Charity due diligence: checking a UK charity

Charities attract trust — which is precisely why they can attract abuse. Diverted funds, fraudulent "charities", conflicts of interest, and the use of charitable structures to move money are all real risks. If you are donating at scale, awarding a grant, partnering, or banking a charity, due diligence is as necessary here as for any company. The good news: in England and Wales, much of it can be done from the public Charity Commission register.

1The regulator and the register

The Charity Commission for England and Wales registers and regulates charities so the public can give with confidence. (Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own regulators — OSCR and CCNI — so check the right register for the charity's jurisdiction.)

The public register shows, for each registered charity, its name and address, its trustees, its work and aims, and its finances. That is the spine of charity due diligence.

2What to check

aIs it actually registered?

Confirm the charity exists on the register under the number it claims. A genuine registered charity above the income threshold will have a charity number you can verify. Beware names designed to resemble well-known charities — a classic fraud is impersonation of a trusted brand.

bWho are the trustees?

Trustees are the people ultimately responsible for the charity. The register lists them. For due diligence:

• Are the trustees real, identifiable people?
• Do any of them appear across a cluster of related entities in a way that concentrates control?
• Do any trustees raise flags when screened against sanctions, PEP and adverse-media data?
• Is there an obvious lack of independent trustees, or a board dominated by one family or interest?

cDo the finances make sense?

The register shows income and spending. Look for:

• Income and expenditure that fit the stated aims — a charity whose money flows look unrelated to its purpose warrants questions.
• A plausible ratio of charitable spending to fundraising and administration.
• Year-on-year stability or explained change — sudden, unexplained swings are worth probing.

dIs it filing on time?

Charities must submit their annual return and accounts to the Commission. On the register, an up-to-date charity is marked accordingly, while overdue filings are flagged. Persistent late or missing filings are a red flag — at best disorganisation, at worst something to hide. Timeliness is one of the easiest signals to read and one of the most telling.

3Red flags specific to charities

Beyond the register basics, watch for:

• Impersonation of established charities (lookalike names, copied branding).
• Opaque links to other entities — trading subsidiaries, connected companies, or overseas partners that move money out of view.
• High-risk geography — operations or fund flows to conflict zones or sanctioned jurisdictions, which raise terrorist-financing as well as diversion risk.
• Conflicts of interest — trustees transacting with the charity, or related-party payments.
• Pressure and urgency — fraudulent appeals often manufacture time pressure to bypass checks.

The Charity Commission's own compliance toolkit on protecting charities from harm is a useful reference for the risk areas regulators themselves prioritise.

4Where Probitas fits

Probitas reads the Charity Commission record the same way it reads a company: it pulls the charity's registration, trustees and filed finances, screens the people behind it, scans for adverse media, and flags the patterns above — late filings, concentrated control, high-risk links — with every finding anchored to its source. It gives a grant-maker, funder or partner a documented basis for the decision; the decision, and any judgement about a charity's suitability, remains yours.