This is according to new research by SwissFoundations based on data from 55 foundations with total assets of 15.1bn CHF (€16.1bn). They range from very large foundations with more than 250m CHF in assets, to others with less than 10m CHF.

The average cumulative return since 2021 is 23.9%.

Average five-year returns were even higher – an average of 29.6% – for foundations holding more than half of their assets in equities (i.e. shares).

The average foundation holds 49% of their assets in equities, with the rest in bonds (20%), real estate (16%), cash (5%) and other asset classes.

The larger foundations in the study generally had more assets in real estate and less than average in equities. Smaller foundations tended to have more in bonds, and more than twice as much (10%) in cash.

Some sustainable investments

While 80% of the organisations in the report said they included sustainability in their investment decision making, the majority of their assets were not held in sustainable funds. Of those using sustainable investments, 37% said less than 10% were in sustainable assets, and 36% between 11% and 25%.

The most common sustainability approach (used by 89%) of the sample was exclusion criteria for certain undesirable industries, followed by positive criteria (used by 73%).

Among the 11 organisations that didn’t apply sustainability criteria, the most commonly cited reasons were: concerns that it wasn’t suited to achieving their foundation purpose; lack of clarity around the issue; and concerns about a reduced financial return.

Beacon informed its customers of the attack on 4 August, which it said started in the early hours of the morning on 27 July. Beacon immediately reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office and the authorities, bringing in expert support to help it conduct an investigation.

While the investigation confirmed that a copy of the database holding all Beacon customer data, including attachment files, was made and likely downloaded in a readable format by the threat actor, it found no evidence that any bank card details had been compromised, or that the data stolen had been “published, disclosed, or otherwise misused”.

The most recent update posted on its website (3 September) concluded the investigation, and said that while the threat actor had not been engaged with, they had contacted Beacon once towards the conclusion of the investigation to indicate they would be deleting any data they have exfiltrated and that no copy would be retained, sold, or shared. Beacon adds that dark web monitoring has found no mention of this incident or data related to it online, and that there is no evidence this was a targeted attack on Beacon, or any specific Beacon customer. Everything learned has been shared with law enforcement.

According to Beacon, the probable root cause of the incident was a compromised AWS access key. These are credentials used to allow the Beacon application to communicate securely with Amazon Web Services, its primary cloud hosting provider. Beacon’s understanding is that this access key was inadvertently exposed in its application code and subsequently used to gain unauthorised access to the organisation’s AWS environment.

The vulnerability that enabled this to happen has since been fixed, and measures implemented to ensure it cannot happen again. These are listed in Beacon’s report, accessible here.

During its investigation, Beacon published an Incident FAQs and Incident Guidance page on its website, providing advice and explanations of the situation and what customers should do next. These also clarified that Beacon was still “operating normally” and that charities could continue to collect payments through it. In a statement to Fundraising Europe on 1 September, Beacon said:

“Since containing the initial incident, we have not identified or observed any ongoing unauthorised access to Beacon’s systems. Our customers continue to access our platform and services as normal.”

Beacon’s website says it is used by more than 1,000 charities. The company is based in London and most client case studies on its website are charities based in the UK, with at least two from the Republic of Ireland.

Reports to regulator & maintaining supporter trust

Following the incident, Beacon and the Charity Commission for England and Wales (CCEW) advised that charities should consider their reporting obligations, such as whether they needed to report the incident to the CCEW, to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) or other regulators. CCEW’s statement also said:

“We know many Beacon customers have moved promptly to inform their supporters about this incident. Clear communication with your charity’s stakeholders is crucial to retaining trust and protecting the relationships that sustain your work.”

 The Fundraising Regulator also said that all charities impacted needed to submit a report through its website.

The CCEW provides guidance on how to report a serious incident and how to protect charities from cyber crime and fraud.

The amount donated by the British public fell in 2025 for the first time in five years, with rising costs continuing to put pressure on public generosity and charity fundraising budgets. In response, the CIOF has partnered with CharityTracker, which surveys a nationally representative sample of 4,000 UK adults every month to provide insight for charities into how people are thinking, feeling and behaving, and how that is changing over time. As part of this monthly survey, respondents will now be asked the following question on behalf of the CIOF: Have you been asked to donate to charity in any of the following ways, in the last 4 weeks?

Participants are asked to select from a list of fundraising approaches, including a range of fundraising channels, workplace giving, and requests from friends and family.

By tracking responses to this question every month, the CIOF wants to establish how often people are being asked to give and through which channels. This will enable trends to be identified over time and a benchmark to be developed, providing its members with insight into what fundraising activity is reaching supporters effectively, where gaps exist, and whether changes or greater investment may be needed. The data will also help inform the CIOF’s wider work on growing giving and championing fundraising.

The initiative supports the pillar ‘Fostering a culture that inspires more people to give’ of the CIOF’s ten-year strategy, which launched in January 2026. A key strand of this work is to challenge the barriers and misconceptions that prevent people from giving and to encourage more to support charitable causes.

Rob Cope, executive director, membership & operations, Chartered Institute of Fundraising, says:

“It’s fantastic to have an organisation like CharityTracker join us as an official partner. We’ll work with them to gauge public awareness and perception of fundraising — using the data they share with us to identify trends in fundraising and any gaps where changes or improvements could be made. It will be a valuable resource for our members, and for informing the future work of our Growing Giving and Championing Fundraising Advisory Panels.”

Anna Turner, head of research & insight at CharityTracker, adds:

“Regular, evidence-based insight is essential to understanding donor behaviour, strengthening supporter relationships and helping charities develop more resilient, effective fundraising strategies. Tracking this question month by month will provide the sector with an invaluable new source of intelligence to inform future fundraising.”

The partnership’s first results have been uploaded to the CIOF website, and reveal that 63% of respondents were asked to donate to charity in August, mainly in-person, such as a street or door-to-door collector (20%), through an ad (20%), or by email (15%).

Meta began restricting ads relating to political, electoral or social issues on its platforms in October 2025, following new EU rules on digital advertising.

An EFA survey of 170 organisations in 12 EU countries in April showed significant concerns that these changes had impacted donations and made it harder for NGOs to communicate around their mission.

ISOBRO suggestions

ISOBRO is the latest EFA member to publish guidance on reacting to the rules.

It suggests that ads should “shift the focus from the causes of a crisis to the aid that can alleviate the situation”, and that ads are more likely to be approved if they “do not place responsibility on a particular actor”.

ISOBRO also makes clear that it’s not just about the words you are using – and that it may be an advantage to let images speak for themselves, and use symbols and visual code which your target audience already associates with your cause. It says:

“For example, if you show a picture of people fleeing, instead of writing ‘Thousands of political refugees live in fear’ you can say ‘Show your support’ and let the picture convey what the message is about.”

You should also be careful to use neutral terminology in the names of images or files you upload, even if those filenames were not going to appear publicly, and in the name you choose for the campaign in Meta Ads Manager.

The same is true of URLs you use in an ad. Meta may also analyse the content on the landing page to which that URL takes users, ISOBRO warns.

The organisation’s advice says:

“If your ad is rejected, you should avoid uploading exactly the same ad again. A piece of advice may be to take down the material, give the files new names and possibly change a little on the cropping or size of the image so that it is registered as a new file. Also review the text and assess whether individual words, formulations or requests can be changed before you try again.”

It would be sensible to create two folders – one of ads that were rejected, and another with ones which were approved, it suggests.

However, ISOBRO also acknowledges that it can be difficult to understand the reason for an ad being rejected, as Meta’s policies “change constantly” while its enforcement “may be inconsistent”.

The ISOBRO document also includes a link to Meta’s page ‘How ads about social issues, elections or politics are reviewed’.

Italy’s system of “percentage philanthropy” allows taxpayers to allocate a small share of their income tax to a cause of their choice, at no additional cost. Three separate instruments coexist: the 5×1000, dedicated to non-profit organisations and, more broadly, to social and welfare activities — including those run by municipalities; the 2×1000, which taxpayers can direct to political parties; and the 8×1000, reserved for religious denominations. Together, they form one of the most distinctive and closely watched fiscal-subsidiarity systems in Europe. This year, ASSIF — the Italian Fundraising Association — is marking a significant moment with three initiatives converging around research and advocacy.

A permanent Observatory for Italy’s fiscal-subsidiarity instruments

ASSIF has formally launched the Osservatorio ASSIF sul 5, 2 e 8 per mille (ASSIF Observatory on 5, 2 and 8×1000) https://5×1000.assif.it/, presented publicly in Genoa in May 2026. The Observatory turns a decade of informal monitoring work (ASSIF’s “Tavolo 5×1000”, active since 2017) into a permanent institutional structure, sitting within ASSIF’s Advisory Board and working alongside its Governing Board.

Its mandate rests on four pillars:

• Continuous data analysis and annual reporting
• A comparative European outlook
• The combined use of human expertise and AI-assisted tools for data interpretation
• Advocacy toward policymakers

The Observatory has also opened a public open-data platform, making historical data on all three instruments searchable by researchers, journalists, fundraisers and citizens alike — data that until now has been public in principle but rarely accessible in practice.

Alongside the platform, the Observatory is putting forward five concrete policy proposals: removing the spending cap that currently prevents part of the 5×1000 funds taxpayers allocate from actually reaching beneficiaries; greater transparency in the relationship between donors and recipient organisations, within privacy rules; the stable reintroduction of the 2×1000 for culture, trialled intermittently since 2016; opening fiscal subsidiarity to companies, as already happens in Spain, Slovakia and elsewhere in Europe; and stronger public support for fundraising capacity within beneficiary organisations, over 13% of which currently receive no allocations at all.

A European comparative study on percentage philanthropy

Building on this Italian groundwork, ASSIF is launching a comparative research project on percentage philanthropy systems across Europe. A structured questionnaire has been developed and circulated to other European fundraising associations (EFA members and non-members), covering the legal basis of each national instrument, eligible beneficiaries, taxpayer participation, funds distributed, privacy arrangements and an overall qualitative assessment. This allows, for the first time, a systematic side-by-side reading of how these mechanisms work (and don’t work) across the European countries that have adopted them.

The findings will be shared with contributing national associations and publicly once consolidated — offering a shared evidence base for countries considering the introduction, extension or reform of similar instruments.

“Il voto fiscale degli italiani”: a conference at the Italian Parliament

The advocacy work converges on 13 October 2026, when ASSIF and the Observatory will bring these findings to the Italian Parliament with the conference “Il voto fiscale degli italiani” (“Italians’ fiscal vote”), held at the Camera dei Deputati in Rome.

The date marks two anniversaries: twenty years of the 5×1000 and twelve years of the 2×1000 — two instruments that have progressively reshaped the relationship between citizens, the Third Sector and politics. In 2025, over 18.4 million taxpayers (43.1% of the total) allocated a share of their income tax to non-profit organisations through the 5×1000, for a combined value exceeding €602 million — the highest figure on record — while the 2×1000 involved over 2.2 million taxpayers and channelled €32.5 million to political parties.

Drawing on Observatory data, the conference will present historical trends, the territorial distribution of funds, and — for the first time in this setting — the European research described above. The programme also includes a preview of the annual Ipsos-DOXA survey on public awareness and take-up of the 5×1000 and 2×1000, and a shared basis for reforming proposals.

For more information on the Observatory, the European comparative research, or the 13 October conference, contact ASSIF at presidenza@assif.it and osservatorio@assif.it

The report from the Fundraising Regulator also shows that overall public trust in UK charities has fallen since 2023, but donors’ actual experience of supporting charities remains largely positive.

The organisation surveyed 3,018 adults across the UK — including Scotland, which has its own, separate regulator — in May 2026, and compared results with a previous December 2023 poll.

In 2023, 42% of respondents said they trusted local charities to deliver on their promises. This dropped to 34% in 2026, although they remain the second most trusted group (behind health professionals, at 46%).

For national charities, the figure dropped from 32% to 27%. For national government, it is now just 11%.

Fundraising experience: positive overall

However, trust in “people who ask you to donate money or goods to a charity” — which was the exact wording of the question — has remained stable. In both 2023 and 2026, just 16% said they did not trust fundraisers.

In addition, the experience of those who do donate to charities — around 85% of respondents in both 2023 and 2026 — remains largely positive.

In 2026, 23% called it ‘very positive’ and 41% called it ‘somewhat positive’, which are almost identical figures to 2023, although the report notes that the methodology means they are not completely comparable.

In both years, 29% answered ‘equally positive and negative’.

Method by method

The report also looks at peoples’ levels of comfort with different fundraising methods.

The most acceptable fundraising method was donation of goods — 81% of people said they were ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ comfortable, followed by sponsorship of individuals (68%), charity bags (65%) and charitable lotteries (64%).

At the other end, 28% were okay with door-to-door fundraising, 29% with telephone fundraising, 38% with text donations and 43% with tap to donate.

However, since 2023 comfort with online fundraising platforms has decreased from 60% to 52%, whereas it has increased for door-to-door fundraising (from 20% to 28%) and public fundraising (43% to 47%).

The report also shows significant differences between age groups — younger people are much more likely to be comfortable with both door-to-door and public fundraising. Donation of goods is the only category in which those aged 65+ are more comfortable than those aged 16-24.

Many make no checks

Asked what checks they made before making a donation, 32% said they did not make any. This rises to 53% of over-65s, but is lower than 20% for both 16–24s and 25–34s.

Meanwhile, 25% said they would look at the charity’s website, 21% would do some research on the cause area, and 18% would ask friends or family.

A less popular answer is looking for the Fundraising Regulator’s badge at 11%. However, 45% said in response to a separate question that they’d be more likely to donate to a charity displaying this badge.

Elsewhere, the research says that only 17% of respondents remembered seeing the regulator’s Fundraising Badge in the past year, while 47% said they had never heard of the Fundraising Regulator.

Paul Winyard, head of policy at the Fundraising Regulator, says that there are several positive findings for charities, and comments:

“Charities must continue to invest in strong oversight, effective training and responsible fundraising practices so the public can give with confidence and charities can continue to thrive.”

OSCR’s report also looks at the average income and expenditure breakdown of charities with an income of £250,000-plus — the level at which this detail is required by the regulator.

These charities get 63.1% of income from charitable activities (such as delivering contracts or services), 18.1% from trading activities (such as retail, merchandise or admission fees for museums), 13.4% from donations and legacies, and the remaining 5.3% from ‘other’ sources.

Looking at their outgoings, 83% of expenditure is on charitable activities, 7.6% is on raising funds, and 9.4% on ‘other expenditure’.

Cross-border comparison

These figures are broadly in line with the 5% to 12% which Dutch charities spend on raising funds, as highlighted in a Fundraising Europe story in December — although these figures are not directly comparable given differences in how each regulator defines and reports fundraising and overhead costs.

The above figures also relate only to charities registered solely in Scotland. In addition to these 23,640 charities, a further 1,306 ‘cross-border charities’ are registered with OSCR. These are charities also registered with another regulator, generally the Charity Commission for England and Wales (CCEW).

The Scottish charities have an average income of £794,000, while for the cross-border charities it is a far larger £15.2m. This reflects the cross-border charities being generally high-profile organisations operating across the UK and sometimes internationally — and OSCR estimates that roughly a tenth of cross-border charities’ money might be spent in Scotland.

The majority of Scottish charities are far smaller — around seven in ten charities have an income of less than £100,000, and 26% have an income under £5,000. Two-thirds (69%) have no paid staff, and less than a tenth have more than 10 staff.

Nearly half of the £18.76bn total income of Scottish charities is from 18 universities (31.2%) and 149 registered social landlords (14.3%).

Charities per population

Scotland’s population is 5.6m, giving it 4.3 registered charities (excluding cross-border charities) per 1,000 people.

The same 4.3 figure is true of Northern Ireland, with 8,337 charities registered with the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile in England and Wales, the figure is much lower at 2.8 per 1,000 population, based on CCEW’s figure of 171,613 charities.

OSCR’s report also looks at the average size of charity boards. Among Scottish charities, the mean average number of trustees is seven, and the median is five. Cross-border charities have both a mean and median of nine trustees, reflecting their generally larger size.

In April, Fundraising Europe reported on separate research into Scotland’s grantmaking foundations, which found they hold almost £4bn (€4.7bn) in net funds.

The researcher behind the report, Giulia Togna from Milan’s Università Bocconi, says she hopes it will support philanthropic organisations to adopt AI “in a way that is informed, responsible, and consistent with its potential transformative role”.

Togna’s research was commissioned by Italian philanthropy sector body Assifero, and is based on responses from 33 members of the organisation in late 2025 and early 2026.

Experimentation without strategy

It shows that 88% of the 33 are using AI, but only eight have an internal policy on AI use, and only one organisation has reached what Togna termed “strategic adoption”.

The other organisations in the study were evenly split between “explorative adoption” and “structured adoption”, with larger organisations more likely to be in the latter, more advanced phase than smaller ones.

The research said that the organisations most likely to be in the structured adoption stage were corporate foundations. Togna says that sharing the infrastructure and skills of their corporate patron was one likely reason for this.

Between half and two thirds of respondents are already using AI for research and analysis, and production of written content or communications.

In addition, many respondents saw the prospect of it being used for reporting, strategy, monitoring and impact measurement in future — although only one or two respondents are currently doing this.

Skills gaps the biggest barrier

Asked about the barriers to further adoption of AI, the most common responses were:

• Internal skills gap (58% of respondents)
• The lack of a strategic vision for the implementation of AI (45%)
• Concerns of diluting the organisation’s human touch (38%)
• Resource concerns (35%)

In her conclusion, Togna says that Assifero could support the uptake of AI within philanthropic organisations by “fostering spaces for peer learning, critical dialogue, and the exchange of diverse experiences, thereby helping to drive change processes aligned with the values ​​and unique characteristics of the philanthropic sector”. She ends:

“This study represents a first step in that direction: a starting point for ongoing reflection — conducted alongside foundations and philanthropic entities — on how to guide the adoption of AI in a manner that is informed, responsible, and consistent with its potential to drive transformation.”

Fundraising Europe readers will recognise the pattern of AI already being implemented, but in an unplanned manner. The same picture was clear in two recent reports — one published by France générosités ​in June 2026, and another by tech supplier Blackbaud, focusing on UK charities.

The report is the latest edition of a biennial research project by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Centrum voor Filantropische Studies, and includes data from a number of different surveys.

2024’s giving represents 0.54% of the country’s GDP, which is the lowest figure the report has seen — it was as high as 1% in 1999 and 1.1% in 2003, but dropped below 0.7% for the first time in 2022: to 0.58%.

43% of 2024’s donations came from households, 30% from corporations, 12% from lotteries, 9% from bequests and 6% from foundations. Donations from households grew from €2.2bn in 2022 to €2.4bn, and while the number of households donating dropped, from 83% to 76%, average donations grew by €58 to €415.

However, the report notes a sharp decline in giving to charity after receiving a specific request — 81% of households gave following an ask in 2006, tumbling to 34% in 2025.

The number of requests that fundraisers make is also declining — 60% of households received a request in 2006, but just 41% in 2025.

Corporate giving increases slightly

The report also reveals that while 61% of businesses gave to charity in 2020, this dropped to 39% in 2022, but recovered slightly to 44% in 2024. Total corporate giving in 2024 was €1.7bn.

Legacy momentum

In the last two decades, the sector’s legacy income has grown by an average of 4% each year. It has been accelerating recently — growth has been 8% per year since 2018, and reached 13% between 2022 and 2024.

A press release on the report says:

“The growth in legacies suggests that the long-predicted ‘Golden Age of philanthropy’ is drawing closer. At the same time, this form of giving is also highly dependent on a relatively small group of people, mainly from the oldest generation, who have also contributed the most during their lifetime.”

The report, Staten, kapitalet eller medborgaren – vem finansierar civilsamhället? (The state, capital or the citizen – who funds civil society?), is the twelfth in an annual series.

It was launched at Almedalen, Sweden’s annual cross-party political festival, by Charlotte Rydh, secretary general of EFA member Giva Sverige. The report was co-produced by Giva Sverige and six other civil society organisations: Fremia, Ideell Arena, Ideell Kulturallians, Ideella Sverige, Studieförbunden i samverkan and Sveriges Föreningar.

It shows that around 80% of funding for the sector comes from private sources such as membership fees, donations, corporate giving, foundations and investments.

This figure rises further to 84% (up from 82% in 2017) once two specific sectors — education and research, and unemployment funds — are removed. The report says these areas account for nearly two-thirds of public funding to the nonprofit sector, and notes that while some of them do receive most of their funding from government, this is far from true of the vast majority of Swedish nonprofits.

Rydh comments:

“There’s a perception in the public debate that civil society is mainly dependent on public funding. It’s important for many organisations, but it’s only part of the financing.”

The report also notes that state support to civil society organisations, excluding unemployment funds, is at its lowest level in real terms in a decade.

The short version of the report ends with four conclusions and recommendations.

1. Being mainly privately financed “entails both risks and opportunities” for the civil society sector. One risk is that it becomes harder for less affluent groups to participate in their work, and another is that organisations’ activities are overly influenced by the demands or interests of donors.
2. Demographic change is reshaping resources and activity, with the 6–20 age group due to shrink by 230,000 (out of a total population of less than 11m) in the next decade, while the number of those aged 70+ will grow by nearly a fifth.
3. There is a growing number of nonprofit associations, but membership income is not increasing at the same level. Had membership fees remained the same proportion of disposable income as they were in 2013, the sector would have received around SEK13bn (€1.2bn) extra in 2024 alone.
4. State funding is shifting — it has fallen in areas like culture and international aid, but risen in areas like defence and criminal justice.

Earlier this year, Fundraising Europe shared findings from Giva Sverige research showing a growing gap between voters for the centre-right and nationalist parties in the country’s governing coalition, and supporters of opposition parties. Supporters of government parties were far less likely to give money to charity, it found.