Local giving › what the records show · drawn as a map of connections
Community foundations: what the records show from outside
A body sees its own members and the people who reach them. Public records see every charity in England at once. This page sets the two side by side for community foundations: who else does this work, where the network is thin, how exposed the field is, and how the people it serves are written about.
1. Who else does this work
This field has no single group of people to count other charities by, so this section is not made for it.
2. Where the network is thin
44 of the 152 county and unitary areas of England record no presence of UK Community Foundations’s network: no listed place, and no member charity recording the area. The median share of residents on low incomes in those areas is 26.1%, against 24.6% across England.
| Area | Share of residents on low incomes | Thin in how many of 24 fields on this site |
|---|---|---|
| Middlesbrough | 38.7% | 10 |
| Barking and Dagenham | 38.6% | 16 |
| Enfield | 37.5% | 10 |
| Brent | 36.9% | 11 |
| Hartlepool | 36.3% | 16 |
| Bradford | 36.2% | 7 |
| Haringey | 35.2% | 13 |
| Nottingham | 33.8% | 9 |
| Ealing | 32.1% | 11 |
| Islington | 30.8% | 10 |
| North East Lincolnshire | 30.3% | 10 |
| Redcar and Cleveland | 29.8% | 14 |
| Waltham Forest | 29.4% | 11 |
| Hounslow | 29.2% | 13 |
| Lewisham | 28.6% | 10 |
The 15 with the most residents on low incomes are shown, of 44.
Across every field on this site, the areas thin in most of them: Isles of Scilly (17 of 21), Barking and Dagenham (16 of 24), Portsmouth (16 of 24), Hartlepool (16 of 25), Rutland (16 of 25), Thurrock (16 of 25), City of London (15 of 24), Havering (15 of 24), Hillingdon (15 of 24), Lambeth (14 of 24).
What this can and cannot say. A thin area is one where the body’s own listed places and its charities’ recorded areas of operation are few for the people counted there. It does not mean nobody there gets help: section 1 is the measure of who else is at work.
3. Money and exposure
Fragile means under three months’ reserves on the latest return, or spending above income for three years running. Government-dependent means half or more of income from government grants and contracts.
| Group | Charities | Fragile | Reserves (months, median) | Income change over returns (median) | Donations share (median) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The field | 41 | 85.4% | 1.7 | -10.2% | 78.4% |
| All other charities in England | 68,067 | 20.8% | 4.4 | 39.6% | 28.4% |
| The field, government-dependent | 4 | – | – | – | – |
| The field, not dependent | 37 | 86.5% | 1.7 | -16.6% | 79.5% |
| The field, in the most deprived third of neighbourhoods | 10 | 70.0% | 1.9 | 18.3% | 77.8% |
| The field, in the least deprived third | 7 | 100.0% | 1.4 | -37.5% | 63.0% |
9.8% of the field is government-dependent.
4. How the people are written about
Not made for this field.
5. UK Community Foundations’s members against the rest of the field
41 charities in the field are on UK Community Foundations’s own list or record its membership; 0 are not.
| Measure | Members | Rest of the field |
|---|---|---|
| Fragile (share) | 85.4% | – |
| Government-dependent (share) | 9.8% | – |
| Reserves, months (median) | 1.7 | – |
| Income change over returns, % (median) | -10.2 | – |
| Donations share, % (median) | 78.4 | – |
| Income, £ (median) | 3,994,073 | – |
| No income source over 60% (share) | 14.6% | – |
A figure is shown only for a group of five or more; a median is of the charities with the figure on their return.
What this can and cannot say. These are counts over groups of charities and places in England, from their own returns and reports and from national statistics. They show where a field stands beside the rest of the sector; they do not rank any charity, name any, or say why.
Sources
Built from public information: the Charity Commission for England and Wales register of charities and the annual reports charities file with it (Open Government Licence v3.0); the 2021 Census (Office for National Statistics, OGL v3.0); the English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (MHCLG, OGL v3.0); the Claimant Count (ONS). Figures are for England and are counts of groups of charities and of places; no charity is named.
Built 2026-10-03.