the Save the Children Fund

What it is

The Save the Children Fund (charity number 213890, registered 1962) is one of the UK’s best-known children’s charities. Its mission is a world where “every child has a chance of the future they deserve,” pursued “with children, for children.”² The work covers child health and vaccination, education, hunger and nutrition, maternal and newborn health, emergency response, children’s rights and family reunification, delivered across 115 countries.²

It is governed by 9 trustees and employs 910 staff, supported by around 3,351 volunteers.¹ This is the UK member of the wider Save the Children movement, focused on a single population: children.

Where the money actually goes

In the year to 31 December 2024, Save the Children UK reported income of £304.8m against spending of £308.8m.¹ That is a deficit of about £4.0m, or roughly £1.01 spent for every £1 raised in the year. In practice that is close to breaking even for a charity of this size. As with any deficit, the thing to check is whether it is a deliberate drawdown or the start of a pattern; a single near-breakeven year is not a warning sign by itself.

The work itself is frontline delivery rather than pure grant-making, and the single-population focus on children makes it relatively easy to understand what your money is meant to buy: health, food, schooling and protection for children in poverty and crisis.

The governance question

The reason this is an eyes-open rather than a full-confidence verdict is the recent governance history. In March 2020 the Charity Commission published findings that Save the Children UK had “let down complainants, its staff and the wider public” over its handling of workplace harassment allegations made against former senior staff in 2012 and 2015. The regulator found the charity failed to follow its own processes, did not promptly inform trustees, made public statements that were “not wholly accurate,” and had “serious weaknesses” in its workplace culture.³

Save the Children UK accepted the findings in full and apologised, and the Commission acknowledged that the charity had taken steps to improve its culture and respond to external review.³ That is a real, documented failure followed by a real, documented reform process. It is several years in the past now, but it is the kind of thing an honest review has to put on the table.

The bottom line

Give with eyes open. Save the Children UK does serious frontline work for children at scale, ran close to breakeven last year, and has been through a public reckoning and reform after the 2020 Charity Commission findings. None of that makes it a bad choice; reformed is not the same as unreformed, and a charity that accepted its failings and changed is in many ways more trustworthy than one that never faced scrutiny. Go in informed: you are funding a large, capable children’s charity with a recent governance history it has worked to fix. If you want a more measured cost-per-outcome for child survival specifically, the alternatives above are worth weighing.