Fundraising ROI by cause

This chart builds on last week's map of the fifty largest fundraising charities. That one showed where each charity sits, how far it leans on donations and what it spends to bring them in. This one widens the lens to the whole sector and follows it over time, around a single question. For every pound spent on fundraising, how much comes back?

What this chart shows

The 159 charities on YouGov's ranking of the UK's most prominent charities that also raise money from the public and file public accounts, tracked across the four financial years from 2021 to 2024. Each line is a cause area, and it traces the donations and legacies those charities raised for every pound they spent on fundraising.

The higher a line sits, the more each pound of fundraising returned. Point at the chart to read any single year. Select a cause in the key to isolate it and follow one sector on its own. The dark line running through the middle is the average across all 159 charities.

What this chart tells us

Every cause area returned less in 2024 than in 2021, and none recovered after 2022. Across all 159 charities the return fell from £3.29 to £2.54 for every pound spent, a drop of 23 per cent in four years. Donations rose 10 per cent over the period. Fundraising costs rose 42 per cent. More money came in. The cost of raising it climbed far faster.

The distance between causes is wide. Culture and heritage fell furthest, down 35 per cent, and is the only group that now returns less than a pound for every pound it spends. International development is the one line to climb before it falls, peaking in 2022 on Ukraine appeal money and handing all of it back by 2024.

Behind the whole picture is a standstill in real terms. The group raised £5.9bn in donations and legacies in 2024 and spent £2.3bn getting it, against £5.4bn raised on £1.6bn of costs four years earlier. Once inflation is taken out, the extra income all but disappears, while the cost of chasing it does not.

Charity register databook

Fundraising ROI by cause

Britain's best-known charities raised £5.9bn in donations and legacies in 2024, and spent £2.3bn getting it. Four years earlier the same charities raised £5.4bn on costs of £1.6bn. Fundraising has become steadily more expensive, and the squeeze reaches every cause.

Each line traces the donations and legacies raised for every pound of fundraising expenditure, for the 159 charities on YouGov's public prominence ranking that both appear on a UK charity register and raise money from the public. Every cause area declined, and none of them reversed the trend after 2022.

Raised per £1 spent, all 159 charities

2021£3.29

2024£2.54

A fall of 23 per cent in four years, with donations up 10 per cent and fundraising costs up 42 per cent.

Donations and legacies raised per £1 spent, 2021 to 2024

Point at the chart to read any year. Select a cause below to isolate it.

Cause area Raised per £1, 2024

Culture and heritage fell furthest, down 35 per cent, and is the only group returning less than a pound. Shop and membership costs sit in the denominator, the income they generate does not.

International development is the one line to rise before it falls, peaking in 2022 on Ukraine appeal money and giving all of it back by 2024.

Notes on the data

How this is measured

Return is total income from donations and legacies divided by total expenditure on raising funds, with investment management costs stripped out of the denominator. Each cause line sums both figures across its charities before dividing, so it tracks the pounds rather than the organisations and the largest charity in a group carries most of the weight. Cancer Research UK accounts for half the donations in the cancer group, the National Trust for 54 per cent of culture and heritage, the RNLI for 53 per cent of armed forces and emergency services. Giving every charity equal weight instead, by taking the median of the individual ratios, lifts every line and reorders several: disability, sight and hearing rises from seventh to third once Guide Dogs stops dominating it, while armed forces falls from sixth to ninth without the RNLI carrying it. The direction of travel is identical either way, and every cause declines on both. Figures are nominal and 2021 is a pandemic-depressed base, so the level of the decline should be read with more care than its direction.

Charity shops and the retail caveat

Expenditure on raising funds includes the cost of running charity shops and other fundraising trading, while the donations and legacies line excludes the income those shops generate. Cause areas with large retail estates, notably culture and heritage, poverty and welfare, and children, therefore look weaker on this measure than their fundraising alone would suggest. Trading income across the panel more than doubled between 2021 and 2024 as shops reopened, which accounts for part of the fall.

Charities returning more than £10 per pound

Ten charities clear that mark. Some of it is real, reflecting fundraising models with very low costs: Islamic Relief raises through mosque networks and zakat giving, Sightsavers books donated medicine as income. Some is a filing artefact, such as the Pesticide Action Network's fundraising cost of roughly a thousand pounds against £1.5m of income. They sit within their cause lines here because the weighted measure limits their influence, but removing all ten would pull the panel-wide figure down from £2.54 to £2.35.

Which charities are in the panel

The 240 organisations on YouGov's charities and organisations ranking, reduced to the 159 that appear on the Charity Commission or OSCR register, raise funds from the public, and filed a usable return in all four years. Excluded are bodies that are not registered charities, overseas organisations, exempt institutions such as the national museums, endowed grantmakers, pass-through funds, and any charity declaring on its annual return that it does not fundraise publicly. Charities are grouped by what their money does rather than by their own identity, so the Salvation Army sits under welfare and Islamic Relief under international development.

Sources: Charity Commission for England and Wales register extract, annual return parts A and B; OSCR five-year charity register; YouGov charities and organisations ratings, second quarter of 2026. Data downloaded 11 August 2026. Analysis by Firetail with Claude. Firetail is responsible for the classification, exclusions and framing.