Charity Commission for England & Wales (CCEW) Advanced Search Guide
The Charity Commission for England and Wales (CCE&W) is the statutory regulator of registered charities in England and Wales. It has a searchable public register of charities.
When to use this guide
- Find financial data about a charity
- Find charities and foundations working in a particular area
- Find charities and foundations supporting a particular cause
- Identify charitable foundations for further research
This guide shows you how to search for charities registered in England and Wales – but you can do a similar search on the Scottish Charity Regulator, OSCR, for charities registered in Scotland, and on the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland for charities registered in Northern Ireland.
What you’ll get
A list of charities, including charitable trusts and foundations, to explore or download
The Charity Commission for England and Wales (CCEW)’s search page allows you to find information about registered charities in England and Wales, including:
- What the charity does
- Who the charity helps
- How the charity helps
- Where the charity operates
- Whether the main way they carry out the charitable purpose is through grantmaking
- Financial history, like income and expenditure
- Links to their annual accounts
You can export up to 10,000 records from search results.
What you’ll need
- Name of a charity or a charity number
Example: “Funders Together”
- Other search criteria
Examples
Classification: What the Charity Does = “Disability”
Classification: Who the Charity Helps = “Children/Young People”
Classification: How the Charity Helps = “Makes grants to organisations”
Filter: Main way of carrying out purposes is grantmaking = “Yes”
Area of Operation: London Boroughs = “Barnet”
Steps
1. Visit the Charity Commission for England & Wales search page
Select Advanced search under the search bar
You now have several options to search and filter, and you can combine keyword searches at the top with the filters below to narrow your search results.
2. Define your search criteria
Depending on your search criteria, you can use a combination of the keyword search and filters.
Keywords
Use the search bar to find a charity name or number or to search for words in charity objects, activities, or classifications. You can restrict your search to certain fields by ticking/unticking the relevant boxes beneath the search bar.
Searching on keywords or phrases in objects and activities allows you to tailor searches to more specific needs.
Classifications
Use to refine your search by selecting classifications for ‘what the charity does’, ‘who the charity helps’ or ‘how the charity helps’. If you are looking specifically for grantmakers, also tick the ‘Main way of carrying out purposes is grant making’.
Location
Use the location filters to find charities that work nationally, locally, or internationally. Filters will only include charities that have said they work in a specific area. For example, ‘throughout London’ will not show charities that work throughout the whole of England or only in certain London boroughs, and a search for a specific local area in England will not include charities that have said they work throughout all of England.
You can combine the filters to widen the search. Selecting ‘Throughout England and Wales’, ‘Throughout England’ and a ‘Local area in England’ will return charities that cover any of those areas.
3. View your results
Select Search to return a list of charities matching your criteria. Explore each charity by clicking on the charity name.
4. Download the results
Download the results of your search by selecting the ‘Export results’ button at the bottom.
Tip: You can only download a maximum of 10,000 results at a time. You will need to apply filters to reduce your results into smaller batches if you want to download a high volume of results. Alternatively, you can also download all publicly available data on the Register of Charities and then filter the list in a spreadsheet.
