Registered charities file accounts with the regulator for their nation — the Charity Commission in England and Wales, OSCR in Scotland, and CCNI in Northern Ireland. As a donor you do not need the full PDF. Four figures, plus the filing date, do most of the work.
Charitable activities (cause spend)
This is money spent on the charity’s purpose: research, beds, food parcels, animal care, grants, and so on. On CharityCompare, cause spend is charitable activities divided by total expenditure. It feeds the Financial Efficiency pillar (20 of 100 Clarity Score points) on a graduated scale — not a separate “cause spend star rating.”
A common band for established UK charities is about 70–90%. Shop-heavy or grant-making models can sit outside that range for honest reasons. Compare peers in the same cause, not a household name in a different one.
Fundraising costs
How much it cost to raise money. Some fundraising is necessary; a very high ratio is a prompt to read the year, not an automatic veto. Payroll giving and regular gifts often cost less per pound than cold appeals.
Reserves in months
Reserves are free funds the charity could spend if income stopped. We show them as months of operating costs where the filings support it. Roughly 3–24 months is a common healthy range; the Clarity Score tapers on both sides rather than using a single cutoff. Very low can mean fragility; very high needs an explanation in the reserves policy. See charity reserves explained.
Filing record
On-time accounts are a basic accountability signal. Repeated late filings, missing returns, or an open statutory inquiry matter more than a single awkward ratio. Inquiry status is a kill switch: the Clarity Score is 0 until it closes.
What the accounts cannot tell you
Filings do not score the worthiness of the cause, celebrity backing, or whether programmes work. Clarity Score is built only from what regulators publish. Use it to rule out weak administration, then read the trustees’ annual report for outcomes.
Next: how to compare charities and the methodology.