New research by the Estate Agency Foundation reveals that over 74% of estate agents involve themselves in fundraising activities and over 59% of estate agency branches give money directly to charity, amounting to a collective donation of £13.0 million in 2013.
Branches aim to raise a further 12% on top of this in 2014, amounting to an additional donation of £1.6 million, bringing the total up to £14.6 million.
Of those branches that do participate in fundraising activities:
80% of branches get involved in sporting activities;
56% of branches are involved in local support activities such as giving to a local charity shop;
46% are involved in fundraising days such as cake sales;
The average annual monetary donation (direct money donated) by an individual estate agency branch is £1,830.
Despite this high participation in charitable activity, estate agents are ranked low in terms of the consumer perception of their charitableness, in the bottom three of the survey with only used car dealerships and doctors’ surgeries perceived by the public as being more tight-fisted. Energy companies, banks and accountants rank more highly in the minds of the consumer than estate agents when it comes to charitable giving and fundraising activities.
Unsurprisingly, the Church was viewed as the most charitable “industry” (5.6), followed by supermarkets (5.4) and mutual financial institutions (4.8). No industry ranked higher than 5.6 in the survey with a possible highest ranking of ‘10’.
Peter Knight, Chairman of the EAF, commented:
“Estate agents have a reputation for being self-interested. In our experience, that is an extremely unfair reputation when we look at the extent of participation in the charitable activities that we set up every year. In our survey, 75% of branches questioned participated in a fundraising activity and we aim for an increased participation in 2014.
Around 80% of agents who do engage in a fundraising activity do some sort of sport whether it is running, a cycle ride or something even more challenging. We aim to expand our range of events this year from cooking competitions to snail races, as well as keeping the much loved favourites such as our golf day. We are also planning a series of developments this year that will broaden the Estate Agency Foundation’s horizon.”
