This chart shows the income distribution of registered charities in Buckinghamshire compared to registered charities in England and Wales. It shows that the size of charities in the county, as measured by their income, roughly reflects the pattern seen in the country as a whole.
The proportion of very small charities, with annual incomes of less than £10,000, is slightly lower in Buckinghamshire (36%) compared to England and Wales (45%), and the proportion of charities with annual incomes of £10,000 to £100,000 is slightly higher (43%) compared to England and Wales (35%).
The vast majority of charities in Buckinghamshire, around 8 out of 10, appear to be relatively small with less than £100,000 income each year. Many in this income range will have few staff, or none at all. Only 2 out of 10 charities in this dataset have incomes of over £100,000 per year.
This data was collected by Community Impact Bucks for their State of the Sector 2019 report. It uses source data from the Charity Commission’s register of charities. Community Impact Bucks published a methodology report explaining how they undertook the analysis and calculated their findings.
There are many types of voluntary organisations and community groups which are not registered as charities and therefore do no submit data to the Charity Commission. It is widely accepted that these organisations outnumber the registered charities in the county, but as no data is held centrally about them, they have not been included in this analysis.
Annual charity income
Percentage of charities in each income band
No Data Found
Total charity income
The CharityBase platform contains up-to-date income data on 2,313 registered charities in Buckinghamshire. The data, analysed in June 2022, indicates that Buckinghamshire charities have a collective annual income of over £1 billion (£1,001,835,361). Individual charities in this dataset have incomes ranging from £0 to £52 million per year.
Community Impact Bucks undertook similar analysis in 2019 where they collected income data from 2,464 registered charities listed on the Charity Commission’s database. They estimated that Buckinghamshire charities had a collective annual income of £1,168,445,523, which is higher than CharityBase platform’s more recent estimate.
The methodology for these two estimates is different, and only takes registered charities into account and not the wider community and voluntary sector, so should be treated as ball park figures only.
There is another dataset on the Bucks Data Exchange which provides more information on the annual income of the 20 largest charities in Buckinghamshire which all have annual incomes of over £10 million. It is important to take their income into account when analysing the income of Buckinghamshire’s charity sector as a whole, because these large charities skew the picture.
According to the latest data from CharityBase, the total annual income of the 20 largest charities in Buckinghamshire is £468,851,734 – nearly half of the total estimated income of all charities in Buckinghamshire. If we disregard these 20 large charities, the estimated total income for Buckinghamshire charities is £532,983,627.
Community Impact Bucks undertook a similar analysis of large charities in 2019. They found there were 17 charities in Buckinghamshire with annual incomes of over £10 million. In comparision, the latest data reveals there are now 20 charities with annual incomes of more than £10 million showing that some of the biggest charities in Buckinghamshire have got even bigger over the past few years.
