In 2024, PBE partnered with the Charity Commission of England and Wales to survey 2,194 trustees. 233 of the survey respondents chose “Grant Making Foundation” as a principal focus area of their work. This report focuses on the responses of the trustees from those organisations.
This report has been commissioned by the Association of Charitable Foundations and produced independently by PBE and covers the following demographic characteristics:
- Sex
- Age
- Highest education level
- Employment status
- Personal income
- Caring responsibilities
- Ethnicity
- Disability status
- Sexual orientation
A note on sample sizes and weighting
Among results presented in this report, some demographic characteristics were reported by a small percentage of respondents. When we focus just on the Grant Making Trusts and Foundations (GMTF) sector, where our sample was 233, this means for example that if 2% of respondents chose a particular answer, this translates to around 5 individuals. As such some of these results need to be interpreted with particular caution – we indicate where in the text that accompanies each chart. In some cases, we group response categories due to small sample sizes.
Responses in this report have been weighted according to the annual gross income of the respondent’s organisation to ensure the results are representative of the population of charities in the Charity Commission of England and Wales Register. We have applied these weights as in our original report: Trusteeship – a positive opportunity: Understanding skills, experience and demographics in England and Wales. This allows us to compare the results for trustees from GMTFs with those of the overall sample of trustees from across all sectors.