Research · Publishing 3 November 2026
The State of Charity Website Governance 2026.
On 3 November I publish the first benchmark of what UK charity websites actually disclose. I am scanning every registered charity between £500,000 and £10 million in annual income that has a website, and measuring what a funder, a journalist or a trustee can find when they look: whether the accounts are reachable, whether the trustees are named, whether the accessibility statement is real, and whether the privacy policy carries a date from this decade.
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One email when the report publishes, and nothing else unless you ask.
What the benchmark measures
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Can a funder find your accounts?
Whether registered financials and the latest annual report are reachable from the site in a click or two, not buried or absent.
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Are your trustees named?
Whether governance and leadership are disclosed where a donor, journalist or regulator would look for them.
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Is the accessibility statement real?
Whether the site meets WCAG 2.2 AA in practice, or carries a boilerplate statement the pages themselves do not honour.
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A privacy policy from this decade?
Whether core governance documents are present, current and dated, rather than last touched several years ago.
Why publish this at all?
Because most website conversations start with how a site looks, and that is the wrong test. The 2026 Give.org Donor Trust Report found donors who research a charity before giving are influenced more by the charity's own website than by third-party watchdog sites. The site is not supporting the credibility case. It is the credibility case. This benchmark measures how well the sector's sites are actually holding it up.
