How to read a grant-making trust's accounts and annual return

A grant-making trust's accounts, filed free on the charity register, tell you in fifteen minutes what its website often does not: its grant-making policy, who it funded last year and for how much, and whether it will consider an organisation like yours. For trusts with no website they are the only source.

What a trust must file and when

Every charity registered in England and Wales must submit an annual return to the Charity Commission within 10 months of its financial year end. What accompanies it depends on income. Charities with income under £10,000 report income and spending only. Between £10,000 and £25,000 they answer the return's questions and attach nothing. Above £25,000 they must upload their trustees' annual report, their accounts and any independent examiner's or auditor's report required, and declare that serious incidents have been reported. Charitable incorporated organisations file the report and accounts whatever their income.

Scrutiny also scales with size. For financial years ending before 30 September 2026, accounts need an independent examination where income exceeds £25,000 and an audit where income exceeds £1 million, or exceeds £250,000 with gross assets over £3.26 million. The Commission's guidance says these thresholds change for financial years ending on or after 30 September 2026, so check its CC15 guidance for the year you are reading. The accounting rules themselves come from the Charities SORP, the Statement of Recommended Practice for charity accounts; SORP 2026 applies to accounting years starting on or after 1 January 2026, and smaller charities below £250,000 income may prepare simpler receipts and payments accounts instead.

The practical consequence is that a trust's latest accounts are between a few months and 22 months old, and that a trust with income under £25,000 may have filed no accounts at all. In Scotland, OSCR's register publishes accounts documents from 9 March 2026; in Northern Ireland the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland publishes them with each annual return.

Finding the documents

Search the Charity Commission register at gov.uk by name or charity number. The entry shows the charity's contact details, trustees, "what, who and how" classification, its activities in its own words, income and expenditure by year, and a section listing the accounts and annual returns filed. The Zochonis Charitable Trust, registered charity 274769, is a typical example: no website, an activity statement reading "to support charitable causes by making grants", and income of £2,283,820 for the year ending 5 April 2025. Its OpenGrant funder page shows the same register facts and notes that no open scheme has been found in OpenGrant's sources, which is the signal to open the accounts.

Part one: the trustees' annual report

The report comes first in the filed document and is the most useful part for a fundraiser. It must describe the charity's objects, activities and achievements, and a grant-making trust normally sets out its grant-making policy here. Read for five things:

• Causes and places. The report often narrows the broad objects in the governing document to what the trustees actually fund: "charities working with young people in Greater Manchester", for example.
• Size of grants. Many reports state a typical range or the number of grants made and the total, from which you can calculate an average.
• Application policy. Look for sentences such as "the trustees consider applications from registered charities" or "the trustees do not accept unsolicited applications and identify beneficiaries through their own research". This is the single most valuable sentence in the document, and which trusts accept unsolicited applications explains how to read it.
• Meeting cycle. "The trustees meet twice a year to consider grants" tells you the decision time and when to write.
• Reserves and investment policy. A trust that states it distributes its investment income each year will give roughly its income; one building an endowment will give less; one spending down will give more.

Part two: the statement of financial activities

The statement of financial activities is the charity's income and expenditure account. For a grant-maker, income is mostly investment income or donations, and "expenditure on charitable activities" is almost entirely grants plus the cost of making them. That expenditure line, not income, is how much the trust gives. Compare it with the previous year's figure, which the statement shows beside it, and with the register's five-year chart. A trust whose income is £2 million but whose charitable expenditure is £500,000 is accumulating; one spending more than it earns is drawing on capital. Either pattern is information.

Part three: the balance sheet and funds

The balance sheet shows what the trust holds. For prospect research the funds note matters more than the total: it separates restricted funds, which can only be spent on the purpose a donor set, from unrestricted funds, which trustees may spend on any object, and shows any permanent endowment, which the trustees must keep and invest. A trust whose capital is mostly permanent endowment gives from the income it earns. A trust whose funds are restricted to a named cause cannot fund yours however good the fit. The size of unrestricted funds relative to annual giving also hints at capacity for a larger or multi-year grant.

Part four: the notes and the grants list

The notes analyse the figures. The one headed "grants payable" or "analysis of charitable expenditure" is the one to find. Larger trusts list every grant with the recipient and amount, or at least every grant above a threshold; the SORP asks for an analysis of grants by activity and, for institutional grants, enough detail to understand the pattern. Smaller trusts list the recipients in the trustees' report instead. Either way, you are reading the trust's real criteria.

Build a quick table: recipient, amount, and, from a minute's search, the recipient's cause, location, legal form and size. If the list is forty grants of £1,000 to £5,000 to charities across one county, that is the trust's range whatever its governing document allows. If the same twelve names appear year after year, the trust has a settled circle. If two or three recipients look like you, the fit is real. For trusts that also publish to 360Giving, GrantNav shows the same list over many years with a download; how to use 360Giving data to find funders covers that route.

Part five: the annual return

The annual return itself is a questionnaire rather than a document, and most of its answers appear on the register entry: income and spending, the classification of what the charity does, who it helps and how, the countries it operates in, and the number of trustees, staff and volunteers. The "how" classification is the quickest filter of all: a trust whose entry says it makes grants to organisations is a prospect, one that makes grants to individuals only is not, and one that provides services itself is not a funder at all. OpenGrant's funders A to Z lists every charity whose register entry says it makes grants to organisations, with the register facts on each page.

A fifteen-minute routine

For each trust at the qualified stage of your pipeline: open the register entry and read the activity statement and the five-year income and spending chart (two minutes); open the latest accounts and read the trustees' report for policy, range, application route and meeting cycle (five minutes); read the charitable expenditure line and the grants note and build the recipient table (six minutes); note the trustees' names and the correspondence address from the report (two minutes). Record the answers and the accounts' year end in your tracker, because a trust whose accounts are two years old deserves a second look when the new ones arrive.

A worked example

A fictional youth charity in Salford finds the Duchy of Lancaster Benevolent Fund on a GrantNav search of a peer's funders. Its register entry on 26 October 2026 showed income of £643,000 and spending of £592,000, grants to organisations and individuals, and no website. The charity opens the accounts. The trustees' report sets out the areas the fund supports and how it considers requests, the grants note lists the year's awards with amounts, and the charity can see at once whether organisations of its kind and size appear and what they received. It records the answer and the accounts' year end in its tracker. The reading took a quarter of an hour and replaced a speculative letter with an informed decision, which is the whole point of prospect research.