One of the charitable causes most favoured by the British public is medical research. In its annual survey of giving, CAF found in 2018 that 25% of people who said they had given to charity in the previous four weeks had chosen medical research, beaten only by animals at 26% and children and young people, also at 26%. Of the total amount people said they had donated, medical research received 10%, behind only overseas aid at 11% and religious organisations at 19%.

These donations, combined with grants from charitable trusts and foundations, meant that in 2019 the 142 charities that are members of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) invested just over £3 billion in research – almost half of all publicly funded medical research in the UK. The record income for the biggest cancer charity in the country, CRUK, was £647 million in 2016/17, most of which went to support research in universities and hospitals. Collective scientific knowledge would undoubtedly be much poorer if it weren't for charities in this sector.

Charities were also at the forefront of efforts to find treatments and a vaccine for COVID-19. Wellcome Trust, a charitable foundation with huge investments, had already given $100 million (£78 million) in 2017 to help set up the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which finances research into vaccines for emerging infectious diseases prioritised by the WHO. In early 2020 the charity provided a further $50 million (£39 million) to establish the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, a joint venture with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Mastercard to speed up the development of treatments. Wellcome Trust, now known as simply ‘Wellcome’, also allocated £10 million to support urgent coronavirus research in poorer countries and pledged its continuing support for scientists around the world who were switching their focus to COVID-19.

Within three weeks of the virus taking hold, and without any government support, the Francis Crick Institute, a leading biomedical research centre in London supported by both CRUK and Wellcome, had set up an accredited virus-testing facility for front-line NHS workers. It also started several COVIDrelated research projects, including investigations into how the coronavirus is transferred from animals to humans, how it replicates in human cells, why it affects some people more severely than others and how the treatment of cancer patients is affected by the virus.