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.

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 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.”

As was also the case in the World Giving Report 2025, Europeans gave away less of their income to good causes than anyone else last year — 0.6%, compared with 1.6% in Africa, 1.2% in Asia, 0.8% in both North America and Oceania, and 0.7% in South America.

South America is also the continent where least people (50%) gave (by any means) to good causes in 2025, versus 57% in Europe, and slightly more than two-thirds in both Africa and Asia.

Ukraine the ‘belonging’ outlier

CAF says that around the world, 66% of people feel a strong sense of belonging to their local community — but the figure is below 50% for all of the 11 European nations in the survey.

People in 10 of those European countries all gave on average less than 1% of income to good causes in 2025. The outlier is Ukraine, with 1.2%. Meanwhile, people in countries with a higher sense of belonging gave on average 1.7% of their income.

CAF found that younger people are nearly twice as likely than older people to say that community plays a large role in their life, whether local, religious or online (54% of under-34s, versus 31% of over-55s).

Donors in higher income countries are also more likely to give to charities that work around the world than those in less wealthy states — and Norway and Sweden are the only countries in which more than half of donors give to global charities.

Government influence and impact stories

The report also says that people who see the impact of charities in their local area are more generous. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of people globally say that charities have had a fairly or very positive impact in their local community, rising to 75% in Africa. In Europe, almost half (48%) of people say that charities make no difference locally, or that it is impossible to tell what the impact is.

Those who see a positive impact donated three times more as a proportion of income supported twice as many causes, and gave to more charity types, CAF says.

Ashling Cashmore, head of impact at CAF, comments:

“Where we have seen charities tell impact stories that donors have really connected with, it has been easier to build the kind of trust and engagement that sets them up for longer-term success.”

CAF also asked people what they thought of their government’s support for a culture of giving — 40% globally agreed that their government encourages giving, rising to 55% in Asia and 51% in Africa.

In Africa, Europe, North America and South America, governments talking positively about charities was seen as the main way they encourage giving.

Meanwhile, Asian respondents said that good charity regulation was the top answer to how governments inspire giving, while tax incentives was the most common response in Oceania.

CAF was supported by a number of global partners in putting together the report, meaning there are deep-dives on many of the countries in the survey including Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany and Italy.

Conducted by Novos, the Barometer shows that momentum accelerated as the year progressed, reaching +4.2% in the second half. This was in a context of 0.9% inflation, and also follows two years of more modest growth (+2.4% in 2023 and +2.1% in 2024).

The report describes last year’s increase as a ‘genuine rebound’, and as all the more remarkable in occurring without any surge in fundraising linked to a major, high-profile emergency. In 2024 for example, Cyclone Chido in Mayotte accounted for 5% of total donations. However, the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine continued to benefit from strong donor engagement in 2025.

At the same time, France is seeing smaller donations decrease, and this trend continues with those under €150 declining again in 2025, representing 38.6% of total donations. This compares to a majority ten years ago (50.4% in 2015) but is offset by larger donations from wealthier donors.

Online giving now commonplace

The report also reveals that 36% of one-off donations now come from the web. In 2025, the amount of digital charity events (gaming, community fundraising, online mobilisations) represented within the panel doubled to nearly €15 million euros in donations, compared to €7 million in 2024.

These figures, says France générosités, reflect a profound change: giving online when making a purchase, rounding up one’s spending at the checkout to benefit a cause, participating in an online charity event like the Z-event, making a donation online in memory of a loved one, are gestures now part of the daily lives of the French.

Outlook uncertain for 2026

Despite the encouraging figures for 2025, France générosités warns that the outlook for 2026 calls for caution.

Previous editions of the Barometer have shown that two factors — fiscal instability and inflation — are likely to reduce French generosity. While the tax framework stabilised in 2025, inflation is rising again in France, reaching 2.2% this April (compared to April 2025, source: INSEE), driven largely by increased energy prices linked to the war in the Middle East. France générosités warns that this could bring an acceleration in the decline in donations under €150 this year.

Commenting on the findings, Philippe Pailliart, its president, said:

“French generosity is on the rise in 2025, good news for all causes of general interest — all the more valuable as many organisations are going through a difficult financial period. But this balance remains fragile: inflation is picking up again and 2026 looks uncertain. France générosités calls on the Government to guarantee now the stability of the tax framework for 2027. Undermining generosity would have dramatic consequences for all causes of general interest.” 

This is according to the Nordic Donor Report 2026, conducted on behalf of EFA members ISOBRO (Denmark), Giva Sverige (Sweden), Fundraising Norway and VaLa (Finland), with around 1,000 adults surveyed in each country.

Seven in 10 (70%) Norwegians, up from 66% last year, said they donate regularly or occasionally to charities. In Denmark, which was the most generous nation in the 2024 and 2025 surveys, the figure fell slightly from 67% to 66%.

Sweden also overtook Denmark, moving from 64% to 69%, while Finland’s figure dropped from 50% to 48%.

Between 2024 and 2025, the donor share had risen in all four countries, by at least six percentage points.

The report notes that the difference between men’s and women’s giving rates has been narrowing over time, and that giving is also increasing across most age groups. The exceptions are in Sweden and Norway, where giving by 18-29-year-olds has been flat across the last three years — something the report says “may need specific attention.”

25% more engagement

Across the four countries, overall engagement in charitable activities has grown by 25% between 2024 and 2026. There is a positive trend around activities such as donating clothes or goods — the most common charitable activity in the region — entering raffles, and making one-off or regular donations.

Volunteering has remained essentially stable, moving from 9% in 2024 to 10% in 2026, while remembering a charity in a will has dropped from 2% to 1%.

Humanitarian aid remained the most supported cause across the Nordics, cited by 27% of respondents, with support for disadvantaged people in their home country (24%) and people in need in developing countries (18%) the next most prominent.

There is, however, notable variation within the region. Helping disadvantaged people in the home country is Finland’s most supported cause (35%), ahead of humanitarian aid (23%) — the reverse of the pattern in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, where humanitarian aid consistently leads. Finland is also the only country where support for religious organizations has not declined over the three years of the survey.

The Finland gap

The report flags a decline in monthly giving in Finland, with the proportion of monthly donors dropping from 18% in 2025 to 10% in 2026, compared to roughly one in three donors in the other three countries.

As was the case following the 2025 report, VaLa points to tax policy as a structural factor in the gap, noting its own research findings that more than 30% of Finns say they would give more if donations were tax-deductible, rising to around 45% among younger age groups.

Picture by Lara Jameson via Pexels

The survey of 1,043 adults finds that 56% gave money in the last six months, meaning the figure has returned to 2020 levels, although it remains short of the 63% in 2016, the survey’s first year.

The number giving monthly has also returned to pre-pandemic levels, at 29% – but remains lower than 2016’s 32%. Both monthly and general giving has increased for both men and women, and across all age groups.

Earlier this year, Giva Sverige said that two in three Swedish nonprofits expected their fundraising income to increase during 2026.

A more polarised landscape

Overall sentiment towards nonprofits remains strong – 79% of Swedes hold a positive view of the sector, a figure which was 77% in 2016 and has only changed marginally in the years since. The figure is even higher (88%) for those aged 18-34.

However, the report notes a growing divide between voters who supported the centre-right and nationalist parties who make up the Tidö coalition, which has governed Sweden since 2022, and opposition voters.

While 91% of opposition voters have a positive view of the sector, this drops to 66% among Tidö supporters – and the gap has grown since 2025, when the respective figures were 86% and 71%.

Charlotte Rydh, secretary general of Giva Sverige, writes in the report:

“Differences between voters of the different political blocs show that civil society operates in a more polarised public sphere — a reality that organizations must navigate. We also see a clear shift in what Swedes want civil society to do: from being seen as actors that solve societal challenges and strengthen democracy, to being valued for meeting places and community.”

Rydh’s point about shifting expectations reflects another point in the data.

The proportion of Swedes who say uniting people and creating meeting places and is an important future role for civil society is 32% – more than double the figure of 15% in 2021. The number saying it should help people to have meaningful leisure time has gone from 14% to 18%.

Meanwhile, the proportion saying that nonprofits must support the most vulnerable elsewhere in the world has dropped from 42% to 30%, and those who say it should solve difficult social challenges from 24% to 15%.

Reasons for not giving

The report also looked at the reasons why people gave, and why they did not.

For those who had given in the past six months, there were four main reasons:

• The cause matches my values: 43%
• I have been giving to this organization for a long time: 39%
• I wanted to help make a difference for the recipient of the gift: 38%
• I felt the need was clear/great: 38%

Among Swedes who had not donated in the previous six months, 36% said they couldn’t afford it, and 26% said they thought money wasn’t being spent properly. Nearly a fifth (17%) said they hadn’t been asked.

Picture by mammela on Pixabay

Philanthropy in Europe: Mapping Research and Data on Donations by Households, Bequests, Foundations, Corporations and Charity Lotteries looks at contributions from households, bequests, corporations, foundations, and charity lotteries to provide a comparative overview of philanthropic giving across Europe. An executive summary can be downloaded here, and the full report accessed via this link.

The study findings are based on the best available data from 2022 on philanthropic giving in 23 European countries. Breaking the overall figure of €104.5 billion down, the study reveals that:

• Household giving is the largest and best-documented source of philanthropy, totalling €52 billion across Europe
• Corporate giving amounts to €21.5 billion, though the true figure is likely considerably higher
• Foundation giving reaches €20.6 billion, with Germany and Switzerland home to the most active foundation sectors
• Bequests contribute €8.4 billion and remain significantly under-measured across most of Europe
• Charity lotteries generate €1.9 billion, concentrated in a small number of countries including the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden

The study is edited by Barry Hoolwerf and Johan Vamstad and draws on the expertise of nearly 50 researchers. It maps how philanthropic resources are directed toward a wide range of causes, including health, social services, education, culture, environment, international aid, and community initiatives.

It also provides a systematic assessment of data quality across Europe, stating that the €104.5 billion estimate is a lower-bound figure, with significant amounts of giving remaining invisible due to data gaps and inconsistencies. This, ERNOP says, highlights how differences between countries often reflect differences in data infrastructure as much as differences in generosity.

Barry Hoolwerf, director of ERNOP and co-editor of Philanthropy in Europe said:

“Building on our 2017 Giving in Europe study, this publication again maps the scale of philanthropic giving across Europe. What emerges is a picture of considerable variety and resilience in how philanthropy is expressed across countries. At the same time, our ability to understand it remains uneven — and in some cases appears to be weakening. The gaps in our data are not a footnote; they are a central finding. Strengthening Europe’s philanthropic data infrastructure is not a technical ambition — it is a prerequisite for informed public debate, effective policy, and the long-term development of the sector.”

ERNOP’s 2017 Giving in Europe study estimated philanthropic giving at €87.5 billion in 2013. Although ERNOP states that differences in data availability and methodology limit direct comparison, it notes that the updated figures underline both the scale of philanthropy in Europe and the importance of continued investment in data infrastructure.

Main image: Unsplash Community for Unsplash+

The publication also includes 17 recommendations for the Scottish Government, its charity regulator, grantmaking foundations themselves, and the organizations which seek their grants.

The research by the University of St Andrews Business School’s Centre for the Study of Philanthropy and Public Good (CSPPG) identifies 315 charities that mainly distribute funds to other organizations, rather than run services themselves. Around half of the foundations, both in number and in terms of total funds, are based in Scotland’s two largest cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

These foundations generated a collective total income of £2.6bn in their last year, a figure significantly larger than the £601m of grants made. However, the researchers warned that it could be a mistake for the Scottish Government to create laws, like those seen in other countries, to force foundations to distribute a certain percentage of their assets each year.

“The modelling suggests importing a similar rule without careful design could backfire,” a CSPPG press release says, noting that it might encourage some to “cut back to the minimum”, reducing the sector’s total outlay.

Other recommendations in the report for the Government include engaging with foundations with low levels of grantmaking, and to develop further regulations for emerging forms of philanthropy, such as donor advised funds (DAFs). Meanwhile, recommendations for the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) focus on improving the data available on grantmaking foundations and charities to enable better policymaking.

On this point, the project’s lead research Dr Christopher Dougherty says:

“We now have a clearer picture of the scale of foundation wealth in Scotland, but we still lack reliable data on restrictions, investments and grant recipients. Without that, it is very difficult to design evidence-based policy.”

Meanwhile, grantmaking foundations are urged to “consider economic counter-cyclical funding practices, to increase funding when economic conditions are worse to better respond to community needs”, alongside three other recommendations around better engagement with both others in the sector, and local and national government.

Grantseekers are told to “focus on pragmatism in approaching grantmaking foundation”.

Last year, Fundraising Europe highlighted new research showing that there are approximately 175,203 foundations across Europe, with total annual expenditure of €76bn. CSPPG’s data therefore shows that Scotland’s foundation make up just under 1% of that total expenditure, but represent only 0.2% of total foundations.

Picture by Henrik Hjortshøj on Unsplash