Donor Behaviour: What Fundraisers Keep Getting Wrong
March 27th 2026 | Posted by Emily Formby
Donor behaviour in the UK charity sector is not what most fundraisers assume, according to fundraising strategist Mark Phillips, who joined Charity Recruit’s virtual boardroom to unpack where the sector keeps going wrong.
“Your best donors are older, wealthier and more generous than you think. You just haven’t harvested them properly.”
What UK Donor Behaviour Data Really Shows
Mark opened with CAF’s UK Giving 2026 figures. Adjusted for inflation, the sector is around £4.4 billion short of where it would be had giving kept pace since 2005 and the UK has lost 6 million donors over the past decade. Giving as a share of GDP has fallen from close to 0.7% in 2010 to around 0.45% today, even though the country has grown a third richer over the same period.
On the International Generosity Index, the UK has slipped from among the top five most generous nations to somewhere in the sixties, though Mark noted a methodology change makes the true figure closer to the mid-teens.
Why Chasing Younger Donors Misses the Money
The instinct to court millennials, Mark argued, ignores where the money actually sits. Boomers and older Gen Xers give most of the charitable income and participation among 16 to 34 year olds has collapsed since 2005 while it has risen among older groups. Roughly £5.5 trillion is set to pass between generations over the next 20 years, most of it landing with people around 60 who have paid off mortgages and raised their children. Even high earners give surprisingly little day to day, for example someone earning £250,000 a year typically gives around £40 a month, which leaves enormous headroom that few charities are asking for.
The Donor Behaviour Mistakes Costing Charities Income
Mark pointed to several recurring habits that quietly damage income and loyalty:
- Rebranding without evidence: Charities make up 3% of the UK economy, but 33% of visible corporate rebrands and Mark’s own tracking of press releases against five-year income shows donations falling after most of them
- Engagement products that hide the ask: One product that signed up 80,000 people converted only 18 of them into donors when finally asked for a gift
- Ignoring older donors’ actual motivations: Liberation, usefulness and a sense of belonging matter more to them than any campaign message about the cause itself
- Mismatched asks: Requesting £10 or £20 from someone who could comfortably give thousands
- Treating fundraising like advertising: Favouring slick design over the plain, authentic letters and appeals that consistently outperform them
What Donors Actually Need from a Charity
Drawing on years of research, Mark described four need states that drive giving, which are; help with a problem, a sense of overcoming helplessness, personal development and a feeling of reward. A Marie Curie appeal that added a simple badge, giving supporters a way to show they belonged to the cause, produced a response rate over three times higher than an identical appeal without one. Thanking matters just as much. Work Mark did with the charity Sense used varied, personal thank yous so no donor received the same message twice, alongside newsletters that closed the loop on stories first told in an appeal.
In Summary
“People give to people. They always have and they always will.”
Mark’s closing message echoed Michael Burry, the investor who profited from the 2008 crash by looking past the consensus and reading the data himself. His advice to fundraisers was much the same, claiming they should stop guessing what donors want and start asking them, testing against them and building strategies around what the evidence actually shows.
