Where your money goes

Thanks to the amazing generosity of our supporters, we’re able to have a big impact on the lives of the women and girls we work with.

Our aim is to make sure your donations go as far as possible.

Our audited 2024 figures will be available in June 2025.

How we invested your money in 2023

In 2023, ActionAid in the UK spent £54.7m, 81% of which was on charitable activities.

Our charitable activities include grants to the ActionAid Federation, emergency and humanitarian work, campaigning and policy influencing in the UK and overseas, and education work in the UK. The focus of these activities is to enable people living in poverty to hold governments and companies to account, to improve the quality of public education, respond to emergencies and to promote the rights of women and girls. 

Take a look at the pie chart below to see the exact figures and the kinds of things we invest your money in.

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

Our expenditure in 2023

Our expenditure in 2019: pie chart
Area of expenditure (£m) %
 
Humanitarian and development programmes and strengthening our global federation		 39.8 73%
 
Fundraising

7.5

 13%
 
Support costs (running the organisation)		 5.9

11%
 
Campaigning for change 		 1.5 3%
Total 54.7 100%

What you helped us achieve in 2023

Every day we hear incredible stories of how the lives of women and girls are changing for the better.

With your support in 2023, our work has helped to transform lives - whether that's by helping to alleviate period poverty, distributing life-saving aid in emergencies such as during the Türkiye and Syria earthquake or training women and girls with skills that help lift them out of poverty.

Here is an example of how your donations helped in 2023.

 

Women’s leadership during the Türkiye-Syria Earthquake

ActionAid has been working with partners in Türkiye and Syria to support women by equipping them with skills to earn a living to support their families.

One such partner is a woman-led organisation called Kareemat in Türkiye. Founded by activist Najlaa, Kareemat supports women’s economic empowerment through training and education and promotes peacebuilding between refugees and the local community in Killis, a city in southern Türkiye near the border with Syria.

The organisation also provides a safe space for women, particularly those who have been subjected to exploitation, oppression and violence. Following the earthquakes in 2023, Kareemat mobilised to get resources, aid and mental health support to women and girls living in the affected areas, but it has taken a toll.

“Women carried the biggest burden. Our team as women, we carried the biggest part of it. We were suffering from PTSD and were completely shaken. Yet we still needed to care for our families, to support and cook and clean.”

Through working in partnership with ActionAid, Kareemat has been able to expand its training programme for women, particularly those who have lost their families or have been subjected to exploitation, oppression, and violence during 12 years of conflict in Syria.

Your donations are a vital lifeline for women-led organisations, like Kareemat to continue their essential work.

Najlaa, an activist and founder of Kareemat.

F. Dilek Yurdakul

Reducing unpaid care work for women

2020 saw the conclusion of ActionAid’s flagship five-year Promoting Opportunities for Women’s Empowerment and Rights (POWER) project.

Reaching over 19,500 women in Rwanda, Ghana, Bangladesh, POWER helped reduce the burdens of unpaid care work on women and supported a more equal redistribution of work between household members.

Through POWER, smallholder women farmers expanded the use of climate-resilient farming practices, and women’s access to markets has significantly improved through skills training and knowledge sharing.

Supporting grassroots movements in Ghana

When Covid-19 struck the Oti region of Ghana, it escalated violence and forced marriages for thousands of women and girls.

But Agnes Afua Obour and her team at the Network of Communities in Development (NOCID) brought together traditional leaders, girls’ clubs and volunteers across 30 communities to end violence against women and girls for good.

With your help, we raised over £9,000 to help Agnes and NOCID to organise community forums for women and girls to share their experiences and ideas for action to end violence; fund young people to run anti-child marriage and sexual violence campaigns and train community groups to provide counselling to survivors of violence in schools. 

Find out more about forced child marriage

     Top image: Hibaq has been living in an IDP in an IDP camp in Somaliland with their mother, sister Nimco, brother and grandmother since 2017. Karin Schermbrucker/ActionAid 

    Page updated 10 January 2025