As we approach a new financial year, five months on from the launch of the Charities Aid Foundation's latest Corporate Giving Report, its message remains powerful: corporate giving is declining, yet it remains a central pillar to responsible business.
You may be wondering who the Charities Aid Foundation are?
The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) are a global charity working with individual and corporate donors to turn their generosity, connection to a cause and ambition, into purposeful change. We help businesses, including those in the life sciences sector, to give to charities around the world. From our UK office, this included £70 million from businesses in the past year, with employees contributing a further £61m.
Our expertise helps companies to embed charitable giving into core business strategies, ensuring it drives positive social change that can be measured, and engages employees in the commitment to delivering impact. An important part of our work is our research. We use it to draw attention to the challenging global backdrop that poses many threats to charities and highlight the opportunities available to companies who make corporate giving a cornerstone of their business.
CAF's annual Corporate Giving Report provides a comprehensive view of the current landscape, key trends, and practical recommendations to help businesses embed purpose and maximise impact. It shows that charitable donations by UK businesses stall at £4.26 billion. Out of 923,000 UK businesses with a turnover of at least £250,000, 75% give no support to charities at all. There is a huge opportunity here. We estimate that if more UK businesses gave 1% of pre-tax profits, including all the FTSE, it could mean £9.06 billion for charities.
So, what does this mean for the life sciences sector?
Our research shows that healthcare companies give well above the average, with leading FTSE 100 life sciences companies donating a staggering 3.7% of pre-tax profits to charities. Six healthcare companies lead the charge, accounting for £492 million of the £1.85 billion in total donations from FTSE 100 companies in 2024.
The role that healthcare companies play in tackling health inequity across the globe is crucial in making medicine, resources and opportunities accessible to all individuals, regardless of background. We support AstraZeneca with their giving programme - working on their Youth Health Programme is just one way we’re helping them come one step closer to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal of reducing early death from non-communicable diseases.
The current economic uncertainty impacts everyone. Charities are managing increased demand alongside rising costs and declining donations, and businesses – including the healthcare sector – are bracing for greater volatility in the coming months. This is why implementing a responsible business framework into your business’s long-term strategy is fundamental. By maintaining and growing a giving budget of at least 1% of profits - based on a multi-year rolling average of profits - while collecting data on giving and benchmark practices against the rest of the market, businesses can avoid short term volatility in giving.
What does responsible business mean for employees?
Having a long-term responsible business strategy not only benefits you as a company and the charities you support, it also helps to drive employee engagement. 70% of employees say it is important for their employer to address social challenges, highlighting the role of business leaders in setting the tone and championing it during strategy and budget reviews. When leaders and employees align their impact and purpose, this generates a powerful surge towards achieving greater social impact.
At CAF, we believe that inspiring and enabling more businesses to give — and to give more strategically for the long term — could be transformative for the charitable sector. We are committed to bringing together, and inspiring, more businesses to commit to long-term giving, by fostering a favourable giving environment, creating opportunities for collaboration and providing expert support to ultimately accelerate progress in society towards a fair and sustainable future for all.
If you are interested in learning more about corporate giving trends, please see CAF’s Corporate Giving Report here. You will learn:
• How leading businesses give back: See which FTSE 100 companies are evolving their giving strategies to meet today’s challenges.
• Which sectors are leading: Benchmark your organisation against industry leaders and identify opportunities to grow your impact.
• Why strategic frameworks matter: Discover how frameworks like B4SI can help you embed giving into your organisation’s values and measure what matters.
• Access expert recommendations for action: Gain insights tailored to businesses, charities, and policymakers to strengthen the future of corporate giving.
• Your benchmark for progress: Use the data to assess your current approach and set ambitions for greater social value.
If you’d like to speak to us about your corporate giving, please email [email protected].
*Guest blog from The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). If you would like to submit a guest blog please email [email protected]