Two-thirds of charities registered in Scotland are run entirely by volunteers, figures from the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator show.
The OSCR’s sector overview report, which provides a snapshot of the charity sector in Scotland over the past three months, is based on the information provided by all charities on the Scottish charities register.
The snapshot includes data from 23,945 Scottish charities, as well as from 1,272 cross-border charities that are also registered in England or Wales.
It showed that while Scottish charities employ nearly 213,000 people as paid staff – equivalent to 9 per cent of the devolved nation’s workforce – 69 per cent of them ran solely on the efforts of volunteers, including the charity trustees.
The average number of staff for Scottish charities was 10. Only 5 per cent had between 11 and 50 paid employees and just 2 per cent had more than 50.
Numbers of paid staff employed by cross-border charities was higher in comparison. Only 20 per cent ran solely on the work of volunteers, with the majority of these organisations (27 per cent) employing 11-50 staff.
The report shows that the most common charitable purpose in Scotland was the advancement of education, with 51 per cent of charities on the Scottish register listing this as an object.
Community development was listed by 37 per cent of charities and 24 per cent cited the advancement of arts, culture or science.
The research also found that the gross annual income for Scottish charities was £15.1bn, with gross annual expenditure remaining steady at £15.12bn.
Cross-border charities had a total gross annual income of £17bn, with an expenditure of £16.8bn.
The majority of Scottish charities on the register reported annual incomes of up to £25,000 and only 4 per cent had an annual income of more than £1m, which the regulator says shows that the Scottish voluntary sector is dominated by small and micro charities.
More than 2,500 of the organisations included in the findings were defaulting charities, meaning they had not submitted their annual returns and the regulator did not know whether they were still active.
The regulator said it had a dedicated team working on resolving these charities’ situations to ensure they complied with Scottish charity law.
Last week, the OSCR removed 31 charities from the register for non-compliance.