Charitable Giving

Charitable giving is an incredible thing. In the UK a staggering 64% of people gave to charities last year and over 51% donate time-to-time and 24% monthly. That gives me, I don’t know about you, a warm feeling inside. As the pandemic has shown we quite like helping each other and during the lockdown millions of us came out and clapped for the NHS who were in the frontline.

The charitable giving stats become quite impressive when you delve deeper. There are approximately 169 thousand registered charities in England and Wales as of 2021. Between 2000 and 2007 the number of charities increased by 10 thousand, before the 2008 global recession culled the number of charities by the same number in just two years. Since 2011, the number of charities in England and Wales has recovered to levels seen just prior to the financial crash. The average amount which people give to charity has also increased slightly in recent years. In 2020/21 for example, the average amount given to charity in England per month was 27 British pounds, compared with 24 pounds in the previous year. Women are more likely to give to charity than men are, and the most charitable age group were those over the age of 75.

Charities come in all shapes and sizes but there are some very big ones, and they include some surprising names too. You can slice and dice the stats in a number of ways such as the number of employees, volunteers or the amount of money that they raise. Some of the big household names such as Cancer Research UK, NSPCC, Oxfam and the RSPCA have incomes way above £10m. One big stat however is the amount of money we raise in total which amounts to around £37bn each year. That’s a staggering amount.

Here at Pines & Needles we think we do our bit too by focusing on cultivating local roots around our stores nationwide and creating community ties. Our stores pop-up but we look to ensure that we contribute to the community who buy our products year-round. We are driven to have a hands-on approach to projects that will benefit locally, charitable giving being at the heart of our operations.

Pines and Needles has a long track record of supporting Charities with over 20 years of donating to great causes. Historically, we have planted thousands of trees and donated to a wide variety of educational and environmental projects as far away as Africa and Southeast Asia.

Our Charity work is on-going and we're proud to include in our top management people that support and encourage Charitable donations at every level.
This year were's once again supporting the following Charities:

The Earth Restoration Service
For 2021 we are looking to reverse the environmental degradation caused by human activities collaborating with schools, community groups and others to address the challenges of regenerating the earth. You can find out more here.

HDLF Teacher Scholarships
Juan Antuña Ros has worked closely with the HDLF over the last 5 years also runs our stores during the Christmas Season. In 2020 we supported this great effort to build schools and provide scholarships in Cambodia. You can find out more here.

In the past Pines and Needles have supported many charities such as Tree Aid and Action for Children.

When you come along with your family to one of our pop-up stores or even if you buy online, you can be sure that you’ll be contributing in some small way to the charities and communities we support. Remember however Christmas can be a challenging time of year for many people and for many reasons. For some there is just not enough to go around. It’s good to give.