Report · Grant renewal
Will they fund you again?
When a funder in England and Wales starts funding a charity, there's about a 23 in 100 chance the charity gets money from it again the following year. Counted the same way as in the US (money paid in the year, the same years, and no donor-advised funds), it's 25 in 100 here against 38 in 100 there. The differences between funders are much bigger than any we found by cause, size or place.
What we're counting
We take a funder paying a charity for the first time in at least two years, and ask whether the same charity got any money from that funder the next year. That isn't always a grant being renewed. Most funders' accounts list the money paid out in the year, so the second payment of a two- or three-year grant counts as money again. Funders that publish to 360Giving list each grant once, when it's awarded, so there money again means a new grant. And “first” means the first we can see in at least two years, not necessarily the first ever.
The second year is the hard one
Most new funding relationships show no money the following year, though some pick up again later. But they get much safer once they last a year: of the charities that did get money a second year, about half (48%) got money a third year.
It depends hugely on the funder
Here are some well-known funders, and how often a charity they started funding got money from them again the next year. Essex Community Foundation paid 32 in 100 of them again. Some paid almost none. That's often deliberate. The Wolfson Foundation tells charities it has funded: “You will need to wait five years before submitting another application.” So a low figure isn't a judgment on a funder. The number beside each funder is how many charities its figure is based on.
all funders in England and Wales, 23%
The same is true across all 441 funders we could check: 55% of them paid fewer than one in five of the charities they started funding again the next year. The differences by cause are much smaller: the figure ranges from 17% for sport and recreation charities to 31% for animals charities.
Funders here take a year off more often
Of the grants that went to charities a funder had backed before, 88 in 100 came the very next year and 9 in 100 after a year off (in the US, 6 in 100). Only 51 of the 2,255 funders that often fund the same charities again do most of it after a gap. Funders here also let go of more charities in general: they fund 50 in 100 of their grantees again the next year, against 68 in 100 in the US.
Some say a year off is good for charities, because it pushes them to find other funders. At first glance it looks that way. Of charities with no other foundation funders, 21 in 100 of those given a year off found a new one within two years, against 18 in 100 of those funded straight through. But that comes from which funders take years off, not from the year off itself. Compare charities given a year off with charities the same funder kept funding, and those given a year off were no more likely to find a new funder (the difference is 1 in 100).
We found no clear link between a year off and a big fall in income. About 1 in 100 lost half their income within two years, the same as charities funded straight through. Charities dropped for good lost half their income more often: 3 in 100.
Chance a charity's income halves within two years, after a funder that had backed it two years running. The short line on each bar is the margin of error.
Do more funders protect you?
When a big funder stops, does it matter how many others a charity has? In the US it clearly does. In England and Wales we can't tell yet: only 566 charities lost a funder that big in the years we can see, too few to measure it.
Open funders are less likely to pay you again
Many funders say in their annual accounts whether anyone can apply, or whether they only fund charities they invite. The invite-only funders paid 30 in 100 of the charities they started funding again the next year. Funders that say they're open to applications: 20 in 100. Funders that don't say either way look like the invite-only ones (30 in 100).
Chance of money from the same funder again the next year, by what the funder says about applications. The short line on each bar is the margin of error.
Bigger grants, bigger charities and nearby charities do better
The bigger the first grant, the better the chance of money again. Under £2k: 23 in 100. £250k or more: 39 in 100.
Chance of money from the same funder again the next year, by the size of the first grant
Bigger charities do better too, which isn't true in the US. Charities with an income under £10k got money again 19 times in 100. Charities with £10m or more: 31 in 100.
Chance of money from the same funder again the next year, by the charity's income
Being close helps a little. A charity in the same region as its funder got money again 29 times in 100, against 24 for charities elsewhere. Charities in London did best (28 in 100) and charities in Wales worst (22 in 100). How big the funder is hardly matters: small family trusts and funders giving £10m a year all land between 23 and 30 in 100.
Some payments we can't see
Our figures come from the lists of grants that funders publish in their annual accounts. Those lists sometimes miss a grant, so the true chance of money again is a little higher than we show.
We can catch some of the missing ones another way. Charities publish accounts too, and some list who funded them. When a charity says a funder paid it again but the funder's own list doesn't, we've found one we missed. For small first grants we found almost none. For first grants of £250k or more we found about 4 in 100.
Chance of money from the same funder again the next year, by the size of the first. The darker end is the extra we found only in charities' own accounts.
in the funder's listfound only in the charity's accounts
That doesn't mean small grants are better recorded. Big grants mostly go to big charities, and big charities are the ones that list their funders. Small charities often don't, and the smallest (under £25k a year) don't have to file accounts at all. So we can't see what we're missing for small grants.
Are bigger grants really more likely to come round again, then? We think so. Take the same funder and compare its smaller grants with its bigger ones. Across 277 funders, grants under £10k were followed by a second 18 times in 100; grants of £10k or more, 25 times in 100.
How we worked this out
We looked at grants listed by registered grantmaking charities, in their accounts filed with the Charity Commission or in the data they publish to 360Giving. For each grant we asked: is this the first time this funder has given to this charity? Our records start in 2020-21, so we only counted grants made in 2022-23 and 2023-24, when we could look back at least two years. That gave us 61,078 first grants from 4,469 funders.
Then we checked whether the same funder gave the same charity anything the following year. We only used funders whose accounts listed all their grants, in a year where the list was about as long as usual. A short or partial list would make charities look dropped when they weren't.
Most accounts list what was paid out in the year, so the second payment of a two- or three-year grant counts as a second grant. That's how US filings work too. 360Giving data lists each grant once, when it's awarded, so there a second grant has to be a new award. That's why 360Giving funders look less likely to fund again (16 in 100, against 25 in 100 from accounts), and why the comparisons by size on this page use accounts only. What a funder says about applications comes from its latest accounts, which may be newer than the grant. There's no three-year figure yet, because our records are too recent.
Is it changing? By the year a funder started funding the charities: 2022-23 23 in 100, 2023-24 23 in 100. That's about the same each year we can see.
Years off: we looked at every grant over five years (2020-21 to 2024-25) that went to a charity the funder had funded before, and counted the years since the last one, using only years where the funder's list was complete. To compare a year off with funding straight through, we followed charities a funder had backed two years running, from 2021-22 to 2022-23: funded the third year and the fourth, skipped the third and back in the fourth, or gone for both. A new funder is one that had never funded the charity before. Income “halved” means that two years on it was below half the lower of the two years before (so one unusually good year doesn't count as a fall), for charities with at least £100k a year. We only count foundation funders whose grant lists we can read, so charities funded mostly by government or individual donors look as if they have none.
Sources: Charity Commission for England and Wales filed accounts, and 360Giving, to 2024-25. The same question for US funders.
Published 2026-11-02
Cite this: Plinth. (2026). Will they fund you again? How often funders in England and Wales pay the same charity again. data.useplinth.com/uk/reports/renewal.