Some 14% of UK consumers who are feeling the chill from the economic downturn are beginning to address their new financial restrictions by scrapping regular charitable donations, according to a new survey.

The research, conducted by customer insight specialist G2 Data Dynamics among its UK-representative ViewPoint panel of 30,000 UK consumers, reveals that 20% of respondents who fall within ‘less well-off’ demographic classifications have already axed charitable giving from their outgoings.

Despite fewer people with higher incomes admitting to ditching donations, and 59% of existing donors stating their charity gifting ‘remains unchanged’, the findings will be a further concern to third sector organisations already struggling to raise funds during the recession.

And the results back up a previous Viewpoint survey, released last October, when 31% of respondents claimed charities would be the first to suffer if they were forced to slash monthly expenditure.

Alan Thorpe, Commercial and Operations Director, G2 Data Dynamics, said: “People are making good on their decision to cut charity contributions, which is bad news for the third sector. However, all is not lost as there is still staunch support from many respondents.

Charity marketers should think carefully about how to get the best out of their existing donor databases to make people stick with them and potentially persuade lapsed supporters to give again.”

G2 Data Dynamics recently launched marketing tool Donor Striker to help charities identify their most valuable supporters and potential donors to boost income from fundraising.

Donor Striker will allow charity marketers to rapidly identify and build a pool of key targets, thereby reducing campaign waste and building more efficiency into precious fundraising budgets.