by causes supporting children and young people at £1.49bn.
Religious causes ranked third, drawing £1.29bn in 2025. Although only a relatively small proportion of donors gave to religion, those who did were the most generous on average, contributing around £90 a month. Animal welfare and overseas aid completed the top five categories.
The report also points to clear differences between income groups. Basic-rate taxpayers accounted for the biggest overall share of giving, contributing about £6.9bn, while higher-rate taxpayers were the most likely to donate.
By contrast, those in the additional-rate bracket were only marginally more likely to give than people paying no income tax, while CAF noted that high-net-worth individuals contribute substantial sums beyond the £14bn captured in the main study.
At the same time, the report paints a sobering picture of why many are not giving.
Nearly half (49%) of non-donors said they simply did not have the money to donate - a rise from 44% in the previous year.
Others (19%) said they lacked confidence that charities would spend donations properly, while almost one in 3 of non-donors gave reasons suggesting they were not particularly moved to give to a charity, a pattern CAF said was especially pronounced among young people and Londoners.
Although levels of trust in charities were broadly unchanged, with 75% of the public viewing them as reasonably trustworthy, CAF said confidence still had a major effect on behaviour.
People with stronger trust gave markedly more, backed a wider range of causes, and were much more likely to support work overseas, while those with lower trust tended to give less and were often more financially vulnerable and less connected to their communities.
Ashling Cashmore, CAF’s head of impact and advisory, said consistent giving remains especially important because it gives charities more stability and allows them to plan ahead. Donations made through direct debit, subscriptions or payroll giving, she said, are critical to organisational resilience and can also help charities build longer-term relationships with supporters.
The report also highlights the continuing importance of Gift Aid, which brought charities £1.7bn in 2025, though CAF estimates that £560m is not being recovered annually.
Greer said better awareness of tax relief could help unlock more giving, particularly as more people are drawn into higher tax bands.
CAF is urging the Government to take practical steps to rebuild the country’s culture of giving, including promoting payroll giving, enhance the use of Gift Aid and investing in local philanthropy infrastructure.
Greer said public policy could play an important role in reversing what he described as a deeply concerning decade-long decline.
The wider impact of falling donations is already having an impact throughout the voluntary sector.
According to The Guardian, some major UK charities, including Macmillan Cancer Support, Samaritans and Oxfam, have recently made significant staffing and budget reductions as financial pressures intensify.
The Guardian also cited warnings from philanthropy expert Peter Grant, of Bayes Business School, and Kate Lee, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, that falling public donations, alongside years of reduced government grant funding, could leave charities less able to cope with rising demand.
Yet CAF’s findings are not the only picture emerging of generosity in Britain.
Stewardship’s recently published Generosity Report 2026, which focuses on Christian giving in the UK, suggests that committed Christians continue to give at far higher levels than the wider public.
According to Stewardship, Christians overall gave an average of £116 a month, while the group it defines as “committed Christians” - those who attend church and read the Bible at least once a week - gave £326 a month on average. That is around five times the current UK monthly average recorded by CAF.
This continues a pattern seen in Stewardship’s previous studies. Its 2025 report found committed Christians were already giving about £314 a month.
The Christian charity also pointed to trust as a major factor, echoing CAF’s wider findings on public confidence.
Stewardship found that people who said they trusted their local church “a lot” accounted for 74% of givers to all causes, suggesting that strong relationships and institutional trust are closely linked to generosity. It also said regular teaching on generosity appeared to reinforce that trust.
