Giving in the UK stands at around 1% of GDP, roughly half the US level (though the comparison is skewed by the fact that nearly a third of US giving is to religious organisations). But in the US, philanthropy is institutionalised: wealthy Americans routinely give 3.5% of their investable assets to charity (against 0.5-0.8% for their British counterparts) and have a public “duty” to give.
Here, it has generally been a private affair: not done to blow your own trumpet. “It’s cultural,” says Beth Breeze of the centre for philanthropy, humanitarianism and social justice at the University of Kent. “The tax differences aren’t enormous. Partly, it’s because the US is better at asking. But in America, every Harvard graduate thinks: who’s going to be the first in my year to have a building named after him? In New York, you haven’t made it if you’re not on the board of a major arts institution like the Met.”
There are big givers in Britain, certainly: the Coutts Million Pound Donor Report identifies 174 donations of £1m or more in 2010, worth £1.3bn. (This was down from £1.6bn in 2006, but since the Sunday Times Rich List reported an 11.5% fall in donations by its major charitable givers last year – coinciding with a 37% fall in their wealth due to the recession – the general view is that philanthropy, under the circumstances, is holding up well.)
But there’s another angle to this very British reticence towards philanthropy, says Breeze, and as a left-leaning academic, it annoys her: “It seems to be OK to be a local giver, raise money for charity, give a bit to Comic Relief. But as soon as you add a few zeroes, people start thinking: something’s up. What’s in it for them?”