How to check a charity or company before awarding a grant

A practical guide to due diligence checks on grant applicants in the UK, for charities, community funders, research organisations and central government.

Due diligence checks on grant applicants in the UK rest on three public registers. Companies House covers companies. The Charity Commission covers charities in England and Wales. OSCR covers Scottish charities. You confirm the organisation exists, read its filings and accounts, and identify who runs it. Then you apply your own funding policy to what you find.

That work carries more weight than it used to. Boards, auditors and the public now ask every funder the same question: how did you know this applicant was sound? The answer has to be the same for every applicant, and it has to be written down. This guide sets out which registers matter, what each one can and cannot tell you, and where a single search fits.

What are due diligence checks on grant applicants?

A due diligence check is the work you do to confirm that an applicant is who they say they are. It also confirms they are fit to receive public or charitable money. For an organisation, that comes down to three questions. Does it legally exist, and is it active? Is it financially sound enough to deliver the project? Is it properly run, with the people in charge clearly identified?

Your funding policy decides how deep the check goes. A small community grant may need a registration check and a glance at the latest accounts. A multi-year award may need the full filing history and a trustee-by-trustee review. The registers are the same either way. What changes is how much of each record you read.

Which registers should you check, and why?

Three public registers hold the records most UK funders rely on.

Companies House is the register of companies in the UK. Every limited company, including a charitable company, has a record there. The Charity Commission for England and Wales registers charities in those two nations. OSCR, the Scottish Charity Regulator, registers charities in Scotland.

Many applicants appear on two registers. A charitable company in England or Wales has a Companies House record and a Charity Commission record. Each shows different things, so you need both. A Scottish charitable company appears on Companies House and on the OSCR register.

What can Companies House tell you?

Companies House tells you whether a company is active, dissolved, or in the process of being struck off. It shows the filing history, so you can see whether accounts and confirmation statements arrived on time. It lists the current and past officers, which for a company means its directors.

It also records charges, which are legal claims a lender holds over the company’s assets as security for a debt. And it records insolvency data, such as administration or liquidation events. Together these tell you three things. Is the company up to date, who runs it, and does anyone else hold a claim on its assets?

What can the Charity Commission and OSCR tell you?

The Charity Commission record confirms that a charity is registered and shows whether its filings are current. It gives the latest income and spending figures, and it names the trustees. Overdue accounts or annual returns are marked on the record, which is a useful early signal.

OSCR provides the equivalent for Scottish charities. You confirm registration, see whether accounts are up to date, and read the income and spending figures. As with the Charity Commission, the register shows who is responsible for running the charity.

What can the registers not tell you?

Every register reports what an organisation has filed. Accounts describe a financial year that has already ended, sometimes by many months. A record can look healthy today and describe a position that no longer holds. Read register data as history, not as a live picture.

The registers also say nothing about the project you are funding. They cannot tell you whether the applicant has the people, the plan or the partners to deliver it. They cannot tell you whether the budget is realistic. Those judgements belong to your assessment process, and no register replaces them.

Why search by registered number rather than name?

Names cause more wrong results than any other part of the check. The working name on an application form often differs from the registered name. Two unrelated organisations can share a name, or differ by a single word. A registered company or charity number takes you straight to the right record. Ask for the numbers on your application form, and use them when you search.

Why does the process break down in practice?

Most funders already know all of the above. The difficulty is doing it consistently, for every applicant, under time pressure.

A typical check means Companies House in one tab, the Charity Commission in another, and OSCR in a third for Scottish applicants. Findings get pasted into a document or a folder, outside the system that holds the application. Depth varies by officer and by how busy the week is. One person reads three years of accounts. Another confirms the registration and moves on. When a trustee or auditor later asks how an applicant was checked, the answer depends on who did the checking.

Where does a single search fit?

Three searches down to one. That is the case for running the check inside your grant management software rather than beside it. Every applicant gets the same check at the same depth, and the result is documented where the application already lives. There is no separate tool to log into, and nothing to copy across afterwards. That is the internal case a grants manager can take to a board. Time saved on the search, and consistency gained on the record.

The AI Due Diligence Checker in Flexigrant, from Fluent Technology, does this from the Manage Grants menu. You type the organisation name, plus the company or charity numbers if you have them. It retrieves the record from Companies House and the Charity Commission for England and Wales. When you enter a Scottish charity number, it retrieves the OSCR record too. You see status, financial data, charges, insolvency data and the directors or trustees. Each item is labelled by register and linked to its source record.

A fixed formula, not AI, scores five factors: filing compliance, financial health, insolvency risk, charges and debt, and governance. Azure OpenAI writes a plain-English summary, clearly labelled as AI-generated, for you to check against the source. The checker is advisory. It supports your due diligence policy and does not replace it. It is built into Flexigrant and included in every subscription. As of 2026, more than £6.5 billion has been awarded through the platform by 250+ UK and global funders.

Read the full AI Due Diligence Checker feature page

Key takeaways

• Companies House, the Charity Commission and OSCR are the three registers behind most UK applicant checks.
• Each register reports filings, so its data lags the present. Read it as history, not as a live picture.
• Search by registered number. Names differ, and a number takes you to the right record.
• One search in Flexigrant covers all three registers, scores the record by a fixed formula, and leaves the decision with you.

See a check on one of your own applicants

Book a demo, and we will run the checker on organisations you name and walk through the results with you.