And while the 2024 spike followed a deadly natural disaster in Spain, there was still good underlying growth between 2023 and 2025, according to data from the Observatorio del Fundraising, an initiative of EFA member Asociación Española de Fundraising (AEFr).

In 2023, the 26 organisations providing data to the Observatorio received 5.3m donations, worth €197.6m in total, with an average gift of €37.

In 2024, the floods drove the number of donations to 13.7m, more than two and a half times the previous year’s figure. The growth in income to €242.7m was still significant, while the average gift more than halved to less than €18.

In 2025, donations fell back to 5.5m, slightly above 2023’s level. However, the average gift recovered to €42, higher than before the floods, meaning income versus 2023 was up by 17.1%, at €231.5m.

Previously, data published by AEFr showed that a group of 13 nonprofits had raised more than €149m in response to the DANA meteorological event which caused huge floods in October 2024. The disaster claimed more than 220 lives, mostly in the eastern province of Valencia.

As Fundraising Europe detailed last year, the relief effort included more than 9,000 volunteers and 500 professionals, with more than 160,000 food kits, 40,000 hygiene kits and 5,000 kg of medical supplies delivered.

The article accompanying the new AEFr stats urges fundraisers to study their data closely, saying:

“An emergency like the one caused by the DANA can bring in people who have never donated, reactivate former donors or generate additional gifts from those who already give. Once the emergency has passed, it is worth knowing how many of those people give again, how often and in what way.”

For example, should commission-based payment for fundraisers be universally prohibited, or could it be appropriate in some cultures? And is it always the best option to adopt messaging which praises a donor for the impact they have enabled, or might it be less effective in societies with more collectivist as opposed to individualist values?

These and other questions are posed by fundraising think tank Rogare in a new project that will eventually provide tools supporting fundraisers across the world to adopt professional practices grounded in their local culture.

To kick off the project, Rogare has published a working paper entitled Does one size fit all? Cultural differences in the evolution and development of global fundraising professions.

It highlights that much of the thinking about fundraising standards originates in English-speaking regions — also referred to as the anglosphere or the Anglo-Saxon world — and is then exported to fundraising communities around the world.

Building on this initial working paper, Rogare intends to establish working groups in different countries, regions and cultures, to examine these issues. Rogare’s website says:

“The purpose of this project is not for Rogare to tell fundraisers in any particular country how they should professionalise (which would not be in the spirit or ethos of the thing). Instead ‘Does one size fit all?’ aims to provide a template approach that fundraisers in different countries or cultures can follow or adapt.”

Alice Ferris, a partner at consultancy GoalBusters and a member of Rogare’s Council and its Critical Fundraising Network, writes in her foreword to the paper:

“The fundraising profession keeps mistaking its own reflection for a universal law. What gets called best practice is often just the dominant culture’s practice, treated as though it were neutral and beyond question. Left unexamined, that habit exports the assumption that one culture’s way of fundraising is the way for communities who never agreed to that premise.

“My hope for this project is that it builds humility in both directions. Humility from the anglosphere to ask why something became ‘best practice’ before assuming it belongs everywhere, and humility from local cultures to look honestly at the assumptions of their own fundraising practices. The real work isn’t defending or throwing out any single standard. It’s asking what value that standard was meant to serve, and then finding out how that value already lives, or could live, in a given community.”

Full details of the project, including the downloadable working paper can be found here.

The survey of almost 500 fundraisers was conducted by the French Association of Fundraisers (AFF) between February and April 2026 to better understand the pressures they face, the impact on their mental health, and what can help. Most were full-time employees with more than two years’ experience.  

Key findings 

• 57% report high or very high stress 

• 63% have experienced burnout or a near-burnout situation at some point in their career 

• Managers are more affected: 67% report high stress (versus 50% of non-managers), and 73% have experienced burnout or come close 

• 76% think about work outside working hours, and 58% struggle to switch off 

• Only 20% often or always feel calm and relaxed, and just 14% woke up feeling rested in the two weeks before the survey 

• 51% have seriously considered leaving their job in the past 12 months 

At the same time, there were also positives: half said their daily lives are often or always filled with interesting things, and 41% reported being in good spirits. 

Sources of pressure 

Respondents cited declining funding (54%), pressure to compensate for falling resources (58%) and rising targets as resources shrink (51%) as key sources of pressure. 42% are very concerned about their organisation’s long-term viability, rising to 52% among lone fundraisers. 

How work is organised also adds to the strain, particularly last-minute requests (52%), short-term demands overriding strategy (50%) and administrative and reporting burdens (45%). The report adds that the pressure many fundraisers put on themselves reflects strong commitment but can also become a vulnerability. 

Relationships with donors and supporters are seen positively, with 65% describing them as built on trust and partnership. However, only 48% feel able to set professional boundaries, and 17% have encountered inappropriate behaviour. 

Impact on work 

The stress experienced has tangible effects on professional practice: 47% have cut back on high-value activities due to lack of time, 45% said their motivation suffered and 40% felt the quality of their work declined. Some 74% have worked while their ability to function was impaired by stress, including 30% who do so often or very often, yet despite this the majority (78%) have never taken sick leave because of stress. 

Support gaps 

Flexible hours and remote working are widespread (77%) and the right to disconnect is generally respected (65%). Formal support such as coaching and mentoring is less common however, although the more measures an organisation has in place, the lower the reported stress.  

Two in three respondents said mental health is discussed in their organisation, mainly by HR (26%) and senior leadership (25%), while only 15% said their line manager raises it. 

Overall though: 

• 46% do not have regular conversations about their wellbeing 

• 39% feel their workload is rarely or never prioritised 

• 27% do not feel safe discussing their difficulties 

What fundraisers want 

Asked what measures they would like to see implemented respondents most often chose peer discussion groups (20%) and tools for prioritising workloads. Open-ended answers pointed to working conditions, with fundraisers keen to see more staff, resources matched to fundraising targets, clearer priorities, and a better understanding of the profession from management and governing bodies. 

More on this topic: Read AFF CEO Yaële Aferiat’s reflections on the study findings here.

CFRE International is conducting research to better understand the experiences and perspectives of fundraising professionals across the sector. This includes how they view professional certification, career development, and employer recognition, including what influences their decision to pursue credentials such as CFRE Certification. The findings will help shape its next strategic plan and future research priorities.

All fundraising professionals are encouraged to participate. CFRE wants to hear from fundraisers at every career stage, including current and former CFREs, those pursuing certification, and those who have never considered it.

The survey takes approximately 15 minutes to complete. Participation is voluntary and a separate, optional section asks about compensation and career experiences. Findings will be reported in aggregate.

The survey closes on 6 November at 12pm ET (6pm CET). Take part here.

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.

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%).

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.”