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Charities
Headings on this page :
- The Charity Commission
- Types of charity - aims, annual turnover, staff, premises, ownership of land, geographical coverage, age, trading subsidiaries
- Funding - sources of income, contributions from the public
- Related pages and Useful links
The Charity Commission
Charity Commission for England and Wales
Website: www.charity-commission.gov.uk
Tel: 0845 300 0218
Note: Its powers derive from the Charities Acts. However, it's called the
Charity (not Charities) Commission.
Status - The Commission is an independent central government agency (a non-ministerial government department), answerable to the Office of the Third Sector (part of the Cabinet Office).
Locations - It has four offices - Central London, Taunton (Somerset), Liverpool (NW England) and Newport (Wales).
The Commission registers charities and monitors them. It conducts inquiries into suspected fraud etc and takes appropriate action. There's a section dealing with the Charity Commission on our Regulators page.
The Commission's website has a searchable database of all the 180,000 or so registered charities - the "online Register".
You can use this database to check out any house-to-house collection if you think it might be bogus.
Types of charity
There are around 180,000 registered charities in England and Wales. Their total annual income is about £20 billion (=£20,000 million).
Charities vary enormously. For example :
Aims - Education, relief of the poor, animal
welfare, environment etc.
A few charities exist solely to assist other charities -
providing services (legal, financial, fundraising, information/advice
etc), such as the Charities
Aid Foundation (CAF) and the National
Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO).
Annual turnover - Ranges from under £1,000
to over £100 million (eg Oxfam).
Staff - The smallest have no paid staff and are run by one volunteer (based at home). The largest have over 1,000 employees.
Premises - Ranges from none to over 500.
Ownership of land - Varies from none to large estates (the National Trust owns 600,000 acres).
Geographical coverage - Ranges from one
building (like a school), to one town, one county, one region,
all the UK, to global (eg WWF, Oxfam).
Age - Ranges from just formed a few days ago, to over 100 years old (such as the National Trust - founded 1895).
Some are also registered as limited companies ('Ltd').
Some have trading subsidiaries, registered as limited companies (eg chains of charity shops). All the profits from these go to the charity. Example: Salvation Army Trading Company Ltd.
Some charities provide benefits for members - for example members of the National Trust get free admission to its properties.
Funding
Sources - Charities get their income from a variety of sources, including :
- the public
- business - sponsorship etc
- business - commercial partners, eg some clothing collectors
- government - eg lottery grants
- investments
- trading subsidiaries - eg charity shops, mail-order catalogues, publishers.
Methods - The public contribute in various ways, such as :
- membership subscriptions
- cash donations - via house-to-house collections, street collections, the post and online
- Give-as-you-earn schemes via employers
- sponsored events - walks, sports etc
- competitions, lotteries and raffles
- Bequests in people's wills
- trading - charity shops, charity cards
- gifts in kind - such as clothing (and other goods) given to charity shops.
Charities :
Related pages and Useful links
Note: There are no red double-arrow symbols next to the external links below.
Related pages on CharityBags website :
Charities
Charity shops
Charity cards
Charity law reforms
Charities and honesty
The regulators
'Charity and door-to-door clothing collections'
(report by the Charity Commission)
Charity Commission for England and Wales
www.charity-commission.gov.uk
Maintains the official register of charities (including a searchable online
database).
For more details see the Charities page
Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR)
www.oscr.org.uk
The Scottish equivalent of the Charity Commission for England and Wales.
Statutory body. Part of the Scottish Executive Development Department.
Website includes a searchable list of Scottish charities.
Office of the Third Sector (OTS)
[part of the Cabinet Office]
www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/third_sector
Created May 2006. Took over the Home Office's Active Communities Division (ACD).
"...the OTS leads work across government to support the environment for a
thriving third sector (voluntary and community groups, social enterprises,
charities, cooperatives and mutuals)..."
Government A-Z above
Non-Government A-Z below
Charities Advisory Trust
www.charitiesadvisorytrust.co.uk
Charities Aid Foundation (CAF)
www.cafonline.org
Helps voluntary sector organisations - providing advice, research etc, especially on financial matters.
Charity Choice UK: the Encyclopaedia of Charities
www.charitychoice.co.uk
Publisher: Wilmington Business Information Ltd: London.
Details of around 8,000 charities, divided into 35 or so categories.
Annual printed directory, c800 pages. Also available on the Internet (fully searchable).
Charity Donation Guide
www.charity-donation-guide.co.uk
"Bringing you the latest news and resources from around the world"
News and resources on charities. Classified. Includes advertisements.
CharityFacts
www.charityfacts.org
"Charityfacts is an initiative of Adrian Sargeant of Bristol Business School (the UK's only Professor of Nonprofit Marketing and Fundraising)."
Charity Law Association
www.charitylawassociation.org.uk
Institute of Fundraising
www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk
National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)
www.ncvo-vol.org.uk
Umbrella organisation for charities. Champions the cause of the
voluntary sector in England.
Activities: Campaigning, lobbying, co-ordination, research, advice,
publishing, training etc.
Publishes The Voluntary Agencies Directory (see below).
Public Fundraising Regulatory Association
Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO)
Voluntary Agencies Directory (VAD)
Annual printed directory, published by the National Council
for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO): London. Annual, about 500 pages.
A-Z listing of about 2,500 charities - addresses, telephone
numbers, aims etc. Indexed.
Certain images from:
www.freeimages.co.uk
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