The missing conversations about trust, values, independence and our heartland

Earlier this year we completed research, funded by the Gates Foundation, synthesising 18 months of polling and grey literature on how the British public feel about “aid” in its broadest sense.

It was commissioned in the wake of the February 2025 cuts, at a moment when engaging the public on the value of aid and playing our fair part globally felt more urgent than it had for a generation.  

We were aware that excellent data already existed. But what was missing was our understanding, as a sector, of the threads that connected them all. We wanted to pull them out so they could finally start informing how we talk to the public about who we are, what we do and why we do it. And it has informed the start of work designed to put international cooperation back on the positive public agenda, and our audiences at the heart of that work. 

The problematic notion of “aid”

A quick aside – the term “aid” is being used because our audiences and the British government use this to describe what we do. Rest assured, we know it is part of the problem, which is why Bond put it into retirement a long time ago. For the sake of talking about the research accurately, we need to use it for the moment. But it will have no place in the sector-wide campaigning work that we are working on in the run-up to G20 and beyond. 

We are also aware that the “British public” is not a monolith, a fact regularly discussed in the research we reviewed. Again, rest assured that we are not tackling this problem with that view, and are instead looking at different groups and individuals. 

What the British public thinks about aid 

So what did we find? The headline numbers are sobering. Around 45% of the public support maintaining or increasing the UK aid budget, but only 18% believe aid is actually effective. Donations to development charities have fallen, from around 20% of the public donating in early 2024 to 14% in 2025. And 38% of the population is now classified as totally disengaged from global poverty.

None of this is new information. But gathering it in one place reveals four things we think you will find interesting and useful. 

1. Trust is our biggest barrier, but also our clearest opportunity

Trust runs through every barrier in this data set: doubts about aid effectiveness, where the money goes and whose interests aid really serves. Yet we are building from a stronger position than the mood music suggests. NGOs remain more trusted than the government and the media in the UK, and second only to business at a trust-level that is just 1% behind it.

The fact that only 18% believe aid is actually effective is not evidence that people do not care. It is evidence that they do care but remain unconvinced that aid is delivering effectively. People consistently say they want to know their money works and has impact.  It is not our job to abstractly reassure them that everything is fine; instead we should share the process – with detail, honesty, and with wrong turns as well as right. 

We are in yet another new communications environment. Audiences shaped by a decade of user-generated storytelling, and most recently by direct reporting from Gaza, no longer wait for information to be mediated by institutions. They find it themselves, and they trust it more when they do. We know this, but do not always use it in our storytelling.

2. We are not connecting with the public’s values

The values that emerged from this data are strikingly consistent. People engage with tangible, practical help they can picture: clean water, vaccines, education, disaster relief. They want to help protect those who, through long-term power imbalances, are more often subject to harmful inequities, particularly women, girls and children. They want fairness, and they want to know the support they are providing reaches the people it is meant for. 

Some of this sends up red flags for those of us who have been working to change narratives for decades to end the saviouristic stories of giving or teaching, rather than partnering and knowledge sharing. But what it really boils down to is that people want to understand how their money makes a difference. Which is fair enough, especially in a cost of living crisis.

What is notably absent is any strong public attachment to global interdependence or shared responsibility, which is the framing policymakers favour. The public moral intuition is closer to “help people who are suffering” than “we are all connected”. This is a significant gap between institutional values and public values. It exists not because aid is not delivering practical support, but because we are not transparently communicating where the money has gone and what it has done.

This does not mean we have to abandon the ambition and message of interdependence and mutuality. But we do need to recognise that just saying that aid benefits everyone, and even showing the impact of aid on both those who receive it and those who give, wil not cut through. 

To bring the public with us, we need to listen, and then show that we are listening by letting what we hear inform how and what we do and say. Those values – fairness, equity and humility – should underpin the evidence-based case for why action on issues such as climate change and investment in global health are in our mutual interest. 

3. Government alignment is undermining the “non” in NGO

When we adopt the government’s preferred language of national interest, tactical partnership and “good for Britain”, we tie ourselves to the least trusted public institution in the country. Trust in government is falling faster than in any other institution. Every time we echo its framing, we erode the very thing that gives us moral authority: our independence.

Those engaged with Westminster-facing aid advocacy tend to prefer the government’s language because the government is one of their principal audiences. But these advocacy specialists are not representative of the wider British public, so we should be cautious about treating their political preferences as a truth for all. If we never challenge a government that funds us publicly, or if our voice is missing when a humanitarian crisis is politically charged, we are not non-governmental in any meaningful sense. Audiences will sense that inauthenticity even if they cannot name it.

4. Our strongest supporters are waiting to hear from us

Two strategic habits deserve scrutiny. The first is our fondness for percentages. Correcting misperceptions of the proportion of public money spent on aid with figures like 0.7% is a dead end because most people have no real sense of the total government budget. 

Secondary, there is also an assumption that our heartland (left leaning, middle aged, mostly white) are still as supportive as ever. So we have oriented communications towards sceptics: older, right-of-centre voters who prioritise national interest. However, the data shows that even in that heartland, concern for the issues and communities we care about is falling and donations are down. The risk is that we may be losing the people already closest to our mission.

Among younger adults (ages 18-24), support sits at 68%. But with the exception of Gaza, many do not feel we are talking to them at all.

So what now?

Bond is convening a “flotilla” of organisations that are looking to secure ambitious G20 reforms and rebuild public support for international cooperation, based on our shared values, for the long term. 

We are working together to learn from what the insights are telling us. We will put our supporters and audiences at the heart of this desperately needed conversation about who we as a sector are and what we stand for, what we think world leaders need to hear and do, and how we, as a country, can influence how the UK shows up in this global world.

Not everyone will communicate in the same voice, to the same audience or on the same channels, and nor should they, but we will be coordinated.  As a group, we believe we have the power to build trust, bring our heartland closer, and renew belief that by working together across borders, we can build a fairer, more sustainable and safer future for everyone. 

To find out more about the “flotilla” we are pulling together, please do get in touch with Maryam ([email protected]) or Sophie ([email protected]). 

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