How we’re funded

We couldn’t do what we do without you – the amazing people who trust us with your money to help women and girls living in poverty change their lives, for good.

From child sponsors and marathon runners to trusts and corporate sponsors, find out how we received funding in 2019 to run our life-changing projects.

Our income year on year

The pie chart below shows you who gave us how much.

The largest percentage of our funding comes from individual committed giving: this fantastic support is the best guarantee of our independence as a charity.

To see this in more detail, you can download our annual reports or go to the International Aid Transparency Initiative website.

Our supporters

We’d like to say a huge thank you for the generous donations of all our supporters, from our community fundraisers through to our child sponsors, who provided over 80% of our income in 2019.

Our income in 2019

Income (£m)	2019	2018	2017
Committed giving This includes income from Child Sponsorship, The Next Step, Basics, and our Country Programme General Fund and any Gift Aid collected from these amounts.	28.3	29.4	30.6
Appeals, individuals, and legacies This includes income from legacies (e.g. Will Aid), emergency appeals (e.g. the 2019 Cyclone Idai), regular appeals, AidMatch appeals, Gifts in Action, general donations, payroll giving, events, JustGiving.com, and any Gift Aid collected from these amounts.	8.6	8.5	7.0
Government and EU This includes income in the form of grants from governments (e.g. the Department for International Development (DFID), the Dutch foreign ministry and EU agencies including ECHO and EuropeAid).	5.4	6.3	9.8
Trading income This is income from the People’s Postcode Lottery and the sales of education packs.	2.9	2.8	2.7
DEC This is income from the Disasters Emergency Committee.	1.7	1.3	2.6
NGOs, Trusts and companies This includes income from other NGOs and trusts such as Comic Relief and the Big Lottery Fund, and also from companies. These can take the form of donations or grants.	1.8	1.0	2.3
Other This includes rental income from subletting parts of our office building.	0.4	0.3	0.0

Jeanne can now go to school, thanks to the support of our donors.

Jennifer Huxta/Actionaid

More than 17,000 new supporters in the UK signed up to give a committed gift

Your incredible commitment helps us run projects around the world that empower women and girls.

In Rwanda, we're supporting girls who have missed school due to period poverty and stigma. Jeanne and her classmates did not have access to sanitary products and would skip school up to 5 days during their period

But thanks to the support of our donors, ActionAid was able to build a special room in Jeanne's school where girls can shower, change their clothes, lie down if they're in pain, and access sanitary pads. They're also given support to manage their periods and advice on sexual health and rights.

Thank you to all our supporters for making projects like this possible.

Find out more about period poverty

People's postcode lottery has supported past projects in Kenya empowering women and girls

Sheldon Moultrie/ActionAid

Players of People's Postcode Lottery helped to empower adolescent girls and young women

In 2019, thanks to the players of People's Postcode Lottery, we supported our work promoting girls' education and tackling the root causes of violence against women and girls.

This helped fund a programme to empower adolescent girls, which has reached 3,900 girls in Zimbabwe and Ghana so far.

Find out more about People's Postcode Lottery

ActionAid trained Shaher in beekeeping in Afghanistan.

Hussain Hussainzad and Sediqa Ahmadi/ActionAid

Our Gifts in Action help strengthen communities

Our supporters helped Shaher, from Afghanistan with the training and equipment needed to start beekeeping. Her new skill has transformed her life.

For the first time, ActionAid offered beekeeping gifts as part of its Gifts in Action range. Gifts in the ‘Beehives to Thrive’ category help women kickstart a new career in beekeeping and earn an independent income.

Before, women in my community didn’t have any opportunity to work except for household and caring activities... now, I spend profits from my beekeeping on my children’s education, buying new clothes for my children and supporting my husband with the household expenses."

Learn more about Gifts in Action