Phase one of the project from fundraising think tank Rogare and Kingston University Business School has just been completed with the launch of a white paper, Death by a thousand cuts: How other actors are displacing charities from giving, asking for support, and providing help.

The paper, out now, examines the threat of disintermediation to charities, and expands the typology of disintermediation (first published in the now Journal of Philanthropy in 2023) with more examples of how other actors, especially companies, are assuming ‘doing good’ roles.

It also introduces two new ideas, exploring how who controls relationships with donors is a marker of whether disintermediation is occurring, and the concept of ‘citizen fundraisers’ – people who carry out fundraising on their own initiative outside the remit of reach of charity fundraising departments.

It considers too how philanthropy advisors, along with donor advised funds and giving cycles, can displace fundraisers from stewarding relationships with donors.

Commenting, Ceri Edwards, EFA president and executive director of engagement at the UK’s Chartered Institute of Fundraising, said:

“The concept of the ‘citizen fundraiser’ is helpful precisely because it describes something distinct from a traditional volunteer role. The evidence on peer-to-peer giving illustrates how much activity now takes place through individual fundraising pages rather than charities’ own channels. That creates opportunity, but it can also leave charities with limited visibility of, or influence over, the supporter experience.

“The answer is not to constrain people’s initiative. It is to build better routes into a charity’s mission: clear and proportionate onboarding, accessible tools and advice, appropriate safeguards, and stewardship that recognises citizen fundraisers as valued partners. If charities make engagement slow, difficult or controlling, people will go around them. But if they offer support and a compelling sense of shared purpose, they have a much stronger chance of building lasting relationships.”

Next steps

The three remaining phases of the project are as follows:

Phase 2 will explore the reasons why people might prefer to help directly, and identify the motivations and reasons that stakeholders cut charities out of philanthropic processes, with a paper expected to be published towards the end of the Northern hemisphere autumn/fall of 2026.

Phase 3 will examine the regulatory and ethical issues that emerge as disintermediation of giving, asking and service delivery becomes more widespread, with a discussion paper to be published before the end of 2026.

Phase 4 will enlist the input of the fundraising profession in identifying the ways that charities could reintermediate. Throughout 2027, this will include a series of webinars, seminars and roundtables – based on ideas from the first three phases – to gather the input of practitioners. The Chartered Institute of Fundraising in the UK will work with Rogare and Kingston University Business School on this phase and other partners will be sought in Europe.

The aim is to produce a toolkit for reintermediation towards the end of 2027 or early in 2028.

Ian MacQuillin, director of Rogare – The Fundraising Think Tank, said:

“We are all looking to grow giving and reverse what seems to be a decline in donations to charities. But what the move towards a ‘democratised’ disintermediation of charities tells us is that giving could be substantially grown, without any of that growth ever going near a charity bank account.

“Looking ahead a decade, if the majority of giving were disintermediated in a way that provided money directly to beneficiaries, would this be in the best interests of people who currently rely on the services provided by charities?

“While fully recognising that charities have no right to claim this space – that it has to be demonstrated and earned – and that in some, possibly many, cases, alternative ways of helping might indeed be the best ways, it might still be that charities are the most effective and efficient channels though which people who want to help can provide that help for those who need. If that is the case, then we need to find ways to reintermediate into the relationship and processes from which we are currently being cut out.”

Dr Rita Kottasz, associate professor at Kingston Business School, added:

“Should we accept a shrinking third sector when nonprofit mission and expertise still have so much to offer? Or is the right response to welcome more providers, precisely because the demand for help has never been greater? We need the map before we can begin to answer them.

“The beneficiaries we care most about are not donors but the people at the end of the pipeline – those who depend on well-coordinated, professionally-managed help. If charities are displaced by actors who cannot match charities’ expertise or safeguards, the risk to those people is real. If charities can understand where they have been cut out, and why, they can think far more clearly about what must change. 

“This expanded typology is the necessary first step. You cannot plan a route until you have a map.”

The whitepaper Death by a thousand cuts: How other actors are displacing charities from giving, asking for support, and providing help can be downloaded from the project page of the Rogare site.

On 7 July 2026, the French Senate’s inquiry commission on the private financing of public policy adopted its report after six months of work, 66 sessions, and 102 hearings, among them a joint hearing with Philea, EFA and ERNOP on 12 May. The commission was launched in response to concern over coordinated, ideologically driven funding strategies operating under the guise of philanthropy, most notably a network of foundations linked to a French businessman openly promoting a right-wing and far-right political agenda. The commission’s 32 recommendations aim to tighten transparency around private funding while explicitly preserving philanthropy’s role in democratic life.

A clear recognition of philanthropy

The inquiry commission explicitly recognises philanthropy’s contribution to funding the public interest, social innovation, and democracy. The commission does not question philanthropy’s legitimacy. The senators conclude that the existing legal framework for associations, foundations, and endowment funds is broadly sound. Their recommendations follow one consistent line: apply existing law better, rather than overburden it with new procedures. The commission pointed to the necessity of investing in human resources and tools for oversight bodies, training for public administrations and auditors, better information-sharing between government departments, improved sector statistics, and a sanctions regime that scales with the severity of the breach. It also proposes consolidating France’s foundation categories into four broad types and easing access to public-benefit foundation status. Endowment funds (fonds de dotation) draw the sharpest attention, with specific recommendations on governance and on dissolving inactive structures.

A neutrality injunction that reflects a broader European trend

The commission devotes an entire section to what it calls the “encroachment of influence strategies” on public policy, which it attributes to the opacity of certain private structures, and asks whether such funding is compatible with the impartiality expected of public action, with democratic oversight, and with the objectives of public policy itself. While this line of questioning stems from a legitimate concern for transparency, it echoes a broader, already documented trend: the growing pressure on civil society organisations to demonstrate political neutrality.

This ambiguity is not unique to France. Across Europe, civil society organisations seeking public or private funding are increasingly required to prove either that they have no political agenda, or that the one they have is compatible with public policy. This tension is visible even within the European Commission itself, where NGOs have faced pressure to soften how they describe their own advocacy work.[1] The same underlying issue shows up in different forms depending on the institution, but the direction is the same.

Institutional dialogue

While the report affirms philanthropy’s democratic role, keeps the current legal framework mostly intact, and prioritises enforcement over new rules, the commission has not taken up the sector’s recommendation of better structuring dialogue between national representative bodies and public authorities. It cites foreign models, Italy’s and the UK’s in particular, but fails to propose a permanent body for consultation between the state and philanthropy’s representatives. Better dialogue would help both sides understand each other, anticipate risks, and build regulation that holds up over time, something French actors have been advocating for some time.

Taken together, the report is good news for philanthropy’s legitimacy, yet challenging associations’ and foundations’ capacity to shape public policy is particularly worrying when civic space is already closing in across Europe.

Laurence Lepetit

[1] Louise Guillot, Florence Autret, “ONG: cachez ce lobbying que Bruxelles ne saurait voir,” Contexte, July 2026.

Full analysis: https://www.francegenerosites.org/actualites/transparence-influence-et-controle-democratique-des-financements-prives-de-laction-publique-synthese/

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.

Over the next two decades, the transfer of wealth from Baby Boomers to their heirs and to charitable causes will be unlike anything the sector has seen before. Across Europe and beyond, organisations of every size are waking up to that opportunity, and many are investing in legacy content for the first time. The problem is that some of that content is built around the wrong thing entirely: the organisation, rather than the donor.

Beautifully produced films that open with mission statements, impact statistics, and carefully crafted brand messaging are everywhere. But what if we started to create content that did something much simpler and let legacy pledgers tell their stories?

What the neuroscience tells us

Professor Russell James at Texas Tech University has done some of the most compelling research in this area, using brain scanners to understand what happens when people consider leaving a legacy gift, and what he found is fascinating.

Legacy decisions activate what James calls the “visualised autobiography” regions of the brain, the parts we use when thinking about our own life stories and memories, and the stronger that activation, the more interested someone is in making a gift. This is why legacy giving is fundamentally different from other forms of donation: it is a deeply personal act of self-expression rooted in a donor’s sense of their own life and values.

Dr Claire Routley’s research (with Marina Jones) reaches the same conclusion through a different method. When she interviewed people who had left legacy gifts, they all had clear, identifiable life-story connections with their chosen charities, and the decision was never abstract or transactional but always rooted in lived experience and a sense of personal continuity.

One size does not fit all

Recent research by James and Routley adds a further layer of nuance that is particularly valuable for the sector. It found that people’s attitudes towards money fall into four broad mindsets: those who see money as a marker of status, those who experience financial anxiety, those who are planners, and those who are bargain-seekers. Each group is motivated differently, and the things that encourage someone to include a charitable gift in their will are quite different from the things that influence how much they ultimately leave.

This has direct implications for how you think about your content mix.

• For your planners, a pledger who talks through the practical decision behind their gift, how it fits into retirement planning or how the conversation with a solicitor went, can be more persuasive than any amount of emotional storytelling.
• For donors motivated by status and recognition, social proof content works well, including films that show the tangible, lasting impact a gift has made, or stories about named funds and what they have built over time.
• For those who are more anxious about money, the most powerful content is probably the warmest, featuring a pledger who had similar concerns and found a way through.
• For bargain-seekers, a short explainer film or an interview that touches on the tax efficiency of a gift in a will can open doors that purely emotional content might not.

The question worth asking is whether your legacy content is speaking to one type of donor and quietly overlooking everyone else.

What this looks like in practice

CoppaFeel is a breast cancer awareness charity with a young, contemporary brand, not what most people picture when they think of legacy fundraising, and their pledger film featured a supporter speaking directly about their connection to the cause. Why she had decided to make a gift, what it meant to her and her family, and how it sat alongside the rest of their lives. The film avoided production gloss, voiceover, and institutional messaging in favour of real people talking honestly, and it has secured 14 new pledgers with a 50% acquisition rate on launch.

The MS Society project took a different approach, featuring multiple pledgers each with different motivations including personal experience of MS, commitment to research, and a sense of community belonging. The deliberate diversity of perspectives reflected the reality that there is no single profile of a legacy pledger, and that showing multiple pathways into a gift is more inclusive and more effective than building content around a single archetype.

Five Talents took a different angle again, featuring Richard, a supporter with a development background, who talked through his gift in terms of due diligence and long-term investment thinking. That framing resonated deeply with Five Talents’ donor base precisely because it reflected how their supporters actually think and talk about money: it was their language, not the charity’s, and that distinction matters enormously.

Trusting the process

There is a practical question underneath all of this, which is how you actually find the right people to feature. Research from Remember A Charity found that 64% of legacy pledgers haven’t told the charities they’ve included a gift. Legacy pledgers are also far more likely to be among your existing supporters than you might expect — they could be your volunteers, regular donors or staff members.

The most effective process starts not with a camera but with a conversation. Talking to supporters, both pledgers and non-pledgers, about what would motivate someone to leave a gift reveals the authentic language and concerns that actually resonate in your community, and those conversations also open doors, because many supporters will say yes to sharing their story when approached with genuine interest and respect.

Good legacy content then needs to balance emotional connection alongside rational explanation, and clear personal values alongside motivations that other viewers can recognise in themselves. The collaborative approach matters too, including sharing drafts, gathering feedback, and making sure participants feel comfortable with how their story is told, not only because it is ethically right but because it consistently produces better content.

Authenticity over polish

In our experience, and that of many legacy fundraisers we have worked alongside, over-produced content tends to underperform compared to more authentically produced videos.

The Five Talents project demonstrated that supporters respond to straightforward, evidence-based storytelling that reflects their own language rather than the charity’s marketing register.

The wealth transfer currently underway is unprecedented, and organisations that invest now in building trust, creating authentic pledger stories, and reaching supporters across different motivational profiles will be better positioned for what is coming. It does not need to be complicated or expensive to begin, and your supporters deserve the opportunity to create impact that extends far beyond their lifetimes.

About Emma Bracegirdle

Emma Bracegirdle is founder of The Saltways, an ethical video production company and consultancy working exclusively with charities and nonprofits. The Saltways works with organisations of all sizes and causes on legacy video content, training, and storytelling strategy. You can reach Emma at emma@thesaltways.com. The Saltways is celebrating the power of ethical storytelling in the charity sector with a Charity Film Festival on 24 September, bringing together charity and nonprofit professionals for a full day of film screenings, workshops, panel discussions, live music and live streamed awards ceremony.

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.”

Ali Walker Davies from Forward Action in the UK will present Hours, Not Days: How To Turn Breaking News Into Movement And Money, sharing a practical playbook for getting organisations ready, and drawing on real campaigns that mobilised thousands of supporters at speed.

In his session, Building Community-Driven Meta Ads Campaigns, Ján Plišnák from Slovakia’s PS:Digital will use real campaign case studies to show how to work strategically with Meta Ads audiences and scale crowdfunding or donation-based campaigns more effectively.

In addition, Larissa Probst, from the German Fundraising Association (Deutscher Fundraising Verband), will present Stronger Together: How A Civil Society Network Defused A Disinformation Campaign. Sharing how civil society responded when an AI-generated “exposé platform” launched by Germany’s far-right party, the AfD, sought to discredit civil society organisations, the session will also provide practical insights on rapid response, donor communication, resource sharing, and building resilient networks before the next attack occurs.

The European Fundraising4Democracy Tour will showcase campaigns defending democracy and civic space, through fundraising, crowdfunding, civic mobilisation and more. It takes place online on Tuesday 29 September, at 14.00-15.30 CEST, with a programme of speakers from across the continent.

Walker Davies, Plišnák and Probst are the latest speaker additions to the programme, which also includes:

• Gvantsa Kakauridze, Orbeliani Foundation — From Charity To Resistance: How Crowdfunding Becomes A Tool For Democracy In Georgia.
• Oriane Penny-Lepastier, Institut de l’Engagement — Funding Democratic Resilience: What Young People Taught Us About Trust And Engagement In The Age Of AI.
• Sara Tokina, Belarus Outside Sound System — Turning Music Into Solidarity: How Belarus Outside Sound System Fundraises For Democracy In Exile.
• Martina Turola, The Good Lobby Italia — Funding Democracy From The Ground Up: Lessons From A Grassroots Voting Rights Campaign.
• Antonio Vega, Outhouse LGBTQ+ Centre / Technological University Dublin — Pride And Prejudice: Pro-Social Preferences, Charitable Donations, And The LGBTQ+ Community.

Registration for the European Fundraising4Democracy Tour is open. Full event information here.

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.