UK Civil Society Almanac 2022

• In 2019/20 there were 165,758 voluntary organisations, with the vast majority being micro and small organisations
• Smaller organisations have declined in both number and proportion of charities over time
• While the vast majority of voluntary sector organisations are smaller, larger organisations account for most income, spending and assets
• The number of organisations earning over £10m continues to grow at a fast rate
• Charity closures during the pandemic were lower than predicted, though the number of new registered charities  fell below average in 2021

• Our analysis of the voluntary sector is based on our ‘general charities’ definition that allows us to compare Charity Commission figures from year to year. Under that definition, in 2019/20 there were 165,758 voluntary organisations in the UK.
• As trends often vary for organisations of different sizes, the Almanac groups organisations into six different income bands (see table below).
• Based on these categories, the vast majority of organisations (80%) earned under £100,000 in 2019/20. This included micro organisations, those with an income under £10,000, and small organisations with an income between £10,000 and £100,000.
• Organisations which earned over £1m (large, major and super-major) made up about 4% of the entire sector.

• From 2000/01 to 2007/08, the voluntary sector grew significantly from 146,429 organisations to a peak of 171,074. Following the 2008 global financial crisis, this fell to a low of 161,202 in 2012/13. Rising once again in 2013/14, this has relatively remained stable until 2019/20, when the number of charities rose to 165,758 – the highest level since 2008/09.
• Micro organisations (income of less than £10,000) peaked at 93,640 in 2006/07. They have declined in number almost every year since then, and reached 74,242 (a small rise from the previous year) in 2019/20.
• Micro and small organisations (income of less than £100,000) have declined as a proportion of the sector, from 88% in 2000/01 to 80% in 2019/20. Organisations with over £1m in income have more than doubled from 1.6% of organisations in 2000/01 to 4% in 2019/20.
• However, as noted in the context section, some of the growth in larger organisations is linked to a natural expansion of income bands due to inflation.
• The impact of the pandemic on the number and size of organisations will start to be seen as new Almanac editions start to cover the covid-19 Pandemic period.

• Micro and small organisations (income less than £100,000) make up 80% of voluntary sector organisations. However, those with over £1m in income (4% of all voluntary sector organisations) account for 80% of the sector’s income, 82% of spending and 86% of assets.
• In comparison, micro and small organisations have 4% of income, 5% of spending and 4% of assets.

• In 2019/20, the number of larger organisations continued to grow, as it has done every year for more than a decade. The number of super-major organisations – those with an income over £100m – was 64, up from 59 and a rise of 8% on the previous year.
• The number of major organisations – those with an income between £10m and £100m – rose by 6% from 736 to 782.
• 60 out of 64 super-major organisations are based in England, while 4 are in Scotland.

• Expectations that the covid-19 pandemic would see a rise in the number of charity closures were seen to be false, according to research by Third Sector Research Council.1
• From 2015 to 2019, removals from the Charity Commission register averaged above 4,000 per year, peaking at 5,846 in 2019 compared to 5,744 registrations (a net loss of 102). In 2020, removals plummeted to 3,830. This pattern was similar to Scotland and slightly higher in Northern Ireland. This trend continued to fall in 2021 to 3,596 in.
• Charity registrations, averaging above 5,000 from 2015 to 2019, were 5,713 in 2020 – a similar level to 2019. In 2021 registrations fell sharply to 4,302 (though numbers started to rise again by the end of the year).
• The reasons for lower levels of closures are unknown. They could include charities not alerting the Charity Commission of closure, targeted government support and other funding, cuts to charity spending, and more flexible funding arrangements.

When considering the total number of voluntary organisations by size over time, it is important to remember that the changes shown are the net change in numbers, as illustrated for super-major organisations.

In any particular year, a number of new voluntary organisations are registered, some are closed, and for others the annual income has changed to the extent that they have moved to another income band.

Therefore, some trends in terms of numbers and financials are affected by the movement of organisations between income bands. For more information, see the reports listed below that unpick some of the financial trends for organisations of different sizes in more detail.

Some of the growth in larger organisations is linked to a natural expansion of income bands due to inflation. For instance, an organisation with an income of £90,000 in 2000/01 would have an income of about £154,500 in 2019/20[1], which would move this organisation from the small income band to the medium income band.

• Download more Almanac data
• Have a look at research looking at income trajectories carried out by TSRC at the university of Birmingham
• Take a look at a Third Sector Research Council report on the impact of the pandemic, which features data on charity closures and foundations during the covid-19 Pandemic
• See our Navigating Change – an analysis of financial trends for small and medium sized charities commissioned by the Lloyds Bank Foundation
• Check out the IPPR’s Too small to fail report exploring how small and medium-sized charities are adapting to change and challenges
• Have a look at the Value of Small research exploring the distinctive features of small charities

Voluntary sector definition

• The Almanac analysis is based on ‘general charities’, which includes most but not all (83%) of organisations registered with the Charity Commission and recognised as charitable in law.
• As discussed in the section on the definition of the voluntary sector, general charities exclude a number of registered charities that do not meet our criteria, for example, non-departmental public bodies, housing associations or universities.

Micro and small organisations

• The categories of micro organisations (income of less than £10,000) and small organisations (income of £10,000–£100,000) are used in the sampling and checking stages of our work on the Almanac dataset but are combined for analysis purposes, since there are too few micro organisations in the sample to provide separate estimates.