Figures from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), suggest the British public donated a huge £14.0b to charity in 2025.
The charities with the highest revenue in the UK include household names such as Save the Children (£1.1b), Cancer Research (£530m) and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (£222m).
Good corporate culture is generally seen to corelate with a more successful organisation and ultimately better share price performance.
On Sunday 27th September four Bowmore colleagues ran the Vitality 10km in London – raising £1,350 for their chosen charity, Macmillian Cancer Support. A total of 19,431 participants crossed the finish line[i] which, if extrapolated simply across all runners, would suggest a total raised of over £6.5m for just one event.
Figures from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), suggest the British public donated a huge £14.0b to charity in 2025[ii]. For context, from April 2025 to March 2026 the UK government raised £16.6b from Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT)[iii] – a broadly equivalent amount. Given these very large amounts of voluntarily donated money, it is worth a look at the charity sector and how it contributes to the UK economy.
The UK's biggest charities
Data shows varied destinations for UK donations. The charities with the highest revenue in the UK include household names such as Save the Children (£1.1b), Cancer Research (£530m) and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (£222m)[iv]. If Save the Children were a private company, its revenue would be greater than some of the largest publicly listed UK companies[v].
The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association has a latest available revenue of £143m for 2024[vi] which is broadly similar to 2025 revenues of UK mid-cap biotechnology company Oxford Biomedica[vii].
The nuance
UK charities must spend donations only on their charitable purposes for the public benefit. They are regulated under the Charities Act 2011, their own governing documents, and Charity Commission oversight.
The economic value of charity work is hard to quantify. For example, Youth Music is the UK’s largest youth music charity and raises £10m each year to support music projects and young creatives [viii]. However, the economic value is far beyond what the financial numbers suggest. It has reached 3.5m young people since its founding in 1999[ix] with projects such as music therapy which helps children with mental health problems.
Around 987,000 young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK are currently not in education, employment, or training (NEETs)[x]. Against this backdrop, the impact of Youth Music’s work may not register in GDP figures, yet it adds real value to young people’s lives in ways that are harder to measure. Where government support falls short, charities are often well placed to step in and do things differently.
The economy
Some economic figures are easier to measure, such as employment statistics. The latest UK Civil Society Almanac (2024) states that the voluntary sector employed approximately 978,000 people. This is about 3% of the UK workforce and since 2011 the voluntary sector workforce has grown by 30%[xi]. It also points to data from 2021/22 which highlights that the voluntary sector contributed 7.5% of overall UK income[xii].
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The direct economic impacts of the charity sector are less easy to measure, especially when compared to things like central bank interest rates, inflation, or oil prices, which have such a direct feed through to portfolios. Broader evidence indicates that organisations with strong employee engagement and positive workplace cultures may deliver stronger long-term outcomes.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence for this comes from Edmans (2011), who studied the companies listed in the "100 Best Companies to Work For in America" between 1984 and 2009. He found that these companies delivered stock market returns of between 2.1% and 3.5% a year above comparable benchmarks over the period. It suggests that high employee satisfaction contributes to future performance rather than simply reflecting existing success. Edmans also concluded that the stock market tends to undervalue intangible assets such as employee wellbeing, so the benefits of a strong culture may not be fully reflected in a company's valuation[xiii]. This should not be interpreted as evidence that charitable organisations or companies with charitable programmes will necessarily deliver superior investment returns.
The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less than you invested. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
[i] Thousands celebrate community and belonging at the 2026 Vitality London 10,000 | London Marathon Events
[ii] UK Giving Report 2026 Charitable Giving Insights | CAF
[iii] Public sector current receipts: Appendix D - Office for National Statistics
[iv] The Largest Non-Profit Organisations of the United Kingdom
[v] Bowmore Asset Management
[vi] The Largest Non-Profit Organisations of the United Kingdom
[vii] Preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2025 - OXB
[ix] Impact and Insights | Youth Music
[x] Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), UK - Office for National Statistics
[xi] https://www.ncvo.org.uk/news-and-insights/news-index/uk-civil-society-almanac-2024/workforce/
[xii] https://www.ncvo.org.uk/news-and-insights/news-index/uk-civil-society-almanac-2024/executive-summary/
[xiii] Edmans, A. (2011) 'Does the stock market fully value intangibles? Employee satisfaction and equity prices', Journal of Financial Economics, 101(3), pp. 621–640.
