SCOTS philanthropists have given more than £100 million to good causes in the past year, new figures reveal.
Sir Ian Wood, Brian Souter and Ann Gloag, and JK Rowling were among the biggest donors, while Euromillions winners Colin and Chris Weir also gave away large sums of money.
Sir Ian and family were responsible for donations worth £58.5m, while Mr Souter and sister Ms Gloag handed out £15m, the Sunday Times Giving List showed.
JK Rowling handed out £9.4m while Lord Laidlaw donated £9m. Golfer Colin Montgomerie, who set up the Elizabeth Montgomerie Foundation in memory of his mother who died of lung cancer gave £3.6m.
The Weirs, who won £161m in 2011, have set up a charitable trust and spent £3.6m in the past year. Other names in the list include businessmen Alastair Salvesen and Alan Savage.
John Low, Charities Aid Foundation chief executive, said: "It's very important and sends a message to a generation: that when you make money you help others."
A total of £2.4 billion in charitable donations were made by the richest people in Britain last year. The Sainsbury family pledged £165.3m to become the country's biggest donors.
Sir Elton John gifted or raised more than £24m, including £14m for his Aids foundations.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article