# Kaiser Khan — A Score That Cannot Be Bought Why CharityCompare turns UK charity register filings into free, readable ratings, and the limits it publishes alongside every score. Canonical: https://mrkaiserkhan.com/notes/a-score-that-cannot-be-bought Last updated: 2026-09-26 In brief CharityCompare is a free UK charity directory built by Kaiser Khan’s company, Elite Digital AI Solutions Ltd. It turns public regulator filings from England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland into readable profiles and published Clarity scores. It takes no commission on donations, scores cannot be bought, and it states that finances are not the same as impact. ## What problem was I trying to solve? Donors ask good questions. Where does the money go? Is this charity still filing its accounts? How does it compare with the one down the road doing similar work? The answers mostly exist. The UK’s three charity regulators publish registers, annual returns and accounts, and that openness is a public good. But a register is built for compliance, not for someone deciding where to give on a Sunday evening. The information is there; it is just hard to read at a glance. And some of the sites that do make it readable take a cut of the donation, or charge for premium ratings. [CharityCompare](https://www.charitycompare.org.uk/), which my company Elite Digital AI Solutions Ltd publishes, is my attempt at the plain alternative: the register, made readable, and free. ## How does it work? Every profile starts from official data: the Charity Commission for England and Wales, the Scottish Charity Regulator and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland. That covers more than 200,000 register profiles. Where a charity’s filings are detailed enough, nearly 7,500 of them at the time of writing, CharityCompare calculates a Clarity score out of 100 across four areas: - **Accountability and transparency**, 40 points: filing history, trustee oversight and declared policies. - **Financial health**, 30 points: reserves, income stability and liabilities. - **Financial efficiency**, 20 points: how spending divides between charitable work and fundraising. - **Community support**, 10 points: volunteers relative to staff. If a regulator has an open statutory inquiry into a charity, its score is zero and a warning is shown. The [full method](https://www.charitycompare.org.uk/methodology) is published, so anyone who disagrees with a score can see exactly which filing produced it. (Figures checked on CharityCompare on 26 September 2026.) ## Why can the scores not be bought? Because the moment a rating can be influenced by money, it stops being information and becomes advertising. CharityCompare takes no commission on donations; donate buttons go straight to each charity’s own page. Memberships and clearly labelled “Featured partner” placements help pay for servers and maintenance, but they are run separately from scoring and excluded from every ranked list. A charity that cancels a paid plan keeps exactly the same score, because the two were never connected. No one can adjust an individual score by hand. ## What does a score not tell you? This is the part I care about most. A Clarity score measures how well a charity accounts for its money. It does not tell you whether the programmes work, whether the cause is worthwhile, or what it feels like to be helped. That is why financial ratios are capped at 20 of the 100 points. A low overhead figure on its own is a poor proxy for good work, and a rating site that pretends otherwise does small charities a disservice. A score is a starting point for a donor’s questions, not the answer to them. ## Why does the conflict of interest matter? I founded World Aid Network and I am Director of World Animal Rescue Network. Someone connected to charities should not publish ratings of charities without saying so. CharityCompare declares both affiliations. Its editorial policy says an editor with a connection to an organisation cannot be the only decision-maker on a dispute or discretionary promotion involving it; an unconflicted reviewer is required. It is the same principle this site follows with [the DEC figures](/notes/dec-appeals-explained): name the relationship, then let the sources speak. Transparency is not a slogan for the charity sector. It is a service to donors, and to the many good charities that already file carefully and deserve to be seen doing it. 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