To vet a charity, confirm it is on the right official register, then check its governing document, accounts, trustees and bank details, and screen it against the UK Sanctions List. Scale the depth of those checks to the size and risk of the gift, and keep monitoring after you pay.
The regulator has made this more pressing. On 3 June 2026 the Charity Commission published Making grants to charities and other organisations, which states that a charity "must carry out appropriate checks before making a grant". It is written for charity trustees, but it is now the clearest public benchmark any corporate giving programme will be measured against.
The risks behind it are growing. The Commission's Charity Sector Risk Assessment 2026, published on 18 August, recorded 211 private benefit cases in 2023-24, 291 in 2024-25 and 374 in 2025-26.
This guide sets out nine checks, a risk-tiered table showing how deep to go for each type of gift, and the official registers to use in the UK and abroad. The last section explains how GivingForce handles these checks on its own platform.
For a company, it means being able to prove you knew who you were paying and what the money was for, before and after the gift.
Charity due diligence: the practical steps you take to know who you are dealing with before money leaves your business, and to confirm it arrived and was used for the agreed purpose.
The Charity Commission's compliance toolkit frames the duty in three parts: know your donor, know your beneficiaries and know your partner. For a company funding charities, "know your partner" is the part that applies. Its first instruction is to "know who you are dealing with".
Two principles run through the UK guidance:
If your company gives through its own corporate foundation, these duties sit with the foundation's trustees. If it gives directly, they are the standard your board and auditors are likely to apply. This guide is general information, not legal advice.
New grant guidance, rising misuse concerns and a new UK sanctions list all landed this year, and your brand sits behind every charity you fund.
Three developments matter most:
The sums involved are large. Civil Society reports that grantmaking charities awarded £17.8bn in grants in 2024, up from £17bn in 2023. Mazeda Alam, head of trustee guidance at the Charity Commission, said the guidance is designed to let trustees "use their best judgement when awarding funds and encourage them to do so confidently".
Nine checks cover most corporate gifts: registration, purposes, accounts, trustees, sanctions, bank details, safeguarding, written terms and monitoring after payment.
Search the official register using the charity's registered number, not its trading name. Names can be close; numbers are unique. In England and Wales the register shows the charity's name and address, trustees, work and aims, and finances.
Scotland and Northern Ireland keep separate registers, so a charity missing from one may appear on another. An organisation on no register at all may still be legitimate, but treat it as higher risk and find out why.
This is where the charity's purposes are set out. Confirm they cover the work you are paying for. If they do not, the charity may be unable to use your money lawfully for that project.
Look at two or three years of accounts. Late or missing filings are a governance warning. Check income trends, reserves and whether the charity depends on a single funder.
Note the trustees listed on the register and screen them. Ask whether anyone who nominated the charity, inside your company or in your supply chain, has a connection to it. Employee nominations are a common source of undeclared conflicts.
Start with the UK Sanctions List, and screen the trustees as well as the charity. For global programmes, add the sanctions lists that apply in each country where you give. Then run an adverse media search on the charity and its senior people.
The account name should match the charity's legal name. Ask for bank evidence before the first payment. Confirm any request to change bank details by phone, using a number you already hold, never one supplied in the request.
If the charity works with children or adults at risk, or your employees will volunteer on site, ask for its safeguarding policy and the name of its safeguarding lead.
The June guidance expects the recipient to agree "in writing, what the grant can and cannot be used for". For small matched gifts your programme terms may be enough. Larger grants need their own agreement with reporting dates.
The guidance says trustees "must be able to show that the grant has been used to help you to carry out your charity's purposes". Ask for evidence of spend on larger grants. Keep screening: a clean result at onboarding says nothing about next year.
Match effort to risk. Low-risk gifts need identity, sanctions and bank checks; high-risk grants need full governance, financial and end-use evidence.
Use this tiering model as a starting point. It is a working framework, not a regulatory threshold, so set the money limits for each tier in your own giving policy.
| Check | Low risk | Medium risk | High risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Register check (name, number, status) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Governing document and purposes | Purposes confirmed on the register | Document read | Document read and project fit confirmed |
| Accounts and filing history | Filings up to date | Latest two years reviewed | Three years, reserves and funding sources reviewed |
| Trustees and conflicts | Names checked | Trustees screened, conflicts declared | Trustees screened, conflicts and related parties reviewed |
| Sanctions and AML screening | Charity screened | Charity and trustees screened | Charity, trustees and delivery partners screened, plus adverse media |
| Bank account verification | Account name matches | Bank evidence obtained | Bank evidence obtained, changes confirmed by call-back |
| Safeguarding | Not usually needed | Needed if working with children or adults at risk | Policy and named lead reviewed |
| Written terms | Programme terms | Short written agreement | Full agreement with reporting milestones |
| End-use monitoring | Not usually needed | Report after the gift | Staged payments against evidence of spend |
| Re-screening | Ongoing sanctions screening | Annual review | Before every payment |
Start with the national regulator's register. Each UK nation keeps its own, and most countries where companies give have a public equivalent.
| Country | Official register | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | Charity Commission register of charities | Name and address, trustees, work and aims, finances |
| Scotland | OSCR (Scottish Charity Regulator) | Registration of charities in Scotland |
| Northern Ireland | Charity Commission for Northern Ireland | Registration of charities in Northern Ireland |
| Republic of Ireland | Charities Regulator | Purposes, trustees, employees, annual report filing status, Charities Governance Code compliance |
| United States | IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search | Eligibility for tax-deductible gifts, automatic revocation after three years of unfiled Form 990 returns |
| Canada | Canada Revenue Agency charities listings | Registered charity status |
| Australia | ACNC Charity Register | Purposes, the people running the charity, financial information and annual reporting |
| New Zealand | Charities Services register | Registration of New Zealand charities |
Where a country has no reliable public register, rely on documents from the charity itself and specialist in-country checks, and treat the gift as high risk.
Pause a gift when the charity's details do not line up: mismatched records, overdue accounts, unexplained bank changes or missing documents.
In-house checks work for a handful of strategic partners. Programmes where employees choose from thousands of charities need a pre-vetted database.
A company funding five strategic partners can keep a full file on each. Payroll giving, matching and employee nominations are different: they spread money across hundreds or thousands of charities in many countries. Checking each gift by hand cannot keep pace with that.
If you are comparing providers, get a straight answer on six points:
A charity check has a shelf life. The one that counts is the check run before this month's payment.
GivingForce screens every charity through CauseCheck before employees can give to it, and pays every donation through its own registered charity.
This is how the checks above are handled on our platform:
A charity check has a shelf life. Registers and bank details change, and so do sanctions lists. The check that counts is the one run before this month's payment.
For the wider risk picture, including how fraud reaches corporate giving programmes, read our article on charity due diligence and fraud risk.
Minutes, for a low-risk gift. A register search and a UK Sanctions List check are quick. A full review for a major or overseas grant takes longer, because it needs documents and bank evidence from the charity itself.
Charity Commission duties fall on charity trustees, so they apply directly if you give through a corporate foundation. A company giving directly still has to comply with sanctions law. The Commission's guidance is the standard boards and auditors tend to use. This is general information, not legal advice.
No. Independent ratings can inform your view, but they do not replace the checks in this guide for the gift you are about to make.
It is the UK's single list of sanctions designations. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office publishes it, and since 28 January 2026 it has replaced the OFSI Consolidated List for screening.
Screen against sanctions lists on an ongoing basis or before each payment, and review registration and accounts at least once a year. Re-check straight away if a charity changes its bank details or its name.