Overview
This research stream is designed to improve our understanding of the third sector through a large-scale programme of quantitative work. It is designed to help us better explain the distribution of third sector organisations, analyse their contribution to society and the economy and understand their dynamics.
We are interested in data not just on third sector organisations and their resources, but also on both financial inputs to the sector (funding flows from various sources) and human inputs (e.g. the paid workforce and volunteers).
Current work
We are working to establish a series of data sets from returns made by charities to the charity commission. Their register of charities was first digitised about 20 years ago - so far we have recovered data going back to 1995 and we may be able to recover still earlier data from old media. This will put us in a much stronger position to analyse trends in the sector for a consistent set of organisations, and to understand the impact of economic changes on the sector.
A systematic review of work on volunteering is underway, in which we are comparing estimates of volunteering drawn from a range of national survey datasets over the past two decades. A particularly interesting dataset is the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) which tracks the same people every year and has asked questions about volunteering at two-year intervals since 1996.
Next steps
A major programme of quantitative analysis will be developed once these databases have been compiled and analysed.
We will also cross reference and compare data from different sources. For example, are estimates of volunteering derived from different sources consistent with one another and, if not, why not and which one is the most reliable source?