Giving in the time of Covid
THE IMPACT on charities of Covid and the various lockdowns and restrictions are becoming clearer. The UK has dropped down the ranking of the world’s most generous countries for the first time.
The Charities Aid Foundation’s World Giving Index, published recently, is a global survey which has interviewed more than 1.6 million people since 2009 and asks each of them three questions: have they helped a stranger, given money or volunteered for a good cause over the past month? For this edition, data has been included for 114 countries, representing over 90% of the global adult population. The rankings produced are not based on the amounts given or the number of volunteer hours spent.
The UK has been a stalwart of the top 10 list since it began in 2009, but 2020 saw it tumble from seventh place to 22nd place. However, the country did maintain its top ten ranking when it came to donating money to charity (seventh overall), but the number of people reporting that they had done so saw its biggest year-on-year drop, signalling that lockdowns affected all three gauges of generosity -the ability
