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Charities Services data via eolas

Charities Services (Te Rātā Atawhai) is the Department of Internal Affairs body that registers and regulates New Zealand's charitable trusts. eolas serves 6 datasets from Charities Services — the full registry + annual financial returns + reference taxonomies.

If you're doing nonprofit-sector research, due diligence on a charity, policy analysis on philanthropy, or evaluating grant-applicant credibility — this is the source.

What's in the catalogue

Core registry

Dataset Description
charities_organisations Master register of all currently-registered (and historical) NZ charities — name, registration number, status, location, registration date.
charities_officers Trustees, directors, and other officers associated with each registered charity.
charities_annual_returns Yearly financial returns — income, expenses, employees, volunteers — for each charity that has filed (most have, some haven't).

Reference taxonomies

Dataset Description
charities_sectors Standardised sector classifications used by Charities Services (e.g. "Health", "Education", "Religion", "Sport").
charities_activities Standardised activity codes — what the charity actually does.
charities_beneficiaries Standardised beneficiary codes — who the charity serves.

Refresh schedule

Monthly. Charities Services updates the registry continuously (new registrations, deregistrations, status changes); annual returns flow in throughout the year as each charity's filing deadline lands. Our refresh runs weekly to catch new releases promptly.

meta = client.info("charities_organisations")
meta["last_refreshed_at"]
meta["source_last_modified_at"]

License

All Charities Services data is published under CC-BY 4.0. Commercial use is fine; attribution required.

Recommended attribution: "Source: Charities Services (Department of Internal Affairs), served via eolas (eolas.fyi). CC-BY 4.0."

A privacy note: data is regulator-published — names of officers + registered addresses are in the public registry by statute. Bank account numbers + private contact details are not in the open dataset.

Common patterns

How many active charities are there?

orgs = client.charities("charities_organisations")
active = orgs[orgs["status"] == "Registered"]
print(f"Active NZ charities: {len(active):,}")
print(f"Historical (deregistered or merged): {len(orgs) - len(active):,}")

orgs <- eolas_get_charities("charities_organisations")
cat("Active:", sum(orgs$status == "Registered"), "\n")

Top charities by income

returns = client.charities("charities_annual_returns")
# Latest filed year per charity
latest = returns.sort_values("filing_year").groupby("charity_no").tail(1)
top = latest.sort_values("total_income", ascending=False).head(20)
print(top[["charity_name", "filing_year", "total_income"]])

Charity-officer overlap

For governance / risk analysis — who serves on multiple boards:

officers = client.charities("charities_officers")
# Count board memberships per officer
overlap = officers.groupby("officer_name").size().sort_values(ascending=False)
print(overlap.head(20))  # Often professional directors with 10+ boards

Sector breakdown

orgs = client.charities("charities_organisations")
sectors = client.charities("charities_sectors")
# Join to get human-readable sector names
combined = orgs.merge(sectors, on="sector_code", how="left")
print(combined.groupby("sector_name").size().sort_values(ascending=False))

Source-specific notes

  • Status field is important: "Registered" = currently active; "Deregistered" = removed (most often by their own request or after failing to file returns); "Removed" = removed by Charities Services for cause. Filter to "Registered" for any "active charities" analysis.
  • Annual return filing rate: not every charity files on time. Smaller charities sometimes lag. For an "all charities" income total, filter to a year where filing is mostly complete (typically 2+ years before current).
  • Financial year varies: each charity sets its own balance date — typically 31 March or 30 June. The filing_year field aligns to that charity's financial year, not a calendar year.
  • Reference tables for joins: charities_sectors, charities_activities, and charities_beneficiaries are stable taxonomies. Join into charities_organisations for analysis by category.
  • Religious charities: ~30% of registered charities are religious (Iwi trusts, churches, parish trusts). They face the same reporting requirements; the registry treats them uniformly.
  • Iwi trusts: many post-Treaty-settlement iwi trusts are registered charities. They tend to have high revenue and complex governance — useful for Māori-sector economic research.

Where to find more