A report examined how to ensure charities' longer-term financial sustainability. It offered a ten-year framework designed to allow the voluntary and community sector to stay financially resilient when faced with depleted resources coupled with increasing demand for services.
Source: Funding Commission, Funding the Future: A 10-year framework for civil society, National Council for Voluntary Organisations
Links: Report | NCVO press release
Date: 2010-Dec
The coalition government announced (in its 2010 Spending Review) that £470 million would be allocated over the period to 2014-15 towards building the capacity of the voluntary and community sector. Of this, £100 million would be put into a 'transitional fund' to help the sector adjust to new public spending budgets.
Source: Spending Review 2010, Cm 7942, HM Treasury/TSO
Links: Report | Summary | Hansard | HMT press releases | CAF press release | Co-operatives UK press release | DSC press release | NCVO press release | NCVYS press release | PwC press release | SEC press release | SIB press release | Children & Young People Now report | Guardian report | Telegraph report | Charity Times report
Date: 2010-Oct
A paper examined how dependent third sector organizations in England were on public funding. Exposure to public funding varied between organizations: those that were bigger or newer, those located in more deprived areas, and those serving socially excluded or vulnerable people were more likely to receive public funding than other organizations.
Source: David Clifford, Frida Geyne Rajme and John Mohan, How Dependent Is the Third Sector on Public Funding? Evidence from the National Survey of Third Sector Organisations, Working Paper 45, Third Sector Research Centre
Date: 2010-Oct
A report called on the government to create and finance a social investment retail bank that would offer loans, equity-like capital, development grants, and business support to civil society.
Source: Understanding Social Investment, Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations
Links: Report | SIB press release | Charity Times report
Date: 2010-Jul
Two linked papers examined trends in the distribution of charitable income, using data on registered charities in England and Wales from 1995 to 2007. The share of total sector income going to the largest charities either remained stable or decreased. There was strong evidence for 'professionalization' – the preferential growth of organizations above a certain size: but there was less evidence to support the idea of 'Tescoization' involving the highest growth for the very largest charities.
Source: Peter Backus and David Clifford, Are Big Charities Becoming Increasingly Dominant? Tracking charitable income growth 1997-2008 by initial size, Working Paper 38, Third Sector Research Centre/Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy | Peter Backus and David Clifford, Trends in the Concentration of Income Among Charities, Working Paper 39, Third Sector Research Centre/Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy
Links: Paper 38 | Briefing 38 | Paper 39 | Briefing 39 | Civil Society report
Date: 2010-Jun
A report said that the voluntary sector's earned income from delivering statutory contracts had increased to £9.1 billion, up 128 per cent since 2000-01. A total of 38,000 charities (22 per cent) received public money; of those, 23,000 received more than one-half of their funding in this way (13 per cent of all charities).
Source: The UK Civil Society Almanac 2010, National Council for Voluntary Organisations
Links: Summary | NCVO press release | Charity Times report | Guardian report
Date: 2010-Apr
The final report was published of the independent evaluation of the 'Futurebuilders' programme (providing loans and grants for third sector organizations to help them to win public service contracts). It said that Futurebuilders investments had generated financial and social returns, and savings to the public purse.
Source: Peter Wells, Tracey Chadwick-Coule, Chris Dayson and Gareth Morgan (with others), Futurebuilders Evaluation: Final Report, Centre for Regional, Economic and Social Research/Sheffield Hallam University
Links: Report | Cabinet Office press release
Date: 2010-Mar