One out of every 10 Scottish charities is currently defaulting on its accounts, according to new data from the OSCR.
In its latest sector overview report, the regulator says there were 25,427 charities on the Scottish register on 31 March 2023 – with a combined income of £14.8bn.
The number of organisations is slightly up from 25,400 at the end of 2021 and continues a trend of gradual growth since 2012, when there were 23,612.
The overall figure includes more than 2,500 defaulting charities, OSCR says, which means they “have not submitted their annual returns and we do not know if they are active or not”.
The report says: “We currently have a dedicated project team working with these charities to encourage and support them to take action appropriate to their situation which will help bring them into compliance with Scottish charity law.”
The data contained in this report was taken from a snapshot of the register on 31 March 2023.
The introduction says: “This report details the scale and scope of the charity sector, what it looks like and what issues are influencing and challenging charities in Scotland.”
It adds that “the events of recent times” led to increased demand for “good up-to-date information about the charity sector”.
While the number of charities rose, the number that were newly registered in 2022, 723, was the lowest since at least 2015. In 2021 it was 821, with a high of 963 new charities in 2017.
The number of voluntary organisations removed from the register in 2022 was 677 – significantly up from 582 in 2021 and 454 in 2020.
The report includes information about charity boards, revealing that there are 166,936 trustees on the register. There is an average of seven trustees per charity.
At the same time, Scottish charities employ 209,634 paid staff – an average of nine per charity, although 70 per cent have no paid staff at all.
Maureen Mallon, OSCR’s chief executive, said: “The report is a great resource for anyone seeking general information about the Scottish charity sector. In time, the data will also help us understand the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost crisis on charities and how charities adapt.”