Islanders gave £80m to charities in 2016

Wednesday 26 April 2017

It's often claimed that Jersey is a generous Island, but a new survey has now provided some actual numbers to back it up.

Commissioned by the Jersey Community Partnership, and conducted by KPMG, the survey of charitable and not-for-profit organisations suggests that Islanders made a total of £80million in donations in 2016, with one-in-eight adults working in the sector, 80% of them unpaid.

The Partnership has a database of 535 voluntary organisations, and 433 were surveyed with 46% (199) responding, which the JCP described as a "superb response rate."

But the survey also seems to show that the recent recession hasn't hit charitable incomes, or volunteer numbers, with respondents saying that the number of volunteers had remained constant or even increased in recent years, with their incomes remaining stable. Around 75% of the organisations who responded said they couldn't survive without volunteers. 

Half of them indicated that they had applied for a grant with the majority of applications being successful.

The survey focused on how charities and voluntary organisations view themselves, how they raise funds, how they are organised, who volunteers for them, how they feel about legislative changes and what support they feel they have or need from government or the community. The JCP hopes the data will help the sector and its donors identify opportunities for further collaboration and is looking to running the survey annually in the future.