If you've ever tried to verify whether a charity is legitimate, you know the pain. Each country guards its charity data in a different format, behind a different API (if there's an API at all), with different update schedules and access requirements.
This isn't a bug. It's how charity regulation evolved. But for anyone building technology in the giving space, it's a significant barrier.
The Current State of Charity Data
| Country | Register | Format | API Available? | Update Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK | Charity Commission | CSV/API | Yes | Monthly |
| USA | IRS 990 | XML | Partial | Annual |
| Ireland | Charities Regulator | CSV | No | Quarterly |
| Australia | ACNC | CSV/API | Yes | Monthly |
| Canada | CRA | CSV | No | Annual |
Five countries. Five different approaches. And that's just the English-speaking world.
Why This Fragmentation Exists
1. Regulatory Independence
Charity regulation is a national matter. Each country's charity commission operates independently, with its own mandate, data standards, and technology stack. There's no international body coordinating data formats.
2. Legacy Systems
Many charity registers were built decades ago. The UK Charity Commission's data infrastructure dates back to the 1990s. Modernisation happens slowly in government.
3. Different Definitions
What counts as a "charity" varies by jurisdiction. The UK has specific legal definitions. The US has 501(c)(3) organisations. These aren't directly comparable, making standardisation difficult.
4. Privacy Considerations
Different countries have different rules about what charity data is public. Some publish trustee names; others don't. Some include financial details; others require separate filings.
The Cost of Fragmentation
For developers building donation platforms, payment processors, or corporate giving tools, this fragmentation creates real costs:
- Integration time — Months of development per country
- Maintenance burden — Each API changes independently
- Data quality issues — Inconsistent formats mean inconsistent quality
- Limited coverage — Most apps only support one or two countries
For charities, fragmentation means invisibility. If a donation platform only integrates with US data, UK charities simply don't exist in that ecosystem.
How We're Fixing It
Charity Global takes a different approach. Instead of expecting developers to integrate with every country's register, we do the hard work once:
1. Aggregate — We pull data from official charity registers worldwide
2. Normalise — We transform it into a consistent schema
3. Verify — We validate against source registers
4. Serve — We deliver it through a single, fast API
The result: one integration gives you access to charity data from multiple countries, in a consistent format, with sub-200ms response times.
What Unified Data Enables
When charity data is unified, new possibilities emerge:
- Cross-border giving — Donors can find and verify charities anywhere
- Global compliance — Platforms can verify charities across jurisdictions
- Better discovery — Charities become visible to a global audience
- Faster development — Build once, support many countries
The Road Ahead
We're starting with the UK's 300,000+ registered charities. But our architecture is built for global scale. Every country we add follows the same pattern: aggregate, normalise, verify, serve.
The fragmentation of charity data is a solvable problem. We're solving it.