More organisations are applying to become charities because of the appeal of the charitable incorporated organisation structure, the chief executive of the Charity Commission has said.
Paula Sussex said last week at the Commission's public meeting in Birmingham that registrations had seen steady increase of around 20 per cent year-on-year, and this was “driven by organisations’ desire to become a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO)”.
In the year to March 2015, the regulator registered 4,648 organisations, of which 2,248 were CIOs, almost twice as many as the previous year. There were 7,192 applications to register in total.
There are now 4,576 CIOs registered, according to the Commission register.
Figures in the register are slightly different from those in the Commission report, because the register includes re-registrations of dormant charities, while the annual report does not.
Sussex told charities at the meeting that the Commission would need to provide “more creative support” to the sector.
She said that her organisation’s change programme would take around two years.
“The journey that we are on does not happen overnight,” she said. “But the Charity Commission has been around for 150 years so it has proven its sustainability.”
Both Shawcross and Sussex reiterated at the meeting that the Commission was looking at whether to charge charities for the Commission so it is not reliant on HMRC for all its funding.
Additional reporting by David Ainsworth
