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There are 171,539 registered charities in England and Wales (Charity Commission, June 2026), but only around 1,700 of them hold enough investable assets to matter to a fund manager, and together those hold more than $250 billion. The right database for this market is the one that tells you which charities those are, who manages the money today, who advises them, and who to email. This guide covers six sources fund managers use in 2026, what each says it covers, and which job each is built for.
Key Takeaways
- The raw material is free. Every UK charity files accounts with its regulator, and larger charities name their investment managers, consultants, custodians, and banks in them. The value in a database is the extraction, structuring, and contacts, not access to the filings.
- Only one of the six sources is built around UK charities as allocators: Dakota Marketplace's UK charity dataset. The regulators' registers cover every charity but not how they invest, and the global investor databases cover charities as one allocator type among many.
- Dakota Marketplace holds 1,674 UK charities, endowments, and foundations with 10,000+ contacts with email. Current investment managers are named on 1,191 accounts, banks on 1,072, and consultants on 177 (Dakota Marketplace, September 2026).
- Four managers, CCLA, Cazenove Capital, Sarasin & Partners, and Rathbones, appear on roughly half of the accounts that name a manager, so knowing the incumbent matters more here than in almost any other allocator channel.
- Grant databases such as 360Giving and Funds Online point the other way: they help charities find funders. They are frequently confused with investor databases and will not help a fund manager.
What should a UK charity database tell a fundraiser?
A UK charity is an unusual allocator. The legal decision-makers are unpaid trustees, day-to-day investment is usually delegated to a discretionary manager, and a small group of consultants controls most formal manager searches. A database earns its subscription only if it answers six questions.
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Question
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Why it matters
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Which charities actually invest?
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Fewer than 1% of registered charities hold $13 million or more in investments
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How much, and as of when?
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Charities report once a year, on different year ends: about a third in March and a third in December
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Who manages the money today?
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Four specialist managers dominate, so most approaches are a displacement sale
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Who advises them?
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Consultants such as Stanhope Capital, Cambridge Associates, Mercer, and Redington run the formal searches
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Who decides, and can I reach them?
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Trustees hold the legal decision; finance directors and investment committee chairs run the process
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How current is it?
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A record built once and left alone is a year out of date within twelve months
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The six sources below are assessed against those questions using what each publisher says about its own product. Where a publisher does not disclose UK charity coverage, we say so rather than guess.
How the six sources compare
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Source
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Built for
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UK charity focus
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What it publishes about coverage
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Cost
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Dakota Marketplace
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Fund managers raising capital
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Dedicated UK charity dataset
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1,674 accounts, 10,000+ contacts with email, managers on 1,191 accounts
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Subscription
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Charity Commission, OSCR, CCNI registers
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Public accountability
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Every registered charity
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171,539 charities in England and Wales; 25,000+ in Scotland
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Free
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MandateWire (FT Specialist)
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Fund managers tracking mandates
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Charities are one of several investor types
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Reports on mandates and manager selection across investor types including charities, endowments, and foundations
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Subscription
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Preqin (BlackRock)
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Alternatives fundraising
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Not broken out
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600,000+ profiles across managers, investors, funds, and companies
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Subscription
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With Intelligence
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Fund managers tracking intentions
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Not broken out
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Investor intentions, mandates, fund rosters, and contacts; no profile counts published
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Subscription
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FINTRX
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Fundraising from endowments and foundations
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Not broken out
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1,500+ endowments and foundations, 8,100 contacts
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Subscription
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1. Dakota Marketplace: built for the fundraiser
Dakota Marketplace added a dedicated UK charity dataset in 2026, built from the audited accounts that every UK charity files with its regulator. It holds 1,674 UK charities, endowments, and foundations, from the Wellcome Trust at $53 billion down to charities investing around $13 million.
What is on each account:
- Investable assets in USD, from the latest filed accounts
- Current investment managers named in the account overview (1,191 accounts), often down to the specific fund
- Banker (1,072 accounts), investment consultant (177), and custodian (58), with consultant and custodian as filterable fields
- Asset allocation (125 accounts) and holdings (130 accounts) where the charity discloses them
- 10,000+ contacts with email: around 8,500 trustees, plus finance directors, chief executives, CIOs, portfolio managers, and investment committee members
The dataset is re-checked against the Charity Commission register every week. When a charity files new accounts, only that record is re-read, and changes flow into Dakota Marketplace monthly: new assets figures, new managers, and trustees who have joined or left.
Best for: fund managers who want to filter to the charities that fit, see who they would be displacing, and reach the people who decide.
2. The regulators' registers: free, and the source of truth
The Charity Commission for England and Wales publishes a free register of all 171,539 charities, with a combined annual income of about $148 billion (£108.5 billion, Charity Commission, June 2026). Each entry shows income, spending, trustees, and links to filed accounts, and the full register can be downloaded. Scotland's regulator, OSCR, publishes a daily download of its 25,000+ charities and since March 2026 has added trustee names and accounts documents. The Charity Commission for Northern Ireland keeps its own public register.
The limits are practical, not legal. The register does not tell you which charities invest, the manager names sit inside PDF accounts, and there are no emails. Building a target list by hand means opening hundreds of annual reports.
Best for: checking a single charity, confirming trustees, and reading the source accounts behind any figure in a paid database.
3. MandateWire: live searches and manager changes
MandateWire is part of FT Specialist, founded in Europe in 2002 and acquired by the Financial Times in 2009. Its journalists report on "the strategies, mandates and manager selection activity of pension funds, family offices, insurers, wealth managers, charities, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, foundations and other asset owners."
Its strength is timing: news of a search before it closes, or of a manager change after it happens. It is a news and mandate service first, so it complements a structured allocator database and does not replace one. It does not publish how many UK charities it tracks.
Best for: fund managers who want alerts on live mandates across UK institutional investors, charities included.
4. Preqin: alternatives depth, global breadth
Preqin, now owned by BlackRock, offers "600,000+ detailed profiles on fund managers, investors, funds, companies, and other alternative asset players." Investor profiles show asset class activity, active mandates, past fund commitments, and allocation breakdowns.
For UK charities, that makes Preqin most relevant at the top of the market, where endowments and foundations such as the Wellcome Trust commit directly to private equity, venture, and real estate funds. Most of the 1,700 investing charities hold pooled multi-asset funds through a discretionary manager and make no direct fund commitments. Preqin does not publish a UK charity count.
Best for: private markets managers targeting the largest UK endowments and foundations alongside global LPs.
5. With Intelligence: intentions and rosters
With Intelligence positions its fundraising product around "directly sourced investor intentions and preferences data," with access to "current investor fund rosters, market insights, and investor contact details." Part of that data comes from a give-to-get model, where allocators share plans in exchange for access.
Like Preqin, it is a global allocator product in which UK charities are one segment, and it does not publish profile counts or a UK charity figure. Its roots are in hedge fund and private markets fundraising.
Best for: alternatives managers who prioritise stated allocation intentions over filed-accounts data.
6. FINTRX: endowments and foundations as a segment
FINTRX is best known for family office and registered investment adviser data, and also markets an endowments and foundations dataset of "1,500+ E&Fs" with "8.1K verified contacts." Profiles cover AUM, investment strategy, allocation interests, and decision-makers.
The example profile FINTRX publishes is a US endowment, and the page does not say how many of the 1,500 are in the UK.
Best for: managers already using FINTRX for family offices who want endowments and foundations in the same tool.
Which databases are often confused with these?
Several well-known UK charity databases point the other way: they help charities find money, not fund managers find allocators.
- 360Giving publishes open grants data: 354 funders, 2 million grants, and £338 billion of grant records, searchable through GrantNav. It shows what a foundation gives away, which is useful colour on a prospect, but nothing about how its endowment is invested.
- Funds Online (Directory of Social Change) is a grant-seeker's database of funders.
- Charity Intelligence is a free directory where charities find vetted investment managers, lawyers, and accountants. For a fund manager it is a place to be listed, not a prospecting tool.
How should a fund manager choose?
Start with the job, not the brand.
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Building a UK charity target list from nothing: you need structured coverage of every investing charity, current managers, and contacts. That is Dakota Marketplace, with the regulator's register as the free cross-check.
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Timing approaches around searches: add a mandate service such as MandateWire. Pair it with year-end dates, since most charities review managers after the accounts are signed.
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Private markets only, top 30 endowments: a global alternatives database may already cover the names you need. Check it against the list of UK charities above $1 billion before paying for anything else.
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Selling services to charities, not funds: adviser directories such as Charity Intelligence are built for that market.
Whichever source you use, test it on five charities you already know well. Check the assets figure against the filed accounts, check that the named manager is current, and check that the contacts still sit on the board. Accuracy on five known records tells you more than any headline coverage number.
See the UK charity dataset for yourself. Dakota Marketplace holds 1,674 UK charities, endowments, and foundations with 10,000+ contacts, current managers on 1,191 accounts, and a weekly check against the regulator. Book a demo.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best database for UK charity investors?
For fund managers raising capital, Dakota Marketplace is the only source in this guide built specifically around UK charities as allocators, with 1,674 accounts, named managers, consultants, and 10,000+ contacts with email. The Charity Commission register is the free primary source behind it, and the global allocator databases cover the largest UK endowments and foundations alongside other investor types.
Is there a free database of UK charities?
Yes. The Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR in Scotland, and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland all publish free public registers, and the first two offer full downloads. They list every charity with income, trustees, and filed accounts, but they do not identify which charities invest or provide contact emails.
How many UK charities have investment portfolios worth targeting?
Around 1,700 UK charities hold roughly $13 million or more in investable assets, out of 171,539 on the England and Wales register. Dakota Marketplace covers 1,674 of them, holding more than $250 billion combined.
Where do databases get information on which managers a charity uses?
From the charity's own audited accounts. Larger UK charities typically name their investment managers, consultants, custodians, and bankers in the reference and administrative section of the annual report. Dakota extracts those disclosures at scale and refreshes them as new accounts are filed.
Can I get email addresses for UK charity trustees?
The regulators publish trustee names but not contact details. Trustee emails are hard to find and verify because most trustees are volunteers with day jobs elsewhere. Dakota Marketplace's UK charity contacts, around 8,500 of them trustees, carry researched email addresses.
Do Preqin and With Intelligence cover UK charities?
Both cover endowments and foundations as investor types within global allocator databases, and the largest UK names appear in each. Neither publishes a UK charity count, so the practical test is to search for a sample of mid-sized UK charities during a trial and see how many appear.
Ready to see who manages UK charity money?
Dakota Marketplace maps 1,674 UK charities, endowments, and foundations and 10,000+ contacts. Filter by account type (Foundation or Endowment) and country, narrow by AUM, filter by consultant such as Stanhope Capital or Cambridge Associates, and open any account to see the named managers and the trustees and finance leads behind the decision. If UK charities are on your fundraising plan, this is the fastest way to a qualified list.
Book a Demo to explore the UK charity dataset.
Related reading: Top 10 UK Charities by Investment Assets · Top 10 Most Active Institutional Investors in the UK
