Giving during COVID-19

Clearly, communities and charities are under great strain at the moment. A vast number of people in the UK have less than one week’s savings. Charities are doing all manner of work, and the crisis is expected to cost them at least £4 billion(!)

Please give.

The National Emergencies Trust was set up after Grenfell Tower to co-ordinate donations after disasters. It has now launched a Coronavirus Appeal. Funds will be distributed to local charities through UK’s network of Community Foundations.

The Big Give will double your donation to it: please give here.

If you can donate more than £50K, or know anyone who could do so, The Big Give can use this as ‘champion money’ – for the pool of matching funds – and thereby encourage more people to give. (There is evidence that the offer of a match encourages more donations.)

Anyone who’d like to be a champion, please get in touch and I will connect you with them.

Some funders are giving way more than their normal budget in order to cope with this crisis: for instance, on Friday, Indigo Trust, a private UK family trust, gave 250% of its annual budget as an emergency measure: see here.

Please forward this message.

If you already have grants in-play

Please consider removing any restrictions from them: organisations need flexibility to respond to fast-changing circumstances on the ground without needing to negotiate with funders. (This is always true, and hence Giving Evidence recommends that gifts are almost never restricted – see here – but it’s particularly important right now).

At least 40 foundations have signed the US Council on Foundations’ Pled g e to that end: it’s detailed below.

Other useful things at this time:

1. The evidence about Covid-19
Our friends at the EPPI Centre at UCL have mapped the available evidence so that people can find it easily. It’s here. They’re continuing to update it.