Grantmaking Picture

For this report we’ve organised UK grantmakers into a number of different segments based on their grantmaking characteristics, with five broad categories. The categories are:

Grantmaker – UK trusts and foundations making grants, generally to charities and non-profit groups in the UK. Includes Community Foundations, family and corporate foundations and others.
Charity – grantmaking alongside other charitable activities or in the support of a single cause or institution.
Government – grantmaking by central, local and devolved government.
Lottery – grants made by the National Lottery Distributors.
Other – Donor advised funds and international grantmakers.

More details on this segmentation are available in our methodology.

Number and size of UK grantmakers
By grantmaking segment, 2021-22

Category	Segment	Total income	Total spending	Spending on grants	Number of grantmakers
Grantmaker	Community Foundation	£229m	£178m	£140m	54
	Corporate Foundation	£1,479m	£1,346m	£563m	122
	Family Foundation	£1,824m	£2,048m	£2,007m	210
	Fundraising Grantmaker	£949m	£949m	£415m	58
	General grantmaker	£3,050m	£2,612m	£1,737m	1,264
	Government/Lottery Endowed	£95m	£192m	£115m	9
	Member/Trade Funded	£695m	£745m	£344m	915
	Small grantmaker	£1,837m	£1,144m	£889m	8,665
	Wellcome Trust	£410m	£1,365m	£848m	1
Lottery	Lottery Distributor	–	–	£1,969m	12
Charity	Charity	–	–	£2,979m	293
Charity	NHS/Hospital Foundation	–	–	£301m	157
Government	Local	–	–	£600m	400
	Central	–	–	£4,983m	15
	Devolved	–	–	£631m	3
	Arms Length Body	–	–	£153m	5
Other	Donor Advised Fund	£1,872m	£1,630m	£1,470m	29
Total		–	–	£20,144m	12,212

Note that income and spending figures are not available for some segments. Where a figure for spending on grants is not available the total spending for that organisation is used instead. Figures for local government are an estimate based on research by the Directory of Social Change.

Grantmaking in the UK context

Figures from grantmakers shared in the 360Giving Data Standard (see the recipients page for more details) suggest that between 25% to 50% of government grants by amount go to registered charities, and around 50%-70% of the grant amount from other funders (the uncertainty of these figures is due to the grant recipients without organisation identifiers).

Comparing to figures from the UK Civil Society Almanac 2022, published by NCVO, suggests that between 14% and 22% of the voluntary sector’s income comes from the grantmakers in this report, with government grants accounting for between 3% and 6% and grants from other grantmakers making up 12% to 17%.