As a nation, we would prefer to donate the most money to charities in aid of ‘the advancement of health or the saving of lives’, compared to charities helping ill-health, animal welfare, human rights, science, sport or heritage, our survey has found. Equally, we would prefer our money to be spent in the UK rather than abroad, if given the choice.
We asked 1,903 British people to imagine that they had to give £10 to a charity of their choice and allowed them to select up to three types of charity to which they could donate, from a list of 14 options.
- The largest percentage (44%) chose a charity that exists for ‘the advancement of health or the saving of lives’.
- 32% picked charities which help those in need due to age, ill-health, disability and financial hardship, making this the second most popular choice.
- 19% apiece would choose charities that exist to prevent or relieve poverty, and advance animal welfare, with these coming joint third.
- Least popular were charities which act to ‘advance religion’ (2%) or ‘advance amateur sport’ (3%), as well as those which help to ‘advance arts, culture, heritage or science’, which also only garnered 3% of the vote.
- An overwhelming 80% of the public wanted the money donated to charities to be spent in the UK in contrast to the 3% who wanted it to be spent abroad.
- 15% wanted the money to be spent abroad and in the UK, while just 3% preferred the money to be spent abroad only.
The results come as a recent YouGov SixthSense report shows that the numbers of donations to charities are dropping due to the financial difficulties brought on by the recession.
