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EveryYouth CEO Nicholas Connolly reflects on CAF’s latest High Value Giving report which reveals just 3% of the UK’s wealthiest givers donate to homeless charities.
At a recent meet up of our supporters, I was discussing our work in the usual way, addressing the normal questions. Why do young people become homeless? How do we help them? So far so good.
Amid this conversation one supporter said: “This is important work you are doing, and I am completely sold. But why is no one at large paying attention to this?”
A profound question. For decades homelessness charities have spent millions ‘educating’ the public and policy makers that homelessness is not about addicts and self-destruction, it’s a symptom of complex social and systemic failures that manifest in individuals falling through the gaps in our social safety net.
Cathy Comes Home – a teleplay directed by Ken Loach and first aired in 1966 – brought this reality to life and inspired the creation of Crisis, a leading charity representing and supporting homeless people in the UK. Of course, huge strides in public policy and welfare provision have been made since 1966 but has public perception changed too?
Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) recently published a 2024 deep dive into how the UK’s wealthy give. They found that of the UK’s richest individuals – 60% gave to causes relating to education, 32% gave to health and 26% to arts & culture. Homeless charities received 3%.
Why? Have we ended homelessness? In September 2024, 126,040 households were in temporary accommodation, an increase of 15.7% from September 2023. A total of 118,000 young people, that’s one person every four minutes, faced homelessness last year.
Maybe there’s no upside? A 2024 Alma Economics study commissioned by Pathway suggested that expanding specialist intermediate care for people experiencing homelessness could yield a financial benefit of £1.20 and a societal benefit of £4.30 for every £1 spent. Implementing such care nationwide could result in potential savings of £5,200 per individual.
“Do donors assume that people experiencing homelessness are responsible for their predicament?”
Perhaps it is because funds can be given directly to beneficiaries? Beam found that 34% of UK adults do not donate to people experiencing homelessness due to not having cash and 19% do not donate because they are unsure where the money would be spent. From the thousands of conversations I had as a street fundraiser for Shelter in 2004/5 it was clear most people did not give to rough sleepers because they assumed the money would be spent on drink or drugs.
Perhaps this is the rub. Or perhaps the issue is a lack of personal experience with, or exposure to, homelessness. This manifests as a lack of sympathy or hope and expectation that people experiencing homeless can find lifelong independence. Do donors assume that people experiencing homelessness are responsible for their predicament?
EveryYouth’s Network supports more than 30,000 young people every year between the ages of 16 and 25. The majority have experienced significant trauma in the family home. A quarter identify as LGBTQI+ and may have felt they had to leave home because of their sexuality, while neurodiversity is alarmingly common. Are these young people considered to be responsible for their predicament?
Following the CAF report, Edward Garrett, Head of Private Clients said: “No matter how much money you have, giving is more often than not emotionally-driven, with people giving to causes that are highly personal to them. This can also translate into people supporting causes they have direct experience of.
“We can see this in particular with high-net-worth support of education, giving back to the institutions they have attended, or funding scholarships so others can access the same education they’d benefited from. Exposure to an experience is likely to motivate an individual to donate. This is evident in Prince William’s commitment to homelessness charities – he credits his interest in the cause to his mother taking him to a homeless shelter at a young age, exposing him to something he otherwise would not have experienced.
“Giving is more often than not emotionally-driven, with people giving to causes that are highly personal to them.”
“A difference we do see between demographics is that high-net-worth donors seem to be more likely to support ‘root cause’ funding to affect change, whereas they may see issues such as homelessness as treating the ‘symptom’.”
For EveryYouth, this is the crux of the matter. Public debate about homelessness is often dominated by references to the housing crisis but in our view, this misses the point. Young people don’t become homeless because of the housing crisis. They become homeless because of ‘family breakdown’ which is itself often a symptom of trauma, neglect or abuse, the challenge of adolescence, and, almost universally, poverty.
Which is why EveryYouth’s lifechanging services focus on mental health, as well as bursaries to remove financial barriers to education, employment and training, and housing. We see independent living as the result of a successful, wraparound support programme that allows our least fortunate young people to aspire and achieve.
Much of the messaging and imagery used in public fundraising campaigns still references homeless people in dank corners of our cities. The stories are real, but they focus on the journey from street to housed.
EveryYouth uses real images and real stories. We show young people experiencing homelessness as they are: hopeful. We focus on what young people can achieve and how they can contribute to society and illustrate this potential with real stories.
Donors believe we can cure cancer, reduce heart disease, protect children, and care for animals better but, perhaps, they think homelessness is grim but inevitable. It’s exciting the Royal Foundation’s Homewards campaign aims to address public perception and we support their efforts wholeheartedly. But success requires the public narrative to move beyond housing.
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© EveryYouth 2023. Every Youth, operating as EveryYouth, is a charity registered with the Charity Commission of England and Wales under number 1201811 whose registered office is at 23-27 ST. Andrews Street Norwich NR2 4TP and a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales under number 14101070
