How we spend your donations

76p in every £1 you donate helps people in crisis.

How we spend your money

Here's the breakdown of our spending in 2024, which was £310.3 million: 

  • 76% (£238 million) was spent helping people in crisis (excluding support costs). For example, crisis response, refugee support and international work
  • 13% was spent on support costs, such as human resources, IT, central management, finance and governance. This spending is essential for our organisation to run efficiently and allows us to help as many people in crisis as possible.
  • 11% was spent on fundraising, excluding the costs of running our high street shops.

A bar chart illustrating how the British Red Cross spends its donations. The largest section is red and the label says '76% spent helping people in crisis'. The next section in grey says '13% spent on support costs'. The last section in grey says '11% spent on fundraising'.

How your donation helps 

We spent £238 million helping people in crisis in 2024.

In the UK:

In the rest of the world:

We publish data on all our international grants on the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) website. Read more about using IATI data

Graph shows expenditure of £238m - £34 million spent on disasters and emergencies, £58.6 million spent on health and care, £28.8 million spent on displacement and migration and £116.6 million spent on our work across the world

How we raise money

Our income of £287.1 million in 2024 came from a variety of sources:

  • 46.4% from donations and legacies
  • 37.9% from charitable activities
  • 13.7% from other trading activities
  • 2% from investments and others 

For a full breakdown of our income and expenditure, take a look at our annual report and accounts.

Graph shows income of £287.1m, 46.4% from donations and legacies, 37.9% from charitable activities, 13.7% from other trading activities and 2.0% from investments and others

Find out more about how we spend the money we receive

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