The British Museum Friends

The British Museum Friends scores 78 out of 100 (4 stars — Good) on CharityCompare's Clarity Score, our independent read of its UK regulator filings. Around 100% of its spending goes to charitable activities (3-yr avg) and its accounts are late. That reflects how transparent and financially healthy it looks on paper — it does not measure the real-world impact of its work, so treat it as one factor alongside the cause you care about. CharityCompare never tells you where to donate.

The register data used for this profile lists The British Museum Friends as a registered charity (charity number 1086080). Verify it on the official register: https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-details/?regId=1086080&subId=0. Check the current entry and the identity of anyone requesting money. Registration does not verify a particular appeal; Clarity Score summarises filing transparency, not programme impact.

The British Museum Friends's charity number is 1086080. Check that number on the official register (Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI) or this CharityCompare profile before you donate — scammers sometimes reuse real numbers on fake appeals.

The British Museum Friends scores 78 out of 100 on CharityCompare (4 stars — Good). The Clarity Score (method v1.1) sums four pillars from UK regulator filings: Accountability & Transparency (40 pts), Financial Health (30), Financial Efficiency (20), and Community Support (10). Stars use the same bands as those labels — 90+ is 5★ Exceptional. It is not an impact ranking.

CharityCompare does not host public user reviews for The British Museum Friends. Instead you get a filing-based Clarity Score, cause spend, reserves and red flags such as late accounts (one red flag on this profile: late accounts filing). For formal complaints about a charity, contact the Charity Commission, OSCR, CCNI or the Fundraising Regulator as appropriate.

Across the recent disclosed accounts used for this score, 100% of The British Museum Friends's total spending went to charitable activities (3-yr avg across disclosed years). That is the closest official figure to "how much of your donation reaches the cause" — it is an average across all spending in the filing, not a pound-by-pound breakdown of an individual gift.

Across the recent disclosed accounts used for this score, fundraising costs were about 0% of total expenditure and fundraising plus separately reported governance figures amount to about 0% of expenditure (2023–2025, disclosed years); these categories can overlap, so this is not a distinct total of all administration costs at The British Museum Friends. The register does not show individual salaries; senior pay is disclosed in the trustees' annual report and accounts.

The British Museum Friends reported £6.9m total income in its 2025 accounts, based on UK regulator filings. Five-year trend: growing.

Filing status: late (last filing 2026-02-06). CharityCompare flags late or missing accounts separately from the financial score.

The British Museum Friends's registered contact address is in London (WC1B 3DG). It tells the regulator it operates in Camden, with a focus on heritage.

The British Museum Friends reported £6.9m total income for the year ending 31 March 2025. The largest sources were charitable activities £6.5m (94%), donations and legacies £262k (4%), investments £122k (2%). Legacies (gifts in wills) contributed £221k.

The register records The British Museum Friends as registered with HMRC for Gift Aid, so a UK taxpayer can usually add 25p to every £1 they give by making a Gift Aid declaration.

The British Museum Friends's annual return for the year ending 31 March 2025 reports that no trustee received remuneration or other benefits from the charity.

The British Museum Friends was entered on the register on 9 April 2001. It is also a company registered at Companies House (company number 04133346).

We calculate a Clarity Score of 0–100 from four pillars in The British Museum Friends's regulator filings: Accountability & Transparency (40 points — filing history, trustees, policies), Financial Health (30 — reserves, income trend, debt), Financial Efficiency (20 — cause spend and fundraising cost, on a graduated scale) and Community Support (10 — volunteer-to-staff ratio). An open statutory inquiry scores 0. The score measures reporting on paper, not programme impact. CharityCompare is free for donors, takes no commission on donations, and scores cannot be bought.

This profile was last updated on 6 September 2026 from the latest UK regulator data available to CharityCompare, and The British Museum Friends's most recent accounts cover 2025. Scores and figures refresh whenever we re-ingest the register, so the page reflects our latest data pull rather than a one-off review.