2026 Supporter Survey results

We run a supporter survey every year because each and every year it continues to be an invaluable opportunity to hear directly from our community about how Positive Money is doing, what matters to them, and ideas for how we can achieve even more together in the future. A big thank you to the 1,429 people who took the time to share their thoughts with us this January, and to everyone else in our 20k strong community for their ongoing support! 

To start, we asked how long people have been a Positive Money supporter; 

It’s fantastic to see a growth in new members, with more than 50% of respondents joining within the last 12 months, as well as celebrate the 6% who have been with us since the very beginning, back in 2010. Our roots sit firmly in wake of the 2008 financial crisis, after the big banks shattered the global economy and governments around the world responded by bailing them out and slashing public spending, the terrible effects of which we’re still living with today. 

And we haven’t stopped fighting since to curtail the power of big finance and make our money and banking system put people and planet above profit, as evidenced in another question, to gauge people’s awareness of our activities in 2025. 

Respondents were most aware of our campaigns to #TaxTheBanks and #KeepCashAlive, followed by our petition on Cash ISAs, which Chancellor Rachel Reeves sadly opted to cut the tax-free cap on in last year’s Autumn Budget, all three of which are key examples of how our government continues to bend to the will of Big Finance. Less well-known among respondents were some pieces of our international work; including the launch of our East & Southeast Asia Green Central Banking Scorecard, and our explainer series of videos, blogs and a webinar on dollar dominance - ie. how the US tops the currency hierarchy in our international monetary and financial system and why this is a huge barrier to achieving economic and climate justice. We’ll aim to do a better job of sharing work in this area going forwards. 

We also asked how supporters engaged with Positive Money in 2025; 

Far and away the top three most popular were our emails and digital mobilisations; petitions and email to MP actions, so we’ll continue to prioritise these. For even more info on everything we got up to last year, check out our 2025 recap blog here.

Looking back on our work from last year, we asked people to share what resonated most with them and why, and received an amazing array of responses including these on three specific areas of our policy work which don’t get as much time in the spotlight as they deserve; 

•  This “Joint briefing on Local Currency Financing for Climate and Debt Justice ahead of the G20" . The themes in that briefing sit right at the intersection of the things that move me most deeply: justice, protection of the vulnerable, and systems that actually work for people rather than against them…This briefing wasn’t just about money — it was about rebalancing global power, protecting ecosystems, and creating a fairer future. That kind of holistic approach resonates with my way of thinking. ❤️ 

• National Wealth Fund - it seemed like a good idea nobody else was pushing

• Joint briefing on the 10-year anniversary of Mark Carney’s ‘Tragedy of the Horizon’ speech. Why because as a report by David Turnbull titled ‘Central Banks Still Fuelling the Climate Crisis’ finds: “Central Banks have powerful tools to confront the climate crisis, but they aren’t using them”.  In particular the Collateral Framework Agreement.  When the BoE makes routine payments to high street banks, 59% of the collateral taken in exchange are bonds from the heavy carbon sector!  The government could change the mandate of the BoE so that it could only accept as collateral the bonds of companies in the low carbon sector.  This could reallocate capital flows towards renewable and regenerative enterprise.

Find out more by reading our briefings on local currency financing, the National Wealth Fund, and the Tragedy of the Horizon’s anniversary. 

Looking ahead to 2026, while we admit it is a little unfair to only let respondents pick one of our work areas as their favourite; after ‘Finance & Democracy; pushing back against the power of big finance’, there was a pretty even split across the others, so we’ll endeavour to keep up activity and look for opportunities for impact and progress up across all of these.

This was followed by a text box question on what Positive Money should by prioritising and pushing for in our influencing and campaigns work. Popular themes and keywords registered for work to tax banks, and wealthy individuals and corporations more broadly, very much in line with our membership and frequent collaboration with the Taxing Wealth More movements, followed by climate/green/environmental issues, which we’ll certainly still be doing in the next 12 months as the climate emergency continues to hit lives and livelihoods around the world. There were also a lot of answers around protecting cash, another issue close to our heart, and which we’re hoping to do more to build on mandatory acceptance this year, the cost of living - which our ongoing work on climateflation aims to address - and cryptocurrency, which we’re to step up our work on this year, so be sure to keep an eye out for that. 

We then asked what people would we should do more of to grow and empower our movement;

Digital mobilisations took the top spot, followed by running digital adverts to reach new audiences online. We’d love to do more of this but unfortunately our digital ads budget got slashed to £0 last March, after two of our grant funders cut their budgets, and individual donations also started falling. The funding environment for our work has never been more unstable, but having a solid financial base is vital to give our team the flexibility it needs to launch reactive campaigns when the moment is right, as #TaxTheBanks shows. 

Currently only 1.2% of our supporters donate on a regular basis. We asked people who donate why they do and here are some of their answers;  

• No matter how many heroic volunteers a cause has, some things still need to be paid for.

• My support, though small, is worthy!

• As much as we might dislike the power of money in the wrong hands, those who desire change understand that very little can change without funding organisations that are committed to change for the better.

• I appreciate the work you do and it doesn't seem to be duplicated by any other campaigning organisation

• Because the likes of banks and big business seems to be taking over politics which makes a mockery of democracy

• Positive Money is one of the few campaigns focused on the politics of finance

• The global financial system is very complex and designed to suit the wealthy. Shedding light on this and showing the general public is a good thing.

• It’s an important non-party political way to raise monetary issues.

We completely understand that not everyone is in a position to donate, but if you can, please consider chipping in each month today, so we can have more impact together in 2026. 

Next up, we asked for feedback on our emails, since their the main way we keep in touch, and were really pleased to have over 80% of respondents rank their quality as 1 (Very useful/informative/interesting) or 2, out of 5 (Not of interest/dull/I don’t read them).

If you haven’t joined our mailing list yet, please sign-up here. We also had some helpful suggestions to use less technical jargon and acronyms and include more images, so we’ll aim to do both of these straight away!

After emails, social media platforms are our main method of communication so we asked respondents which ones they use;

The answers were understandably in line with our biggest platform followings, on Facebook and YouTube, and we’re endeavouring to be more active on LinkedIn in 2026. We also withdrew from X (formerly Twitter) in January, are in the process of growing our presence on BlueSky, and use Instagram and TikTok to reach younger audiences (which is essential as you’ll see in the demographic questions further down!)

Then we had a question about our local groups, of which there are six around the UK. 

Given this low number, the lack of awareness isn’t that surprising, although if you do live around Edinburgh, Belfast, Southampton, west and central London, and Brighton, keep an eye out in your inboxes as we highlight when local group events are coming up. 

After this we gave respondents the tricky job of summing up Positive Money in a single sentence (or two max). Resulting in an incredibly useful insight into how we’re perceived and what matters most to people about our work, we hope you find some of the answers as interesting - and heartwarming! - as the staff team did when reading through;

• Positive Money is the organisation which taught me how money really works.

• A force for good with a vision to change the current twisted economic banking system.

• hoping to hold the banks and policy makers to account, and to drive forward equitable reforms to create a fairer monetary regime.

• Making money work for everyone, rather than just those who already have it.

• Rethinking money for people and nature.

• A small fish in an ocean of sharks

• Fighting to keep money and the control of money in everybody’s hands not just the elite.

• A ray of hope in a dark world.

• I wish I'd been aware of you sooner. Economics is too important in our lives to just find boring, and you help make straightforward sense of it.

• Positive Money offers us hope and opportunities for change and reform in the UK financial services industry

• Getting to the heart of a broken economic system

• Excellent campaigning and important messages - keep up the good work!

• PM is a good mix of research and action

The final section of the survey gathered demographic information. We use this anonymised data to better understand who makes up our supporter network and monitor whether we’re building a more diverse and representative community, since one of the many failings of our current economic system is its structural exclusion of marginalised groups to the benefit of a tiny elite. We cannot hope to build a more equitable and inclusive society, without first representing one ourselves. With that in mind, while the number of survey respondents only represents 6.4% of our mailing list, the fact that statistics show a membership still leaning heavily older (Nearly 75% over 60), more white (93%), and more male (58%) than the UK population, shows we have a lot of work still to do. 

Thank you so much again to everyone who took part in our 2026 Supporter Survey, we couldn’t do this work without you all, and we can’t wait to keep on fighting for a better money and banking system together! 

Join the mailing list to be the first to hear about our plans for the rest of 2026 and make a donation to support our work redesigning our economic system for social justice and a liveable planet.