Where the local charities are, and where the community foundations are
The Charity Commission’s register records where every charity works. UK Community Foundations publishes a list of its members — the local foundations that raise money in a place and give it to groups there. This puts the two side by side, council area by council area.
This is a map, not a funder, and nobody here can award a grant or take a gift. The community foundation for your area can — find it under Find a foundation, and its own website says what is open now.
115,032local charities in England and Wales
Registered charities whose every recorded area of operation is a council area: the Charity Commission register’s own record.
109 of 174areas where a community foundation shows
Counties and unitary authorities where a foundation gives an address, or a foundation records working there.
86.4%of local charities name an area where a community foundation shows
Counted by the council areas each charity names on the register.
6 of 43foundations on the register that it places nowhere
Each tells the register it works throughout England, or England and Wales, so the register cannot place it in any one area.
What the register can find, and what it cannot
A group looking for a local grant, or a funder looking for a local partner, can search the register by area. For six of the foundations on UK Community Foundations’ list, that search finds nothing in any one place: the register records each as working throughout England, or throughout England and Wales. They are Community Foundation Wales (all of Wales), Heart of Bucks Community Foundation, Lincolnshire Community Foundation, Point North (formerly County Durham Community Foundation), The London Community Foundation and Wiltshire and Swindon Community Foundation. That is why a community foundation shows in only 1 of Wales’s 22 areas here, while UK Community Foundations lists Community Foundation Wales as covering all of Wales.
Several other areas where no foundation shows are cities with councils of their own inside a county whose foundation records the county. Whether a county’s foundation gives in its cities is for the foundation to say; the register does not.
UK Community Foundations says: “In 2024-25 £183m+ was awarded throughout the UK to support communities”. Where that money went, area by area, is in the foundations’ own grants records, not in the register: this page measures where the foundations are, not where their grants land.
Where the community foundations are
England’s counties and unitary authorities, split into five equal groups by the published measure of deprivation — the share of each area’s neighbourhoods in the most deprived tenth nationally.
| Deprivation | Areas | A community foundation shows |
|---|---|---|
| Least deprived fifth | 30 | 19 of 30 |
| Second | 30 | 17 of 30 |
| Middle | 31 | 27 of 31 |
| Fourth | 30 | 20 of 30 |
| Most deprived fifth | 31 | 25 of 31 |
There is no steady pattern with deprivation. Comparing the two ends: one is present in 25 of the 31 most deprived areas and 19 of the 30 least deprived. That is a finding about where community foundations are, not about how much help anybody gets.
By kind of council
Every county and unitary authority, by the kind of council it is. London boroughs and metropolitan boroughs are the big cities and their conurbations; counties are mostly rural and small-town England; the unitary councils are a mix, many of them cities.
| Kind of council | Areas | A community foundation shows | Share of local charities living where one shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| London boroughs | 33 | 5 of 33 | 24.2% |
| Metropolitan boroughs | 36 | 34 of 36 | 94.1% |
| Unitary councils in England | 59 | 45 of 59 | 89.6% |
| Counties | 24 | 24 of 24 | 100.0% |
| Welsh councils | 22 | 1 of 22 | 10.0% |
See the areas where no community foundation shows, and what that does not mean →
The foundations themselves
UK Community Foundations’ network page lists 48 community foundations, 2 of them covering Scotland and Northern Ireland. 43 charities on the register for England and Wales stand behind the rest. The typical one — the median — reported income of £3,959,000 in its latest accounts, which for a foundation includes money raised to be given away.
What this is for
Two readers, and they want different things.
- Somebody looking for a local grant, or wanting to give locally. The list is searchable here by the question they arrive with — I need a grant, I want to give — rather than by a postcode.
- Somebody arguing about whether local giving reaches everywhere. This counts where the foundations are against where the registered local charities are, council area by council area, rather than asserting either.
This was built without asking you, from information you and others already publish, to show what is possible rather than to speak for you. If you would rather it came down, say so and it comes down, and you do not have to give a reason. If you would rather it were built properly — with your own figures for the local groups each one works with — that is the more interesting conversation.