A Generous Society
The charitable giving strategy for England
A Generous Society, the Office of the Third Sector's strategy for charitable giving, sets out our plans for working in partnership with the voluntary and community sector to foster a deeper culture of planned, regular and tax-efficient giving.
The UK has one of the most generous charity tax regimes in the world, with a wide range of tax reliefs available to individual donors and the charities they support. These reliefs were worth over £2.4 billion a year in 2004-05. This included £625 million tax paid to charities on Gift Aid donations, £270 million relief to higher-rate taxpayers, £20 million relief to donors on payroll giving and £390 million of inheritance tax relief.
But the Government's support for charitable giving goes beyond the development of existing and new tax reliefs. The Giving Campaign and more recently the Payroll Giving Grants Programme have demonstrated how the Government can work in partnership with the voluntary and community sector to enhance people's awareness of the range of tax-efficient methods of giving available to them.
The Giving Campaign concluded in its final report, A Blueprint for Giving, that "there is no single big idea that will dramatically change the culture of giving in the UK", and that "the way forward lies with a set of targeted initiatives". It also threw down the challenge to double charitable donations in real terms over the next ten years.
The Government agrees with this analysis and is committed to playing its part in meeting the Campaign's challenge.
A Generous Society sets out the Government's plans to:
- work with young people so that the culture of giving is instilled at an early age
- work with employers and employees, so that existing schemes like payroll giving and gifts of shares are maximised, and so that new approaches to social investment are fostered
- work with charities to promote tax-efficient giving, so that they get the full benefit of existing and new schemes
- work in partnership with a wide range of stakeholders to extend opportunities to give across society
Full details of the strategy are available in the complete document:
