Charity Merger Research: Record-breaking year for charity mergers

Charity Merger Index: How many charities have merged?

The latest Good Merger Index, the review of merger data across the charitable sector in England and Wales reveals the highest number of charity mergers in the Index’s 12-year history. Between May 2024 and April 2025, there were 94 mergers involving 183 organisations – a 49% rise on the previous year and almost double the activity seen in 2022/23 which followed 2 years of record low levels of activity during COVID-19.

In particular, this year we saw a significant increase in mergers among the smallest organisations (with income under £1m). This year, 88  organisations under £1m were involved in mergers, compared to 65 in 2022-23, 59 in 2022-23 and 50 in 2021-22. This indicates a consistent multi-year trend towards increased activity at this end of the sector.

Charity Merger Index data sources:

Our geographic focus is England and Wales, although we include significant mergers where organisations in this region involve others from outside the region.

Because the Charity Commission’s data only covers situations where one organisation is dissolved, we use Charity Commission data plus additional data sources:

1. Public registries: Charity Commission for the 12 months 1^st May 2024 to 30^th April 2025, removing cases where deals happened in the past but were only now being registered, internal reorganisations and tiny organisations with little publicly available information.
2. Media and organisation websites including charity and housing sector press to find deals at the point of announcement plus local and specialist publications, social media and charity websites. Many of these transactions had not yet been recorded on the Charity Commission register.

We therefore feel that our report contains the most up-to-date, accurate and comprehensive information on the state of the charity merger market in England and Wales.

Get the latest Good Merger Index report on charity mergers

Download the latest Good Merger Index here.

Read previous Good Merger Index Reports here.

 References:

At the time of writing, there are c170,700 main charities and c14,000 linked charities in England and Wales.

Find all of our charity merger resources