This blog post is written by Caroline Fiennes, Giving Evidence

Each year, the Foundation Practice Rating chooses 100 UK-based charitable foundations which it assesses. Most of those are chosen randomly.

The pay-out rate of the cohorts has increased every year (see graph below). In this most recent year (2025-26), the average pay-out rate was 6.1%, which exceeds the level of 5% that some people in the sector call for.

Last year, the average pay-out rate was 4.6%.

Notice that these data reflect the FPR cohort: the data do not include all UK foundations, nor even all UK foundations above a particular size.

360Giving published in 2025 an analysis of pay-out rates of a larger set of UK foundations. That also found an average of above 5%.

The way that the FPR cohort of 100 foundations is chosen each year is explained in a short video from a recent FPR webinar.

Graph shows average pay-out rate and total net assets for Foundation Practice Rating cohorts from Year Two to Year Five