Tearfund

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Tearfund began in 1968 as the Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund Committee, formed by the Evangelical Alliance after it found itself receiving unsolicited donations from supporters moved by news of famine and disaster overseas. Rather than continuing to forward those gifts to existing relief agencies, the Alliance created a dedicated committee of its own to receive and distribute them, a name later shortened first to TEAR Fund and then to Tearfund. George Hoffman, a former curate, was among the founders and served as the new organization's first director, and the charity was formally registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales in 1973, five years after its informal start.

What began as a channel for spontaneous giving grew into a standing international relief and development agency, working through local churches and partner organizations across dozens of countries on poverty, disaster response and advocacy for justice. Its identity has stayed close to its origin: Tearfund draws its support base substantially from UK evangelical churches and individual Christian donors, and its founding committee's original job, receiving and distributing gifts the Evangelical Alliance had not planned to manage itself, still describes the shape of the funding relationship it depends on today.

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Tearfund's trustees' annual report and accounts for the year ended 31 March 2025 record total income of 80,238,000 pounds sterling, of which 79,030,000 pounds sterling, better than ninety eight percent, came from donations and legacies rather than from grants, trading income or investment returns. Total expenditure for the year came to 77,667,000 pounds sterling, leaving income ahead of spending by a comfortable margin.

That concentration in the figures is not incidental; it is a description of how the organization is built. An agency whose income is overwhelmingly gifts and legacies, rather than government contracts or diversified institutional grants, is one whose financial health rises and falls with the giving habits of a network of churches and individual donors rather than with contract cycles or grant renewals that can be forecast years in advance. Read against Tearfund's own founding as a committee created specifically to receive and distribute unsolicited church giving that the Evangelical Alliance had not planned to manage itself, the 2025 accounts show that structure has persisted for more than half a century: the organization Tearfund became is still funded, almost entirely, the same way its founding committee was, by people and congregations choosing to give rather than by contracts negotiated in advance.