Sector intelligence from open register data

Scottish Charity Sector Dashboard

How ready are Scotland’s charities for the compliance expectations that funding and trust depend on? This dashboard reads the register through the one compliance duty open data can measure across all of it, registration with the ICO, in three ways: the shape of the whole sector, your own local area, and the case for supporting the smallest charities. Every figure is drawn from dated public sources, set out in the methodology at the foot of each lens.

This dashboard accompanies the written analysis The State of the Scottish Charity Sector, which tells the full story behind these figures with the complete methodology.

Sector lens — 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. 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 the figures below are an evidenced-income view.

24,967charities on the register
44.7%evidenced income under £25,000 a year
17.5%have a findable ICO registration
under £25k 44.7% (11,156) £25k–£100k 20.0% (4,981) £100k–£250k 10.8% (2,707) £250k–£500k 5.5% (1,384) £500k–£1m 3.0% (743) over £1m 7.4% (1,840) not known 8.6% (2,156) Share of each band across the whole register. Light bar is 100% (all charities). under £25k 44.7% (11,156) £25k–£100k 20.0% (4,981) £100k–£250k 10.8% (2,707) £250k–£500k 5.5% (1,384) £500k–£1m 3.0% (743) over £1m 7.4% (1,840) not known 8.6% (2,156) Share of each band across the whole register. Light bar is 100% (all charities).

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

Income bandCharitiesShare
under £25k11,15644.7%
£25k–£100k4,98120.0%
£100k–£250k2,70710.8%
£250k–£500k1,3845.5%
£500k–£1m7433.0%
over £1m1,8407.4%
not known2,1568.6%
All charities24,967100%

Sector lens — the data protection picture

Findable data protection registration rises steeply with income

Why this measure: ICO registration is the one compliance duty measurable from open data across the whole register, and close to the easiest a charity carries. Where the easiest duty thins out, the duties that take knowledge and time, such as safeguarding policies, financial controls and governance evidence, can be expected to thin out faster. Read it as the visible edge of a wider readiness 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 from 4.7% of charities with evidenced income under £25,000 to 75.1% of those over £1m.

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 4.7% 11.9% 24.8% 43.9% 58.0% 75.1% under £25k £25k–£100k £100k–£250k £250k–£500k £500k–£1m over £1m Share of charities in each band with a findable ICO registration (lower bound)

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

These figures are a lower bound, not a non-compliance rate. They count charities with a registration we can find by name. A charity registered under a different legal or trading name, covered by a central or umbrella registration, or exempt from the fee will appear here as unmatched while still being properly registered. What the match shows reliably is the gradient across income bands, not an absolute count of who is or is not registered.

Sector lens — constitutional form

Findability also tracks legal structure

The same lower-bound pattern appears by constitutional form. The two largest groups on the register, unincorporated associations and SCIOs, which together account for the bulk of smaller charities, have the lowest findable-registration rates. Forms more commonly used by larger or company-linked charities sit higher. Forms below 100 charities are omitted.

Unincorporated assoc. 3.9% (8,577) SCIO 12.8% (7,830) Trust 10.7% (2,889) Other 9.1% (350) CIO (E&W) 39.6% (222) Company 50.4% (4,670) Statutory corporation 53.2% (190) Registered Society 86.5% (148) Findable ICO registration rate by form. Light bar is 100%; count in brackets. Unincorporated assoc. 3.9% (8,577) SCIO 12.8% (7,830) Trust 10.7% (2,889) Other 9.1% (350) CIO (E&W) 39.6% (222) Company 50.4% (4,670) Statutory corporation 53.2% (190) Registered Society 86.5% (148) Findable ICO registration rate by form. Light bar is 100%; count in brackets.

Forms with fewer than 100 charities on the register are omitted. Rates are findability lower bounds.

Sources. OSCR Scottish Charity Register, full export, snapshot 20 June 2026 (public open data, attributed to OSCR). ICO register of fee payers, cached 10 July 2026. Match rates are findability lower bounds, not non-compliance rates: name variants, central or umbrella registrations and fee exemptions cause registered charities to appear unmatched.
www.oscr.org.uk/about-charities/search-the-register/charity-register-download/
ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/what-we-do/register-of-fee-payers/

Local lens — your council area

The same picture, cut to one area

Choose a main operating location to see how many charities are registered there, how many have a findable ICO registration, and how that rate compares to the national figure of 17.5%. ICO registration is used here as the one compliance duty measurable across the whole register: the visible edge of a wider readiness picture, not the whole of it. This is the view a local infrastructure body can use to target support and evidence need to funders.

—charities on the register in this area
—have a findable ICO registration
—compared with the national 17.5%
This area National 17.5% Bars scaled 0 to 100 percent. National rate 17.5% across all 24,967 charities. This area National 17.5% Bars scaled 0 to 100 percent. National rate 17.5% across all 24,967 charities.
Income band in this areaCharities

Reading this locally: the national gradient shows findable registration is thinnest among the smallest charities. Where an area’s register is weighted towards the under £25,000 band, the same pressures on time and capacity are likely to be concentrated there. The income-band split above shows how much of this area sits in that smallest band.
Sources and alignment. Area charity counts and findable ICO registration rates come from the ICO cross-match summary (OSCR foundation snapshot 20 June 2026 x ICO register of fee payers cached 10 July 2026). The income-band split within each area comes from the OSCR TSI/council breakdown (same 20 June 2026 snapshot); the two files share identical council-area names, so each area’s figures line up directly. Only areas present in both datasets are listed. Match rates are findability lower bounds, not non-compliance rates.
www.oscr.org.uk/about-charities/search-the-register/charity-register-download/
ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/what-we-do/register-of-fee-payers/

Funder lens — the small-charity gap

The quantified case for supporting compliance capacity

The largest single group in the Scottish charity sector, 44.7% of the register, has an evidenced income under £25,000 a year, and it is exactly this cohort where findable data protection registration is thinnest. Read the ICO gradient as a symptom, not the whole picture: ICO registration is the one duty we can measure at register scale, and close to the easiest and most visible a charity carries, a small annual fee and a short form. If the easiest duty already thins out as income falls, the duties that take knowledge and time, such as a safeguarding policy, data protection practice beyond the register entry, financial controls and trustee governance evidence, thin out faster. Compliance is fundability: many of the items on a grant due-diligence checklist are the same items the smallest charities are least likely to have in place.

11,156charities with evidenced income under £25,000
44.7%of the whole register
4.7%have a findable ICO registration
Share of the register under £25k: 44.7% £25k and above / not known: 55.3% Findable ICO registration under £25k 4.7% whole sector 17.5% over £1m 75.1% Findable ICO registration rate, lower bound. Light bar is 100%. Share of the register under £25k: 44.7% £25k and above / not known: 55.3% Findable ICO registration under £25k 4.7% whole sector 17.5% over £1m 75.1% Findable ICO registration rate, lower bound. Light bar is 100%.

The 11,156 charities with an evidenced income under £25,000 are 44.7% of the register, the largest single band, and have the lowest findable registration rate, 4.7%, against a whole-sector 17.5% and 75.1% for charities over £1m.

The case, in one line: the compliance gap is concentrated in the cohort with the least capacity to close it. The 11,156 charities with an evidenced income under £25,000 a year carry real governance and data protection duties on the smallest budgets, and are the least likely to have even a findable data protection registration. Resourcing readiness here reaches the charities a due-diligence checklist most often screens out, and reaches the most of them.

Who already funds this cohort

These are the funders reaching charities with an evidenced income under £25,000 in the grant data we hold, drawn from our dated summary of 360Giving-published grants, now compiled systematically from every publisher in the 360Giving registry rather than a curated subset. To keep the cohort honest, this table counts only recipients whose register income is a filed figure under £25,000: recipients that report no income figure, and cross border charities whose accounts go to the other regulator, are excluded here even where a simple band lookup would place them in the smallest band. That evidenced-income guard is why the counts and totals are lower, and cleaner, than a raw band tally. The grant counts and totals are the grants to that evidenced band; the share and distinct-recipient figures are each funder’s fingerprint across all their grants in the data. The figures are cumulative totals over each funder’s own data window, which differs per funder because each publishes a different span of grants to 360Giving; they are not annual figures and are not directly comparable across funders. The Scottish Government row covers a 2020 to 2025 window of funds published via SCVO and says little about current core grant-making. Every figure is a lower bound within the coverage the source describes: it is the floor of what the open data shows, not the ceiling of what each funder does.

Funder Data window Grants to evidenced under £25k Median award to that band Total to that band Under £25k share of their grants Distinct recipients
The National Lottery Community Fund2004–20263,302£7,973£50,410,80015.8%6,790
Foundation Scotland2010–20251,731£2,000£7,230,82915.9%3,677
The National Lottery Heritage Fund1995–2026569£8,200£22,867,05115.9%1,376
Corra Foundation2016–2026409£3,000£2,362,55218.6%1,341
Scottish Government2020–2025239£2,000£1,338,3055.7%2,470
Quartet Community Foundation2016–2026120£1,016£284,60828.8%106
Garfield Weston Foundationnot dated57£5,000£593,0003.4%946
Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations2014–202540£6,858£278,0964.6%571
Henry Smith Foundation2012–202527£4,570£1,097,2154.5%315
R S Macdonald Charitable Trust2015–202526£7,412£402,1863.3%376

Top funders to the under £25,000 band, in the data we hold. Cumulative totals over each funder’s own data window (the award-date range we hold for that funder), not annual figures. All figures from our dated summaries of the 360Giving-published grant data.

Coverage caveat. This is now compiled systematically from every publisher in the 360Giving registry, subject only to mechanical limits (parseable format, a file-size cap, a handful of files that could not be retrieved), and covers only recipients we could match to an OSCR-registered charity. It remains a lower bound on grant-making: absence never means unfunded. Some primary Scottish funders are still not in it: the Robertson Trust does not publish to 360Giving, and a small number of publisher files failed to download or parse. We maintain a full map of the known coverage gaps, with an alternative source for each; it is available on request.
Sources. OSCR Scottish Charity Register, full export, snapshot 20 June 2026 (public open data, attributed to OSCR). ICO register of fee payers, cached 10 July 2026. Grant figures from 360Giving-published grants matched to OSCR charities, reduced to dated summaries in July 2026 (grant data attributed to 360Giving and the publishing funders, CC-BY). All figures are shown exactly as recorded in those dated summaries. Match rates are findability lower bounds, not non-compliance rates. Grant coverage is compiled systematically from the full 360Giving registry within mechanical limits and is a lower bound; absence never means unfunded. No price, cost saving or return figure is stated or implied.
www.oscr.org.uk/about-charities/search-the-register/charity-register-download/
ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/what-we-do/register-of-fee-payers/

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: the local lens above already shows your area’s headline figures. 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.