Sometimes the best conversations happen over a cup of tea in the sunshine.
Recently, as part of the Live Well Spring Festival, the One World Together team took to the streets of Manchester for a roaming Solidari-Tea; sharing coffee vouchers, soaking up a genuinely beautiful March day, and doing what we love most: listening to our community.
And what a time to listen. This month, the Charities Aid Foundation published its UK Giving Report 2026, and the picture is sobering. Overall donations dropped by around 10% in a single year, falling from £15.4 billion to £14 billion — the first decline since 2021. Zoom out over a decade, and the trend becomes even starker: roughly six million fewer people are giving to charity now than in 2016, with an estimated £12.4 billion in lost donations over that period.
Among young people, the shift is especially sharp. Only around a third of 16–24 year olds gave to charity last year, down from over half just five years ago.
We didn’t want to simply read the headlines. We wanted to understand them, from the people living them.
So we asked students on campus at Manchester University what they thought of the headlines and what they believed may be causing the change in donor behaviour. They were more than happy to share…
“I don’t know where the money actually goes.”
Trust came up again and again. People told us they want to give, but they don’t feel confident that their donation will reach the people who need it most. The traditional charity model, with its layers of bureaucracy and distant decision-making, has eroded confidence in giving for many people.
“I just don’t know how or where to start.”
Accessibility matters. For many of the students and young people we spoke to, giving feels complicated or unclear. Without an easy entry point, generosity stays an intention rather than becoming an action.
“I genuinely can’t afford it right now.”
The cost of living crisis is real, and its impact on giving is real too. People aren’t becoming less generous; they’re navigating increasingly tight budgets. The CAF report confirms that affordability is the single most common reason people don’t give.
“I do give — just not with money.”
This one gave us pause. So many people we spoke to are already generous, volunteering their time, donating clothes, and shopping in charity shops. Generosity isn’t disappearing. It’s showing up differently.
We feel genuinely grateful to have been able to hear all of this. Because these aren’t problems to be dismissed — they’re real barriers that the sector needs to take seriously.
And they’re exactly what One World Together was built to address.
At One World Together, we believe communities know what their communities need. That’s why we fund grassroots organisations directly — with no strings attached, no distant gatekeepers, and radical transparency about where your money goes. Small monthly contributions from our Global Citizens go straight to community-led groups in the UK and around the world, generating up to 40× the community impact of traditional giving models.
No complicated forms. No saviour narratives. Just trust, solidarity, and real change — made possible by people like the hundreds we met in Manchester.
If our roaming Solidar-Tea taught us anything, it’s that the desire to be generous is still very much alive. People just need giving to work differently.
That’s what we’re here for. Come and give differently with us.
A huge thank you to the Live Well Spring Festival for welcoming us into such a vibrant, community-centred pop-up, and to Bold Street Coffee, University Green, for fuelling the conversations with great coffee. We couldn’t have done it without you.
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