Category: Factary Tools

The Venture Philanthropists

Posted on by Chris

The UK’s venture philanthropy industry, now nine years old, is worth more than £1.5 billion and provides more than £50 million in support for nonprofits, according to a report issued today by Factary.

But who are the people behind this new wave in philanthropy?

Factary’s report, ‘The Venture Philanthropists – A Review of Venture Philanthropy funds in the UK and the people behind them,’ focuses on the 135 trustees, donors, patrons and board members in the UK VP sector, including brief biographies on each. Over half of the trustees come from the financial sector – with 29% coming from the private equity industry, a key target audience for many nonprofits. Many are wealthy – we identify more than £5.2 billion in personal wealth in the report.

Factary’s team has analysed the UK venture philanthropy sector, identifying the eleven key funds, reviewing their areas of interest, their finances and the people involved. We review the spectacular growth in investment income in the sector and look in detail at the £51.8m in charitable grants, loans and investments made by the sector.

The report – 70 pages of newly researched information – includes a detailed index of corporate and trust connections. The report details the trends in the sector, as well as giving background on venture philanthropy – history, definition and key features. Download a contents list here.

How to Order

To order a report email research@factary.com with your contact details. The report is available at £125 per copy.

The report is featured in UK Fundraising and there is an interview with Chris Carnie at Helen Brown Group. We’re also featured at Philanthropy UK.

Charities analysed

Posted on by Chris

We’ve been continuing to extract useful information from our Factary Phi database. Here, in a brief 2 page report, is the latest data from a survey we carried out in Factary Phi on donations to charities

We have found some interesting patterns by comparing reported gifts from trusts with reported gifts from individuals. For example mental health charities are reporting substantially more gifts from trusts than from individual donors, while education and training organisations show the reverse picture.

We hope that this information helps organisations in the nonprofit sector to begin to establish benchmarks in their work with strategic donors (philanthropists, companies and trusts.)

Do contact us (research@factary.com, or 0117 916 6740) if you would like to know more, or to set up an online demonstration of Factary Phi.

Download the report here.

Universities in Factary Phi

Posted on by Chris

Factary Phi, our database of donors and supporters to UK nonprofits, is beginning to reveal an interesting picture of philanthropy in the UK. The database only covers donations that are recorded in the public domain, so it is emphatically not a sample of all philanthropy.

But working within that limitation, the Factary team has been analysing donations to Universities and education, and we’ve come up with some surprising, and some reassuring, results.

Reassuring, for example, is the fact that over 95% of publicly acknowledged donations come from individual people – that means a good wide base of philanthropic support for UK universities. Surprising was the fact that we have found trusts and foundations to be particularly keen to list their donation value on University websites.

We have also demonstrated, we think for the first time in the UK, that academics are an important group of donors to UK Universities – representing around 12% of donors and 17% by value of publicly recorded donations.

We have written a brief report on these statistics as an aid to development teams in universities and the education sector. You can download the report here.

There is more about Factary Phi at here. If you would like to talk to a human being about Factary Phi, call us in Bristol on 0117 916 6740, or email at research@factary.com.

Download the report.

Thanks from the Arts

Posted on by Chris

More than 36,500 supporters are acknowledged publicly by arts organisations in the UK, according to new research by Factary. And most of the donated income is from people (not from companies or trusts, as you might have expected.)

A summary research note is available for download here.

The research is based on data from Factary Phi, the database of donations and donors reported in the public domain. Factary Phi currently contains more than 160,000 records of donors and supporters to UK nonprofits who have been publicly thanked or reported.

Factary’s research shows that while only one in three publicly-acknowledged donors is an individual, almost three-quarters of publicly-acknowledged donated £s are from people as donors.

Our research seems to show that grant-making trusts and foundations are shy of public acknowledgement – with few arts organisations listing the donation value of their trust supporters. By contrast, companies seem more willing to allow their arts organisation partners to report donation values on arts websites.

To build Factary Phi, Factary researched donors by name from public domain sources, and Factary Phi shows the organisation they donated to with that organisation’s location and the web address of the source we used to find this data. Almost half of the records show either the amount of the donation or a gift band, and we are currently reporting on more than £13 billion in known donations to UK nonprofits, from 161,896 donors and supporters.

For further information contact David Hughes, Editor of Factary Phi.

Download the research summary.