Sector intelligence from open register data

The State of the Scottish Charity Sector

How ready are Scotland’s charities for the compliance expectations that funding and trust depend on? This analysis reads the whole register through the one compliance duty that open data can measure across all of it: registration with the ICO. Every figure below is drawn from dated public sources, set out in full in the methodology.

Every figure here can also be explored interactively, including a view of each of Scotland’s 32 council areas, on the companion Scottish Charity Sector Dashboard.

Section 1 — The landscape

A sector dominated by small charities

There are 24,967 charities on the Scottish Charity Register in this snapshot, taken on 20 June 2026. Grouped by their most recent submitted income, the sector is heavily weighted towards the smallest organisations: the under £25,000 band is by far the largest single group, while a small number of large charities account for most of the money. Income is counted only where the register carries a filed figure. Charities that do not file an income figure with OSCR, and cross border charities whose accounts go to the other regulator, are shown as income not known rather than assumed small, so these are evidenced-income figures.

24,967charities on the register

44.7%evidenced income under £25,000 a year

7.4%have income over £1m

Bars are proportional to each band’s share of the 24,967 charities. Percentages sum to 100 with rounding.

Income band	Charities	Share
under £25k	11,156	44.7%
£25k–£100k	4,981	20.0%
£100k–£250k	2,707	10.8%
£250k–£500k	1,384	5.5%
£500k–£1m	743	3.0%
over £1m	1,840	7.4%
not known	2,156	8.6%
All charities	24,967	100%

The headline: 44.7% of Scottish charities, the largest single band, have an evidenced income under £25,000 a year. Charities on £25,000 or more make up 46.7% of the register (11,655 organisations), and those on £500,000 or more make up 10.3% (2,583). A further 8.6% (2,156) do not evidence an income figure with OSCR and are shown as not known rather than assumed small. The compliance duties that apply to a charity do not scale down neatly with income, so this large cohort of the smallest charities carries real obligations with the least capacity to meet them.

Section 2 — The data protection picture

Findable data protection registration rises steeply with income

Why we measure with ICO registration. Funders, regulators and the public expect charities to meet a set of compliance duties: safeguarding policies, data protection practice, financial controls, governance evidence. Most of those cannot be measured from outside. Registration with the ICO can: it is the one duty visible in open data across the whole register, and it is also close to the easiest duty a charity carries, a small annual fee and a short form. That makes it a useful marker. Where the easiest, most visible duty thins out, the duties that take knowledge and time can be expected to thin out faster. Every ICO comparison on this page should be read that way: as the measurable edge of a wider readiness picture, not as the whole picture.

To gauge how far one basic compliance step reaches, charity names on the register were matched against the ICO register of fee payers, the public list of organisations that pay the data protection fee. Across the whole sector, 17.5% of charities (4,364 of 24,967) have a findable ICO registration. The share climbs sharply with income, from 4.7% of charities with evidenced income under £25,000 to 75.1% of those over £1m.

These figures are a lower bound on registration, not a measure of failure. They count charities with a registration we can find by name. They are not a non-compliance rate: a charity can be registered under a different legal or trading name that the match misses, or be exempt from the fee, and still appear here as unmatched. What the match shows reliably is the gradient, not an absolute count of who is or is not registered.

Whole-sector findability: 17.5% (4,364 of 24,967 charities).

Why the gradient holds: the reasons a match can be missed, such as name variants, central or umbrella registrations, and fee exemptions, apply across every income band rather than only to the small end. They lower every bar together, so they cannot manufacture the steep, consistent rise from the smallest charities to the largest. The gradient is the robust finding.

Section 3 — What it means

Reading the same picture from three seats

For charities

A small income does not mean small responsibilities. Data protection, safeguarding, financial controls and trustee duties apply well below the thresholds where a charity can afford professional help. The steep registration gradient suggests many smaller charities have not yet worked through even the routine steps, usually for want of time and clear guidance rather than any lack of will.

For TSIs and umbrella bodies

The gap is concentrated exactly where local infrastructure bodies focus their support: the under £25,000 cohort that is the largest single group in the sector. A methodology-transparent view like this, cut to a single council area, can help target training and one-to-one help where the need is greatest, and evidence that need to the funders who resource it.

For funders

Compliance is fundability. Many of the items on a grant due-diligence checklist, from a data protection position to core policies, are the same items the smallest charities are least likely to have in place. Quantifying the gap makes the case for resourcing readiness in the cohort that can least afford to buy it in.

Where we sit in this: Integrity Nexus is building the Charity Compliance Engine, an adviser-led service that helps trustees and staff work through governance and compliance in proportion to their charity’s size. It is actively in pilot with Scottish charities today: sessions are running, more are in the diary, and early feedback from participating charities has been very positive. For the small charities that need it most, the pilot is free of charge, and it remains open to new charities. We are co-designing the service with the charities using it rather than selling a finished product, and as it takes shape we want TSIs, umbrella bodies and funders at the table. If this picture is useful to your work, or you would like to take part, we would value the conversation.

What happens next is up to you

If you run a charity: the pilot is open, and for small charities it is free. Book a session and leave with policies and a plan.

If you are a TSI or umbrella body: ask us for a written briefing on your area, free, no strings. Then tell us what your members need this to become.

If you are a funder: the largest group of Scotland’s charities, 44.7% of the register, has an evidenced income under £25,000 and cannot buy this kind of support. We are looking for funding partners to sponsor compliance support for that half of the sector, where the gap is widest. Come and talk to us about funding a cohort.

Whichever seat you read this from, the same evidence is explorable for your own council area on the Sector Dashboard.

Section 4 — Methodology

Sources, method, and why the ICO figure is a lower bound

Sources. Two dated public datasets underpin every number on this page.

OSCR Scottish Charity Register, full register export, snapshot 20 June 2026. Register data is public open data made available under the Open Government Licence; attributed to the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR). One row is kept per charity at its most recent submitted financial year, giving 24,967 current charities and the income-band distribution in Section 1. Income is only banded where the register carries a filed figure: a charity that reports no income figure to OSCR, or a cross border charity whose accounts are filed with the other regulator and so show as nil on the Scottish register, is shown as income not known rather than counted in the smallest band, so the under £25,000 figure reflects charities with an evidenced income at that level rather than every charity the register happens to show as nil.
www.oscr.org.uk/about-charities/search-the-register/charity-register-download/
ICO register of fee payers, the Information Commissioner’s Office public dataset of organisations paying the data protection fee, cached on 10 July 2026. Used for the findable-registration figures in Section 2.
ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/what-we-do/register-of-fee-payers/

The matching method, in plain English. Each charity name from the OSCR register was reduced to a simplified form (lower case, with punctuation and common suffix words such as “limited” and “trust” removed) and compared against the same simplified form of every organisation name and trading name in the ICO register. A charity counts as having a findable ICO registration when its simplified name matches an ICO entry. No income, address or other field is used in the match.

Why it is a lower bound, not a non-compliance rate. A charity can be registered with the ICO and still not match, for three main reasons:

Name variants. A charity registered under a slightly different legal or trading name than the one OSCR holds will be missed by a name-based match.
Central and umbrella registrations. Some charities are covered by a parent body, diocese or national organisation’s registration rather than one in their own name.
Fee exemptions. Some organisations are exempt from the data protection fee and so do not appear in the register of fee payers at all.

For these reasons the match rate understates true registration and must never be read as a rate of non-compliance. Because all three effects apply across every income band, they depress the absolute numbers everywhere but do not explain the steep rise across the bands, which is why the gradient rather than any single figure is the reliable finding.

Reproducibility. Both datasets are dated and publicly available, the reduction of the OSCR export and the ICO cross-match follow a fixed, repeatable method, and the aggregate figures are stored in dated summary files. Anyone with the two source datasets can reproduce every number on this page; the method is available on request.