Prepare a charity trustees' annual report

About charity trustees annual reports

Your trustees annual report helps people understand what your charity does, particularly potential funders and beneficiaries.

You need to write a trustees annual report if your charity is registered in England or Wales. Along with your accounts, the report tells people:

• about your charitys work
• where your money comes from
• how youve spent your money in the past year

Reports for small non-company charities

If your charitys income is under 500,000 (and providing it doesnt have assets worth more than 3.26million), prepare a simple report including:

• your charitys name, registration number, address and trustee names
• its structure and details of how it is managed, including how it recruits trustees
• its activities and objectives in the year
• its achievements and performance, including reporting on its public benefit
• a financial review including any debts and details of your reserves policy (if applicable)
• details of any funds held as a custodian trustee

You can put more detail into your trustees annual report if you want to. You only have to send a copy to the commission with your annual return if your income is more than 25,000. But you need to send the commission a copy if it asks for it.

Reports for large or company charities

Prepare a full trustees annual report if either:

• your charitys income is above 500,000 (or above 250,000 if its assets are worth more than 3.26 million)
• your charity is a company or CIO

A full report needs to follow the guidelines set out by SORP.

Upload a copy of your trustees annual report as a PDF file when you send your annual return to the Charity Commission.

Charities SORP

A statement of recommended practice (SORP) gives a framework for accounting and reporting, designed to:

• help charity trustees meet their legal requirement for their accounts to give a true and fair view
• encourage consistency in accounting standards

For accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2016 and before 1 January 2026 use the Charities SORP (FRS 102)if your charity is preparing accruals accounts unless theres a specific SORP for your type of charity, for example:

• further and higher education institutions
• registered social landlords

This guidance will be updated in 2026 to reflect requirements for preparing a report for accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2026.

Report on your charitys public benefit

Whether you complete a simple or full trustees annual report, by law you must report how you have carried out your charitys purposes for the public benefit.

This helps people, including funders and beneficiaries, to understand why your charity does what it does. If your charitys income is less than 500,000, you can choose how you report on this. But as a minimum you need to say:

• what your charitys charitable purposes are
• what it has done during the year to carry out those purposes
• that you have taken the commissions public benefit guidance into account when making any decision it is relevant to

If your charitys income is more than 500,000 you also need to:

• explain your strategy for meeting its charitable purposes
• list any significant activities you undertook as part of this strategy
• give details of what your charity achieved in carrying out these activities to meet its purposes