The council last week launched a campaign called Red Tape - Cut It Out! to highlight the problem.
It said that organisations have to respond to multiple regulatory authorities, many requiring the same information.
Chief executive Martin Sime said, 'A picture is emerging of charities drowning in a sea of administration and rows of paper shufflers who have to be paid before one penny gets to the cause.'
The campaign is backed by the Scottish Pre-School Play Association. Its chief executive, Ian McLaughlan, said, 'We are concerned at the amount of red tape facing voluntary sector pre-school providers of services that is threatening their existence.'
Another charity, the Edinburgh-based Rock Trust, which helps more than 400 young homeless people each year, said that 'ridding needless red tape' would mean it could help 100 extra young people annually.
This month a report by the Better Regulation Task Force, an independent body that advises the Government, said red tape was 'tying the voluntary and community sector in knots', and called for 'lighter touch' regulations.
Task force chairman Sir David Arculus said, 'The sector is working in areas that the public and private sectors have failed to reach.
Yet too much red tape can have a negative impact on the public's willingness for volunteering and the sector's ability to innovate and deliver.'
Cases cited included a women's refuge that wanted to offer a service looking after the children of women living there for a couple of hours at a time, but this would require registration with Ofsted and staff would need childcare qualifications.
The report, Better Regulation for Civil Society, is available at www.brtf.gov.uk.
The report recommended giving regulators the power to waive prescriptive requirements, where workers have other relevant experience and training.
.By Simon Vevers Nursery group Child Base is extending its staff share scheme in a step towards its vision of an employee-owned business.
The chain, which has 32 nurseries, set up the All Employee Share scheme five years ago, allowing staff to save to buy shares in the company. For every share they bought they received one free.
Now the chain has set up the Employee Share Ownership Trust (ESOT), with three elected staff members on the board, which has purchased more than 30 per cent of the shares of existing shareholders to be distributed among its 770 employees.
Staff will now receive two free shares for every one they buy and the company will be able to distribute free shares at the end of each financial year, depending on its performance.
Chief executive Mike Thompson said 120 employees had joined the share scheme since it was set up. 'They are interested in how we are trading, what investments we are making and the annual general meeting is no longer a small group of people'.
He added, 'Our staff turnover is low. We can only continue that if people believe they are valued and have more opportunities than perhaps would exist if they were just an employee.'
Child Base operates its own internal stock market where employees can buy and sell shares. Mr Thompson said the number of dealing days would increase to two and possibly four. He said the ESOT board would decide how the free shares are distributed.
His father, Sir Peter Thompson, who co-founded the company in 1990, has stepped down as chairman, but remains life president and chair of ESOT.
Mike Thompson is now deputy chairman and chief executive, while Emma Phillips, previously operations director, becomes managing director. Lynda Gostelow is the new operations director. Rosemary Murphy, former chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, has joined the Child Base board.
