The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) has reported that 69% of charities registered with it employ no staff and are entirely run by volunteers.
However, charities registered with the regulator employ 218,323 people as paid staff.
OSCR has released its sector overview report, which reviews the regulator’s latest data on the Scottish charity sector.
The report found that 743 Scottish charities were registered in 2023, while 57 cross-border charities were.
The number of charities removed from the register was the highest since 2016 at 1,144. This is due to the regulator’s work to remove inactive charities, it said.
OSCR recorded having over 25,000 charities on its register in 2023, a slight decrease on the previous year.
Over half of the charities registered (53%) reported having an income of less than £25,000.
Meanwhile, around a third of Scottish charities (31%) reported an income below £5,000 per year.
With the quarterly review covering January to March 2024, the regulator found 210 charities had been registered during the time period while 261 charities had been removed.
In the same time period, a total of 424 charities are overdue with filing their accounts, while 615 submitted late, OSCR said.
Some 6,663 submitted their financial records on time but the rest have not yet needed to submit accounts, with deadlines later in the year.
The regulator's report recorded 181,258 charity trustees across all Scottish charities.
Almost half (45%) of the charities registered with the regulator work to benefit children and young people.
The overall income of Scottish charities was £16.9bn in 2023, against expenditure of £16.4bn.
The income of UK-wide cross border charities on the Scottish charity regulator was £17.7bn against total gross expenditure of £17.3bn.
