What the data actually shows

We’ve been digging into charity closure data recently.

Headline: roughly 300 charities are removed from the register each month.

That’s just over 3,600 in 2025.

The graph reflects closures. That might be due to financial difficulty (failure?), or an organisation reaching a natural end (success?).

It sounds high. But on its own, it doesn’t tell us very much.

What’s interesting is that this is happening alongside a higher number of new registrations. In 2025, 400 new charities were registered every month on average.

So this is less a story of growth or decline, and more a steady level of churn. Organisations are continuously starting, evolving, and closing and being replaced.

Which raises a challenging question: Are we trying to preserve individual charities, or support a system that is constantly renewing itself?

A few caveats on the data:

• Charity Commission data records removals from the register, which can include closures as well as mergers and re-registrations.
• We’ve tried to exclude cases where charities have re-registered or merged, but these aren’t always clearly recorded, so some will still be included. According to our records, 16% of removals relate to re-registration.
• The removal date reflects when the Charity Commission updates the register, not necessarily when the charity actually stopped operating.

What do charity closures actually look like?

Looking a bit deeper, 2 things stand out from the data.

1. Most closures are among smaller charities.

Only around 10% had income above £100k in the years before they closed.

So while closures happen across the sector, they are concentrated among smaller charities.

At the very smallest end, some may reflect local or personally-led organisations, where closure may mean something different.

2. Most charities don’t close early

Over 70% have been operating for at least 10 years before they close.

So this isn’t mainly about early-stage failure. Many charities run for years before reaching a point where they stop.

Together, this suggests that closures are often smaller, established organisations reaching a limit over time.

How should we think about charity closures?

If closures are mostly smaller charities, and often after 10+ years, this doesn’t look like early failure.

It looks more like charities reaching a limit over time.

Taken together, this suggests the pattern may not be random, and could reflect underlying factors shaping how charities sustain themselves over time.

Not just individual circumstances, but how charities operate, how they are funded, and how activity shifts across the sector.

What does this mean in practice?

If that’s the case, it raises some practical questions.

For charities

• Some smaller charities appear able to operate for many years without becoming truly sustainable
• Models that work at a small scale may become harder to sustain as costs rise or demands change
• At what point does continuing become harder than adapting, collaborating, or changing form?

For funders

• Funding can keep charities going year to year, without always helping them become more sustainable
• Is funding paired with support that helps charities develop and adapt, not just deliver services?
• Do funding decisions look beyond individual charities, to how activity is spread across the sector?

For the sector

• How easy is it in practice for charities to collaborate, merge, or transition activity when needed?
• Do some closures reflect activity continuing elsewhere, rather than being lost?
• How much visibility is there of where capacity sits across the sector, and where it may be building up or dropping away over time?

A final thought

Closure can be positive or negative.

The more important question is whether, when it happens, it is managed well — and whether value and learning are retained.