Disclosure: I'm the founder of GiveRadar, a free charity lookup built on official government charity registers. This analysis uses the register filings GiveRadar holds. Nothing here is for sale; the aggregate data is CC-BY-4.0, and no individual charity is named or ranked.
TL;DR
I followed the same 396,252 charities through 4 years of official filings (FY2021 to FY2024) in 6 official registers: the United States, England and Wales, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.
The share of charities spending more than their income rose in all six. In England and Wales, it went from 31.1% to 43.9% of the same 75,225 charities. Among 183,681 US public charities filing the full Form 990, it went from 25.9% to 41.4%.
FY2021 looks like an unusually low, not a normal baseline. In the two registers where I have 10 years of filings (New Zealand and Ireland), FY2021 was the decade's lowest-deficit year.
Charity income is extremely concentrated. In FY2024, the largest 1% of filers report 57% to 75% of all reported income, and the smaller half report 0.28% to 1.21%.
A deficit year is not wrongdoing. Charities spend down reserves on purpose, receive multi-year grants in one year, book depreciation, and absorb inflation.
Epistemic status: descriptive counts from official register data, not a causal analysis. The numbers are as solid as the filings that back them up. The explanation for why FY2021 was low is my interpretation, not something the filings show. FY2024 is still incomplete (late filers), so treat FY2024 as "filings published so far".
Why I looked at this
I'll start by telling you why I looked at this. A one-year snapshot of charity finances can't tell you whether things got worse for charities because the set of filing charities changes every year.
GiveRadar holds several years of filed accounts per charity for a handful of registers. That made it possible to build a fixed panel: only charities that filed income and expenditure above zero in every year from FY2021 to FY2024. Every year in the table below describes exactly the same organizations. So the change can't come from different charities filing in different years.
I also think this matters for this community specifically. "Did they run a deficit?" is one of the easiest financial signals to check in a charity's accounts, so I wanted to know how common it actually is.
Finding 1: how many charities spend more than their income?
About 4 in 10 charities in these registers spent more than their income in FY2024, up from about three in ten in FY2021. In most registers, the share peaked in FY2023 and eased slightly in FY2024.
Register (panel size)
FY2021
FY2022
FY2023
FY2024
Change (pts)
England and Wales (75,225)
31.1%
40.7%
45.7%
43.9%
+12.8
Scotland (16,006)
38.4%
44.7%
47.9%
47.5%
+9.1
US, Form 990 (183,681 public charities)
25.9%
37.0%
42.1%
41.4%
+15.5
US, Form 990-EZ (65,523 smaller public charities)
35.2%
41.5%
44.6%
44.5%
+9.3
Australia (31,131)
29.7%
37.1%
36.9%
36.6%
+6.9
New Zealand (19,399)
31.4%
37.6%
38.8%
37.8%
+6.4
Ireland (5,287)
30.5%
38.5%
39.9%
38.0%
+7.5
US private foundations, Form 990-PF (64,042), not in headline
38.0%
58.6%
61.7%
51.0%
+12.9
Share of each panel whose total expenditure was higher than total income in that fiscal year. I show private foundations only for completeness: their income moves with investment results (FY2022 was a market-loss year), so they tell a different story from operating charities.
Two more things from the same panels:
Deeper deficits rose too. The share spending more than 110% of income went from 20.2% to 27.0% in England and Wales, and from 15.0% to 23.0% among US Form 990 filers.
Two deficit years in a row are common. Between 19.1% (Australia, New Zealand) and 25.8% (Scotland) of panel charities spent more than their income in both FY2023 and FY2024. In England and Wales, it's 24.3%; among US Form 990 filers, 23.7%.
10-year context: FY2021 was the low point
For New Zealand and Ireland, I have 10 consecutive years of filings, so I built a separate panel of charities that filed income and spending above zero every year from FY2015 to FY2024 (14,507 charities in New Zealand, 3,956 in Ireland).
Fiscal year
New Zealand
Ireland
FY2015
35.4%
41.4%
FY2016
34.6%
42.2%
FY2017
35.9%
37.2%
FY2018
36.3%
37.7%
FY2019
35.3%
37.3%
FY2020
35.9%
34.7%
FY2021
32.5%
29.8%
FY2022
38.8%
39.6%
FY2023
39.0%
41.0%
FY2024
37.5%
38.3%
This changes how I read Finding 1. Part of the "rise since 2021" is a return from an unusual low, not a new record. Ireland was actually higher in FY2015 and FY2016 than today. New Zealand is above its pre-2021 range (34.6% to 36.3%), but not by a lot.
Why was FY2021 low? My best guess is pandemic emergency support counted as income (for example, forgiven US Paycheck Protection Program loans) combined with reduced activity. The filings don't prove that, though.
Finding 2: how concentrated is charity income?
In each of the 6 registers, the largest 1% of filing charities report more than half of all reported income for FY2024, and the smaller half together report about 1% or less.
Register (FY2024 filers)
Top 1%
Top 10%
Bottom 50%
Median income
United States (357,928 public charities)
75.1%
94.1%
0.54%
USD 222,645
Ireland (5,848)
70.5%
91.9%
0.68%
EUR 180,254
Scotland (19,652)
69.8%
95.9%
0.28%
GBP 34,641
England and Wales (103,014)
59.8%
89.6%
1.21%
GBP 59,934
New Zealand (23,380)
57.7%
87.9%
0.97%
NZD 65,588
Australia (41,352)
56.9%
90.7%
0.51%
AUD 158,536
All charities in each register that filed FY2024 income above zero, ranked by income. United States = Form 990 and 990-EZ filers combined (501(c)(3) public charities), excluding private foundations. Compare shares, not amounts: currencies differ.
To make that concrete: the largest 1% of US public charities (3,580 organizations) report 75.1% of USD 2.89 trillion in revenue. In England and Wales, the largest 1,031 of 103,014 filers report 59.8% of GBP 101.6 billion. Most charities are small: 60.4% of England and Wales filers and 57.7% of New Zealand filers reported income under 100,000 in local currency.
One important caveat. "Reported income" is not the same as donations. It includes government contracts, fees for services, trading and investment income. That's why hospitals, universities, housing and care organizations dominate the top of each register, especially in the US. So please don't read these as shares of giving.
Method, briefly
Sources: IRS Form 990, 990-EZ and 990-PF e-file data (total revenue, total expenses); Charity Commission for England and Wales annual returns; OSCR (Scotland); ACNC Annual Information Statements (Australia); Charities Services annual returns (New Zealand); Charities Regulator annual reports (Ireland). Snapshot of the GiveRadar database on 15 October 2026. Organizations GiveRadar has excluded as not being charities are left out.
Fiscal year: labeled by the calendar year in which it ends. Year ends differ (many Australian charities close on 30 June, many New Zealand charities on 31 March), so FY2024 covers financial years ending at any point in 2024.
Deficit: total expenditure in the filed accounts higher than total income. "Deeper deficit" means expenditure above 110% of income.
Panels: a charity enters a register's panel only if it filed income and expenditure both above zero for every year FY2021 to FY2024. If a charity has more than one filing for the same year, I use the highest figure. US filers are split by return type, and a charity enters the panel of the form it filed in all four years.
Concentration: all charities with FY2024 income above zero, ranked within their register. The top 1% is the first 1% of that ranking (rounded up). Each group's share is its total income divided by the register's total.
Limitations
I do not want to hide the known limitations of my research:
A deficit year is not wrongdoing. Charities spend more than they take in for ordinary, planned reasons: drawing on reserves built up for that purpose, receiving a multi-year grant in one year and spending it over several, depreciation, higher costs from inflation, or higher demand after the pandemic. These figures describe pressure on the sector, not any organization's conduct.
FY2024 is still arriving. US Form 990 can be filed up to 10.5 months after year-end, and IRS e-file releases lag further, so the US panels lean towards earlier filers. Late filers in other registers will also add to FY2024.
The smallest organizations are under-represented. US organizations filing the Form 990-N e-Postcard report no figures, and charities with income of GBP 10,000 or less are under-represented in the England and Wales data. Including them would most likely make concentration higher, not lower.
Amounts are nominal. No inflation adjustment. The deficit share doesn't depend on it; income growth would.
Scotland overlaps with England and Wales. Charities registered with both regulators appear in both registers, and cross-border charities based in England report UK-wide income to OSCR, which raises Scotland's total and its top 1% share.
Income is not donations (see Finding 2).
What I think this means for donors and grantmakers
My own view, for what it's worth (would love to hear your thoughts):
A single deficit year is a weak screen. If roughly 4 in 10 charities in these registers spent more than their income in FY2024, and between 1 in 5 and 1 in 4 did so two years running, then "they ran a deficit" flags a huge part of the sector. It tells you something only together with what the charity holds in reserves, whether the deficit was planned, and what happened in the years around it. Note that this note does not measure reserves, so I can't tell you how many of these deficits were funded from them.
Pick your baseline carefully. If you compare a charity's FY2024 accounts with FY2021, you're comparing with what looks like the decade's lowest-deficit year, at least in New Zealand and Ireland. A charity that "went from surplus to deficit" since 2021 may simply be back to its normal pattern.
"Charity income" statistics are mostly about very large service providers. In every register, the bottom half of charities together report about 1% or less of income. If you're thinking about the typical registered charity, the median (GBP 59,934 in England and Wales, USD 222,645 for US public charities) is a much better picture than any total or average.
Don't read the FY2023 to FY2024 easing as a turning point yet. It's small, and FY2024 still has the most filings missing.
What I'd love feedback on
I'd love to hear your feedback on:
The panels include only charities that filed in all 4 years, so charities that closed or stopped filing during that period aren't included. How would you expect that to affect the deficit shares, and is there a better design than a balanced panel for this question?
Is "emergency funding counted as income plus reduced activity" the right reading? If you know of register-level data on pandemic grants or PPP forgiveness by charity, I'd like to test it.
This note doesn't look at reserves at all. Would a "deficit share among charities with less than X months of reserves" cut be useful to you as a donor or evaluator?
Do you know of official registers with 4 or more years of machine-readable income and expenditure that I should add? (I wrote about which registers publish what in an earlier post on register transparency.)
If a number doesn't match what you know of a register, please tell me. I'd rather correct the note than defend it.
Data
The aggregate tables are free to reuse under CC-BY-4.0. They contain counts and shares per register and year only, no per-charity rows.
Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
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