Funding gaps (cross-cutting)
Researched as a cross-cutting dossier; its gap entries proved to be views of gaps that live in the vertical domains, so the July 2026 curation pass folded them there. The entries that surfaced here are listed below, each in its canonical home. The landscape chapter remains.
Britain is not short of charitable money. Foundations gave a record £8.24bn in a single year. Most adults donate something. Yet the very richest give away under half a per cent of their wealth, the funders who kept civic infrastructure alive are quietly leaving the field, and nobody's job is to fund the connective tissue that everything else depends on.
The gaps below are about plumbing, not generosity. Missing funds, missing rules, missing data. Each names something buildable (a pooled fund, a match scheme, a reporting requirement) that would move money which already exists towards work that already matters.
Full landscape notes (July 2026)
UK giving is stuck around 0.5% of GDP versus roughly 1.4% in the US; participation is broad (about 71% of adults donate) but thin at the top: the wealthiest 1% give roughly 0.4% of their ~£2tn investable assets (£7.96bn, CAF 2025). Foundations made record grants of £8.24bn in 2023-24, but endowments are flat in real terms and there is no payout requirement or reporting norm. The state dominates supply: UKRI (rising towards £10bn/yr by 2030), ARIA (£1.2bn over four years after the 2025 Spending Review), the National Lottery Community Fund, and dormant assets (£440m for England to 2028 across youth, financial inclusion, social investment and a new £87.5m Community Wealth Fund). Since 2024 the government has built new machinery: the Civil Society Covenant (July 2025), the £500m Better Futures Fund outcomes vehicle, the Office for the Impact Economy (November 2025) and the 'Our Place to Give' place-based philanthropy plan (April 2026, backed by just £1m). Meanwhile the niches a gap map depends on are shrinking: Open Society Foundations wound down most European funding, Nesta pivoted away from civic tech and democracy to three missions, Luminate narrowed, and mySociety's income fell 15% in 2024/25. Community organising receives 0.3% of foundation grants. London hosts world-class effective-giving infrastructure (Founders Pledge, Longview, Open Philanthropy) that exports capital to global causes, and crypto public-goods funding barely touches UK civil society. Aggregate money is adequate; allocation is chronically misshapen, and nobody's job is to fund the connective tissue.
Entries from this lens, in their canonical homes (12)
Who is already here: key actors (15)
- National Lottery Community Fund (non-departmental public body / lottery distributor): Largest UK community funder; delivering dormant-assets causes including the £175m Community Wealth Fund programme (£87.5m dormant assets + £87.5m Lottery match).
- Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) (network / membership body): Represents 400+ foundations; its Foundations in Focus research (Oct 2025) is the main data source on foundation giving (a record £8.24bn in 2023-24).
- Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) (charity / financial services): Publishes UK Giving and High Value Giving reports; runs donor-advised funds; documented the top-1%'s 0.4%-of-wealth giving rate.
- Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (incl. UK Democracy Fund) (non-charitable funder): Deliberately non-charitable so it can fund political reform campaigns; hosts the UK's only pooled democracy fund, credited with ~746,000 voter registrations before the 2024 general election.
- Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (funder (Quaker trust)): Grants £10m+/yr across power & accountability, rights & justice; one of very few institutional funders of UK democracy and accountability work.
- Nesta (endowed foundation): Former anchor funder of UK civic tech and democratic innovation; its Strategy to 2030 exits that field entirely for early-years, health and decarbonisation missions.
- Nuffield Foundation (endowed funder): Endowed social-policy research funder; founded and core-funds the Ada Lovelace Institute (£5m+), making it the de facto funder of UK data/AI-and-society research.
- Luminate (funder (Omidyar Group)): One of the few funders of UK digital rights (e.g. Open Rights Group); has narrowed its global focus, thinning an already fragile funder base.
- Civic Power Fund (pooled fund / charity): UK's first pooled donor fund for community organising; documented that only 0.3% of UK foundation giving (2021/22) supports organising.
- 360Giving (charity / data infrastructure): Runs the open grants-data standard; 300+ funders publishing, £300bn of grants represented. It is the UK's de facto philanthropy data infrastructure, itself grant-dependent.
- Founders Pledge (charity / giving network): London-founded pledge community for tech founders; deploys mostly to global health and catastrophic-risk causes rather than UK domestic gaps.
- Better Society Capital (social investment wholesaler): Dormant-accounts-capitalised wholesaler anchoring the UK social investment market; a model for how new quasi-endowed funding institutions get built.
- Office for the Impact Economy (government body (cross-government unit)): Launched November 2025 to be the 'front door' for philanthropy, social investment and purpose-driven business partnerships; a remit without capital of its own.
- Local Trust (charity / campaign): Ran Big Local (£217m endowment-style neighbourhood funding) and led the decade-long Community Wealth Fund campaign that won the £87.5m dormant-assets allocation.
- Public Interest News Foundation (charity / funder): The UK's only charitable foundation dedicated to public-interest journalism; distributes small grants (well under £1m/yr), the residue of the rejected Cairncross institute.
Funders active or plausible here (17)
- National Lottery Community Fund (largest community funder; delivers dormant-assets causes)
- UKRI / Innovate UK (~£10bn/yr by 2030; no civic or social-innovation stream)
- ARIA (£1.2bn over four years for high-risk R&D)
- Dormant Assets Scheme (£440m for England to 2028 via Better Society Capital, Access, Fair4All Finance, Youth Futures Foundation and the Community Wealth Fund)
- Better Futures Fund (£500m HMT social-outcomes fund seeking philanthropic match, from 2025)
- Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
- Paul Hamlyn Foundation
- Barrow Cadbury Trust
- Blagrave Trust, Porticus UK, Unbound Philanthropy (UK Democracy Fund contributors)
- Rowntree trusts: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust
- Nuffield Foundation
- Wellcome Trust (very large but health-focused)
- City Bridge Foundation and place funders (community foundations network, Big Give match platform)
- Luminate / Omidyar Network (narrowed focus)
- Open Society Foundations (largely withdrawn from European funding since 2023)
- Founders Pledge, Longview Philanthropy, Open Philanthropy (London-based, globally focused tech/EA philanthropy)
- Ethereum Foundation ESP, Gitcoin, Protocol Labs, Optimism (crypto public-goods funding, minimal current UK reach)
Policy notes
There is no minimum payout or payout-reporting requirement for endowed foundations (the US requires ~5%). Gift Aid's higher-rate relief flows to donors rather than charities; reform proposals have repeatedly stalled. Charity Commission campaigning rules (CC9) and Electoral Commission non-party campaigner regulation chill foundation funding of democracy work; JRRT stays deliberately non-charitable to fund reform campaigns. The Dormant Assets Scheme Strategy (June 2025) governs £440m to 2028, but allocation of future tranches among four competing causes is unresolved. The Civil Society Covenant (July 2025) sets partnership principles without money; the Office for the Impact Economy (November 2025) is a 'front door' without capital; 'Our Place to Give' (April 2026) carries just £1m. The Law Family Commission's recommendations (commissioner, match funds, better data) are mostly unimplemented. No policy treats open-source software, civic tech, local news or evidence intermediaries as fundable public infrastructure.