Alistair Hardaker | Image: Ru ware bowl stand, part of the Sir Percival David collection © The Trustees of the British Museum
Transfer of Sir Percival David collection to British Museum last March pushes self-generated income beyond £1bn
Record self-generated income figures announced by DCMS for its sponsored museums and galleries are largely the result of a single formal transfer of a ceramics collection that has been on display at the British Museum for 16 years.
DCMS last week reported that its 15 sponsored museums and galleries had together surpassed a £1bn milestone in collective self-generated income in 2024/25, a first since its records began.
The £1.3bn total, it said, was an increase of almost 2.5 times that of the previous year, when adjusted for inflation.
DCMS attributed much of the increase to the British Museum, which alone accounted for 81% of the figure. The transfer of a ceramics collection to the museum last March, understood to be valued at £915m, made up the bulk of that figure.
Last year, the Charity Commission gave the go-ahead for the transfer of a collection of 1,700 ceramics from the Trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation to the museum. The commission described the transfer as the most valuable object donation in British museum history.
Loaned to the British Museum in 2009, the Sir Percival David collection has since been on display in the museum’s specially designed bilingual Room 95.
The transfer saw the British Museum secure ownership of one of the world’s most important collections of Chinese ceramics, which had previously been held on long-term loan.
DCMS notes that donated objects have been recorded as income in line with accounting standards of organisations, but “are non-cash in nature and therefore differ from other forms of income such as grants or fundraising revenue”.
It warns that one-off ‘star’ donations can dramatically increase this figure, which was notably higher than usual last year. The British Museum accounted for 95.7% of total fundraising through donated objects in 2024/25, and 70.8% in 2023/24.
The figures form part of wider annual reporting from DCMS on the national museums and galleries, which also includes annual visitor figures.
The £1.3bn self-generated income from all museums and galleries consisted of £1.2bn from fundraising/contributed income, plus £71m from admissions income (a decrease of 6% from the figures recorded in 2023/24) and a trading net profit of £70m (an inflation adjusted increase of 5% over the figures recorded in 2023/24).
The ceramics donation has been large enough to significantly boost the total income of all DCMS-funded cultural organisations in 2024/25, in figures published today. It totals £5.6bn, up from £4.5bn in 2023/24.
Stripped of the recognised value of donated objects, fundraising income across all DCMS-funded cultural organisations totalled £578.9m in 2024/25, a 5.2% increase on 2023/24 and 5% above 2018/19 in real terms, broadly in line with previous years.
The figures come as the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee examine the financial resilience of DCMS-sponsored museums, which remain reliant on self-generated income.
