How to update your charity's details
Use our online service to keep your charity’s information and contact details up-to-date with the Charity Commission.
Applies to England and Wales
Charity Commission information for your charity
The Charity Commission holds information on your charity. This is either:
- shown on your charity’s page on the public register of charities, for example who your charity’s trustees are
- only for the Charity Commission’s records, for example all trustees’ contact details
If anything changes, you need to let the Charity Commission know by updating these details online.
Use the online service
You can sign into the new My Charity Commission Account to access online services for your charity.
If you don’t have an account find out how to request one
When you submit your changes, we’ll email:
- the person who made the change
- your charity’s contact
- any trustee or contact whose personal data you’ve changed
Details you need to keep up-to-date
Trustees
Only the trustees’ names are shown on the public register.
Whenever a trustee stops being a trustee you need to remove their details. If you get a new trustee, you need to add their details.
If a trustee is also a trustee for other charities, any changes you make will automatically update their details for all the charities that person is a trustee for.
We need this information for every trustee:
- title (optional)
- given name
- family name
- suffix (optional)
- home address
- email address
- phone number
- date of birth
- date they started as a trustee at your charity
You must give the trustee’s full legal name.
If using their legal name would cause a trustee personal danger, they can apply for permission to use a display name.
We use trustee email addresses to:
- let them know when their details have been updated
- send a quarterly email update
- send emails with regulatory information
If a trustee does not have an email address
If one of your trustees does not have an email address you need to confirm this in the service. You need to:
- Leave the email field blank for that trustee.
- Click confirm at the bottom of the page.
- Return to the email field, and tick the box that has appeared underneath it, to confirm the trustee does not have an email address.
- Click confirm at the bottom of the page again to save.
Details for role of charity contact
The Charity Commission has one person on record as the contact for each charity. This is not shown publicly on the register. Your charity’s password for our online services is always sent to the charity contact. If your charity contact changes, you need to name a new contact in the service so that you’ll be able to reset your password if you need a new one.
If the charity contact is also a trustee you can choose to use the same email address for both roles or have different ones.
We need this information for the charity contact role:
- title (optional)
- given name
- family name
- suffix (optional)
- home address
- email address
- phone number
- date of birth
Charity’s public address
This is what you see on your charity’s entry on the register:
- address
- telephone number
- email address
- website address
Information about your charity
This is basic information about your charity:
- description of what your charity does, also known as ‘activities’
- what your charity does, who it helps and how, known as ‘classification of activities’, chosen from a list
- if your charity owns or leases land or buildings
- where your charity operates
- policies, chosen from a list
- your charity’s other regulators, chosen from a list
- your HMRC charity reference number, if your charity is registered for Gift Aid
Bank and building society accounts
If you have a bank or building society account you need to give the Charity Commission this information. This won’t be shown to the public.
You cannot edit the account number for existing bank accounts, you’ll need to remove it and create a new record.
You must use the sort code finder to add new bank account details.