Funding to charities: FOI release

Information requested

Information on charitable donations made by the Scottish Government over the last five years (2019–2024 inclusive). Please provide:

• The total annual value of donations made to charities.
• A list of the charities that have received funding in each year.
• The amount each charity received.

Response

The Scottish Public Finance Manual (SPFM) is issued by the Scottish Ministers to provide guidance on the proper handling and reporting of public funds. Within the SPFM, ‘charitable donations’ are defined as follows;

• A gift is something voluntarily given or donated without the expectation of receiving anything in return and generally without preconditions. In the context of this guidance gifts made can be defined as:
• payments to individuals or bodies other than grant or grant in aid or payments made in the normal course of business  
• the extent to which assets are sold or transferred (including the sale or assignment of leases) to individuals or bodies at less than market value i.e. the best price reasonably obtainable in the market
• income foregone where individuals or bodies are given the use of resources at concessionary rates
• other transactions which are virtually indistinguishable from gifts e.g. the loan of an asset for its expected useful life.

The SPFM also states that ‘gifts made should be reported in notes to the annual accounts’ and that ‘the relevant finance officials should be made aware of all gifts made or received to enable the compilation of notes to the annual accounts.’ As such, the details of all charitable donations that have been made by the Scottish Government are publicly available and will be available in the annual published accounts. I have linked to these below for your reference.

Financial reports and accounts - Government finance - gov.scot

The Scottish Government does provide a range of funding to charities and third sector organisations, however the vast majority of these are grant awards with preconditions on the expectations of how those public funds will be utilised with robust reporting frameworks that allow Government officials to determine if these preconditions are met. As such these funds would not constitute ‘charitable donations’.

The Scottish Government does have a nominated official charity, which is The Lifeboat Fund. However any funds that are raised for The Lifeboat Fund do not come from public funds, rather Scottish Government colleagues are encouraged to consider The Lifeboat Fund when making personal charitable donations or partaking in any fundraising or charitable endeavours.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.