← Charity in a Box  ·  Local giving

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.

AreaShare of residents on low incomesThin in how many of 24 fields on this site
Middlesbrough38.7%10
Barking and Dagenham38.6%16
Enfield37.5%10
Brent36.9%11
Hartlepool36.3%16
Bradford36.2%7
Haringey35.2%13
Nottingham33.8%9
Ealing32.1%11
Islington30.8%10
North East Lincolnshire30.3%10
Redcar and Cleveland29.8%14
Waltham Forest29.4%11
Hounslow29.2%13
Lewisham28.6%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.

GroupCharitiesFragileReserves (months, median)Income change over returns (median)Donations share (median)
The field4185.4%1.7-10.2%78.4%
All other charities in England68,06720.8%4.439.6%28.4%
The field, government-dependent4––––
The field, not dependent3786.5%1.7-16.6%79.5%
The field, in the most deprived third of neighbourhoods1070.0%1.918.3%77.8%
The field, in the least deprived third7100.0%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.

MeasureMembersRest 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.


Questions or corrections
adrian@charityinabox.uk — Adrian Taylor. This page is a sample on a demonstration site. Nothing on it has been sent to any organisation named, and no organisation named here has agreed to appear.