UK Report Reveals Charity Links

Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has produced a new report called CHARITY LINKS which it says offers a new perspective on the sophisticated nature of the charity sector in the UK.

The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) report has identified that over half of all charities in England and Wales state that they work towards helping more than one charitable cause.

The report says that while it is relatively simple to analyse charity finances when a charity supports just one cause, it becomes a more complex analysis when a charity supports two or more causes.

This report reveals that over half (52%) of all charities focus on two or more of the UK Charity Commission’s basic 14 causes, and that there are literally thousands of different ways for charities to operate as far as ‘missions’ are concerned.

The report found that 48% of all charities are solely focused on helping just one cause, 22% support two causes, 13% help three, 7% four and 10% work in five or more causes

In other words, it says the charity sector is far more intricate and elaborate than it is typically given credit for.

The causes that charities most commonly support are education/training, general charitable purposes and sport/recreation. The three that have the fewest charities supporting them are animals, other charitable purposes and accommodation/housing.

The report reveals that there are 3,689 different ways that UK charities currently support causes, based on their Annual Return submissions and the most popular link from one cause to another is to education/training.

Excluding the single causes from the analysis, the most popular link from each cause to another are: 

• Accommodation/housing and relief of poverty (480)
• Animals and Education/training and environment/conservation/heritage (219)
• Arts/culture and education/training (4,023)
• Disability and medical/health/sickness (1,330)
• Economic/community/development/employment and education/training (1,125)
• Education/training and arts/culture (4,023)
• Environment/conservation/heritage and education/training (1,487)
• General charitable Purposes and education/training (2,461)
• Medical/health/sickness and education/training (1,802)
• Other charitable purposes and general charitable purposes (334)
• Overseas aid/famine relief and general charitable purposes (331)
• Relief of poverty and general charitable purposes (1,144)
• Religious activities and education/training (2,440)
• Sport and recreation and education/training (3,332)

CAF says the report shares new insight into the sophistication of the charity sector.

There are 162,427 registered charities in England and Wales with a total income of £53.4billion.

The full report can be downloaded at http://www.charitytrends.org/uploads/publications_free/files/2_Charity%20Links(4).pdf