The impact of COVID-19 on the formation and dissolution of charitable organisations

The COVID-19 pandemic, through its associated economic and social impacts, presents an existential threat to many voluntary organisations, and a limiting factor in the launching of new voluntary initiatives. As yet, however, there is limited detailed evidence of the effect of the pandemic on important events such as the rates of formation and dissolution of voluntary organisations. Using comprehensive publicly available data from charity and company regulators, this chapter examines the impact of COVID-19 on the formation and dissolution of charitable organisations. Employing robust time-series methods, the findings highlight considerable disruption to the long-run trend in charity formation in England and Wales, but not in Scotland. In both jurisdictions there is evidence of lower levels of charity dissolutions since the pandemic took hold in the UK. The extent to which formations and dissolutions recover to pre-pandemic levels remains an open question.