Original research on the state of UK charity websites - platform adoption, email security, analytics and consent practice, and web health - measured directly and published as aggregate statistics with full methodology.
Churches and other religious bodies are excluded from the census papers below; each one says how, and why.
The UK charity register changed again on 4 October 2026: 251 records updated - 0 charities newly registered, 34 removed, 7 website addresses changed. Since 15 August 2026 our nightly diff has recorded 25,484 changes; the register paper below updates daily from the current register.
Updated 4 October 2026 · measured by NebulaBot's pipeline, aggregate counts only
UK census · published August 2026 · updated September 2026
Analytics and consent tooling measured on 55,300 charity homepages, excluding churches and other religious bodies. 42% load cookie-setting analytics - and 62% of those show no consent tool, so nothing asks the visitor before the cookies are set. Even among £2m+ charities the gap is 46%. Includes the consent-tool league table, the Meta pixel figures, and the CC-BY data behind every figure.
UK census · published August 2026 · updated September 2026
MX, SPF and DMARC measured for 73,687 charity domains, excluding churches and other religious bodies. 87% publish no enforcing DMARC policy, so nothing tells a receiving mail server to reject a message forging the charity's address; 56% publish no DMARC record at all, and 29% no SPF. DKIM is deliberately not measured - the method section says why. CC-BY data included.
UK census · published August 2026 · updated September 2026
A measured census of 73,687 charity websites - every charity on the three UK registers with a usable recorded address, excluding churches and other religious bodies. Of the 34,843 sites that engage with donations online, 59% show a visible way to give - and 41% ask but give the donor no way to act. Includes the full platform league table and the CC-BY data behind every figure.
August 2026
Between 41% and 50% of UK charity register records hold no usable website - rising to 56% of the smallest charities - and 17.9% of recorded URLs were wrong on first contact. The paper measures what the registers' website field can and can't be trusted for, with full method.
August 2026 · pilot study
A measured census of 1,233 charity websites across the Bristol area: 45% show a visible way to donate online, the top three platforms carry 54% of offsite giving, and 29% of WordPress charities send their donors to a third-party platform. Measured by our crawler in Bristol and its fringe - a five-city study using the same method is under way.
Further publications are in preparation. Everything published here carries its method, its denominators, and its aggregate data.
About the crawler behind the research: NebulaBot.
Questions: [email protected]