Help for Heroes vs Royal British Legion — veterans’ charity comparison
In short: Help for Heroes: Support for wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans. The Royal British Legion: Armed Forces welfare and remembrance. Match the work to your purpose, then compare dated accounts and evidence.
Data from Charity Commission register, last updated .
This comparison brings together registered purposes, source-checked interpretation and the accounts held by CharityCompare. The organisations may use different reporting periods and definitions. Read the source notes before comparing totals or treating a financial score as an assessment of programme results.
Key differences
| What to compare | HELP FOR HEROES | THE ROYAL BRITISH LEGION |
|---|---|---|
| Registered work and operating model | Support for wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans. | Armed Forces welfare and remembrance. |
| What to consider | The registered model includes direct help and grants. When assessing results, distinguish support to individuals from grants to other organisations, and look for recovery and participation outcomes beyond funding totals. | Its remit includes welfare, membership and remembrance. Compare the relevant activity against your purpose for giving, and read programme allocations before treating total charitable expenditure as direct individual assistance. |
| Access and practical checks | Check current eligibility and application routes directly. The register’s activity description may describe arrangements that have changed since it was written. | Use the official welfare-support route to check eligibility, including family circumstances. Remembrance participation and welfare applications are different services. |
| Sourced result or evidence gap | No programme outcome has been source-checked for this profile. This is a gap in our coverage, not evidence of no impact. | No programme outcome has been source-checked for this profile. This is a gap in our coverage, not evidence of no impact. |
What the latest filings show
Figures from the accounts held in our dated dataset; the live register may contain newer filings. Ratios can span multiple years, as labelled. Clarity scores use our methodology.
| Metric | HELP FOR HEROES | THE ROYAL BRITISH LEGION |
|---|---|---|
| Latest accounts year in our snapshot | 2025 | 2025 |
| Financial snapshot refreshed | 2026-09-06 | 2026-09-06 |
| Ratio reporting window | 3-yr avg | 3-yr avg |
| Overall score | 67/100 (3★) | 87/100 (4★) |
| Accountability & Finance | 100/100 | 100/100 |
| Spend on charitable activities | 57% of expenditure | 73% of expenditure |
| Fundraising efficiency | £2.3 total income per £1 fundraising (2023–2025, disclosed years) | £3.3 total income per £1 fundraising (2023–2025, disclosed years) |
| Latest income | £23m | £168m |
| Fundraising spend | 43% of expenditure | 27% of expenditure |
| Reserves | 30 months | 7 months |
| Accounts filing | On time | On time |
| Data confidence | high | high |
| Charity number | 1120920 | 219279 |
HELP FOR HEROES on the register · THE ROYAL BRITISH LEGION on the register
Considering Help for Heroes
- Support for wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans.
- Check current eligibility and application routes directly. The register’s activity description may describe arrangements that have changed since it was written.
Considering The Royal British Legion
- Armed Forces welfare and remembrance.
- Use the official welfare-support route to check eligibility, including family circumstances. Remembrance participation and welfare applications are different services.
Common questions
Help for Heroes or The Royal British Legion: which should I support?
There is no universal winner. Support for wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans. Armed Forces welfare and remembrance. Check the programme that interests you, the accounts period and the evidence behind any result. A financial rating is not an impact assessment.
Can I compare the headline results directly?
Only if the definitions, population, geography and reporting periods match. Research expenditure, service contacts and lasting outcomes measure different things. The source notes explain any figures included here.
How we score charities +
The Clarity Score is a 100-point rating from UK regulator filings (Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR and CCNI). Four pillars — Accountability & Transparency (40), Financial Health (30), Financial Efficiency (20), and Community Support (10) — each scored on a continuous scale, not pass/fail cutoffs. A statutory inquiry sets the score to 0 automatically.
Accountability & Transparency
Scored from filings
40 points — filing history (15), trustee oversight (15, scaling up to a board of three or more), declared policies (10).
Financial Health
Scored from filings
30 points — reserves (15, full marks 3–24 months, tapering on both sides), income stability (10), liabilities to assets (5, scaling down as debt rises).
Financial Efficiency
Scored from filings
20 points — program expense ratio and fundraising cost, each on a graduated scale (not a single cutoff). Kept at 20% of the total: financial-ratio scoring alone is not a reliable effectiveness signal (see "why not just an overhead ratio?" below).
Community Support
Scored from filings
10 points — volunteer-to-staff ratio from Charity Commission workforce data, scaling continuously up to a 2:1 ratio.
Overall score
Sum of all pillar points. Display stars use the same bands as the labels: 90–100 → 5★ Exceptional; 75–89 → 4★ Good; 60–74 → 3★ Needs improvement; 1–59 → 2★ Poor; 0 → not rated.