UK Civil Society Almanac 2014 Key Facts and Trends
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This document summarizes statistics about the UK civil society sector from 2000-2012. It finds that the sector includes over 900,000 voluntary organizations, 161,266 of which are charities, with a total income of £39.2 billion and spending of £38 billion in 2012. Government funding for the sector declined between 2010-2012, while income from individuals increased. The number of paid employees in the sector grew from 2000-2013, while volunteering rates declined slightly from 2001-2012. Looking ahead, further cuts to government spending were forecasted to continue negatively impacting civil society organizations.
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UK Civil Society Almanac 2014 Key Facts and Trends
- 1. UK Civil Society Almanac 2014 David Kane, Senior Research Officer Supported by:
- 3. Fast facts 900,00 0 161,266 Voluntary organisations Total income £39.2 billion Total spending £38.0 billion Net assets £104.8 billion 29% volunteer at least once a month 800,000 Paid staff
- 5. Trends since 2000 (voluntary sector) Source: NCVO/TSRC, Charity Commissio
- 6. Sources of income Income sources 2000 – 2012 (£ billions, real terms)
- 7. Changes to income sources 2010/11 to 2011/12 Percentage change in voluntary sector’s real and cash income by source 2010/11 to 2011/12 (%) Source: NCVO/TSRC, Charity Commissio
- 8. Change in income from government Change in voluntary sector income from government between 2010/11 and 2011/12 (£ millions) Source: NCVO/TSRC, Charity Commissio
- 9. What was the experience of individual organisations? Source: NCVO/TSRC, Charity Commissio Winners and losers: How did government income in 2011/12 compare with the previous year? (% of organisations, change in cash terms) 68% - not state funded in either year
- 10. Income from individuals Change in voluntary sector income from individuals between 2010/11 and 2011/12 (%)
- 11. Spending Expenditure of general charities, 2011/12 (£ billions)
- 12. Reserves Voluntary sector reserve levels, 2000/01 - 2011/12 (£ billions, 2011/12 prices)
- 13. Liabilities & loans Type of liabilities, 2011/12 (% of liabilities, excluding micro organisations)
- 14. Paid Workforce Voluntary Sector employees, 2001 – 2013 (headcount)
- 15. Volunteering Proportion of people formally volunteering, 2001 – 2012/13 (% of respondents)
- 16. Counting the Cuts: What next? Charlotte Ravenscroft, Head of Policy & Research
- 17. Contents Central and local government spending Counting the cuts – our previous forecasts Why does it matter? What NCVO members tell us Policy choices Counting the cuts – a new forecast
- 18. Central and local government spending Change in central and local government spending from 2010/11 (£ billions) Excludes: social security; interest payments; capital spending Source data: OBR
- 19. Counting the cuts – our previous forecasts • Proportionate scenario • Contract winning scenario • Disproportionate scenario
- 20. Counting the cuts – our previous forecasts
- 21. What NCVO members tell us • Cumulative impact of cuts for communities and those most in need • Move from grants to contracts…to bigger/more generic/PBR contracts • Procurement focussed on lowest price, not quality
- 22. What NCVO members tell us • Charging for services • Partnership/consortia development • Social investment - not a viable option for most
- 23. Policy choices • Review of open public services • Retain grant funding & make contracts more accessible • Training on Social Value Act & forthcoming procurement reforms • Improve government spending data
- 24. Counting the cuts – what next?
Editor's Notes
- What is the Almanac?Launched in the mid 1990s after a collaboration with ONS. Aims to provide the statistics on the sector that other sectors take for granted.Methodology has remained consistent since 2004, so we can present trends over 10 years based on a consistent method.In 2008 we started to include data on civil society – wider than just the voluntary sector. But most of the data that I’ll speak about today relates to voluntary sector.Our voluntary sector is based on the “general charities” definition. This is a subset of registered charities – we exclude organisations such as faith groups, independent schools, charities controlled by government, to give a definition that is closer to what the man in the street might consider a charity.
- Here are some of the key stats from this year’s Almanac, just to give you a flavour.
- Here are some of the key stats from this year’s Almanac, just to give you a flavour.
- Sector’s income steadilyincreased to £41 billion (in 2011/12 prices) by 2007/08.Recession hit the voluntary sector as well – large drop in income, followed by a slow recovery (mirrors the pattern of the whole economy?)Expenditure was kept up during the recession – dipping into reserves. But this couldn’t be maintained – spending seems to have lagged behind income.Now lets focus on 2011/12 – which saw income drop.
- This graph shows the relatives sizes of different income sources – the top line is income from individuals, which has consistently been the highest, and the next one down is income from government – which we’ll come onto in a bit.The important part is to recognise how big the contribution of these two sources is – 4 pounds out of every 5 the sector receives comes from individuals or government.
- These figures show change in value for different sources of income in cash terms (dark green) and 2011/12 prices (light green).The pattern is clear – while the fall from 2007/08 to 2008/09 was driven by non-statutory sources falling, this year the fall is concentrated in income from government.This real terms fall of nearly 9% equals a drop of £1.3 billion, and even in cash terms (not adjusted for inflation) the fall is over £800 million.
- The pattern of changing government income reflects the government’s spending priorities.International organisations (the bottom bar) have seen increased funding from government – and the government has increased spending on aid to meet their 0.7% of GDP target.Protected departments – Health, Education – have seen smaller falls.But areas where funding is unprotected – Social Services (by far the largest category), environment, culture and recreation – have seen large falls.Worth concentrating on employment and training organisations – we identified these as vulnerable organisations, with low reserves, a high reliance on income from government. Impact on this sector will be high. But this is also an area where the funding environment is rapidly changing, we don’t yet know the impact of payment by results and personal budgets.Looking at other ways of breaking this data up – central and local government both saw falls, with local government’s slightly bigger (£750 million) than central government (£540 million)Grants vs Contracts
- But experience of individual organisations is much more complicated that the aggregate figures suggest – as this chart by my colleague Pete Bass shows.Worth remembering that 2 out of every three organisations didn’t receive any state funding in either year.There is a lot of movement, that adds up to create the aggregate picture. So even this year that saw cuts to funding – 6% of organisations won new funding, and 5% saw funding increase by more than 10%.But 7% of organisations lost all their funding, and 9% lost more than 10% of their funding. Even looking at other previous years – the norm is not stability, it is fluctuation.
- In contrast to income from government, income from individuals held up between 2010/11 and 2011/12 in real terms, increasing by 3.1%.But this real terms increase was spread across a number of different income streams.Voluntary income rose by just 0.9%. This number is closest to a figure for “donations” or “giving”, although some of this income may be treated differently in accounts that it is for the people making a donation. This figure is different to the decrease found in UK Giving 2012 which covered the same period. It’s important to remember the differences in methodology and coverage of the two reports, which mean it is not unusual for the numbers to differ. UK Giving includes a wider range of activities, some of which such as religion and giving to hospitals, are outside the “General charities” definition used in the Almanac. UK Giving is a survey of over 3,000 individuals, and is based on their recollection, whereas Almanac figures are based on the reported income of charities in their accounts.Legacies and earned income saw above-inflation growth, with earned income in particular driving a large amount of the change. Earned fundraising income isn’t just traditional “fundraising” – it also includes any activity where a charity charges fees but doesn’t contribute to their primary purpose – so a raffle ticket.
- General charities spent £38 billion in 2011/12 – a real terms fall in spending for the second year in a row.As I mentioned earlier, charities seemed to be able to sustain spending through the recession, but now not able to. Also, losing contracts from government will inevitably mean that the spending on those projects also reduced, which might not be the case for other income sources.11% of spending goes on generating funds – almost exactly the same as the previous year.Grant-making dropped dramatically after the recession – due to the large fall in the value of the investments that grant-makers hold, but has increased every year since.
- Reserves are a way of measuring the capital that organisations have available to spend – so it excludes money that is tied up in long-term investments or property.Voluntary organisations’ reserves dropped significantly in the recession as the value of stocks and shares and other investments fell, but the rebounded afterwards.Since then the reserves of charities have slowly fallen – although total net assets have risen over this period, driven mainly by fixed assets (ie property). This reflects continuing troubles in the stock market over this time, but also fits with the trends we’ve observed in income and expenditure.Total reserves cover about 15 months of expenditure – a healthy level. But this aggregate figure hides some real inequalities in how these are held – excluding the large foundations the figure halves to 8 months, and around 20% of organisations have no reserves at all.
- For the first time we have more details on the sector’s £18.6 billion liabilities. These are becoming increasingly important as social investment rises in prominence.We can see that the sector currently has around £4 billion in loan finance
- I’ll finish on a couple of positive notes. The trend that we’ve seen in spending has been reflected in our data on how many people the sector employs.But this data (from the Labour Force Survey) extends slightly further than the Almanac dataset, so we can get an idea of what has happened since the Almanac figures.Definition in labour force surveyThis shows an upturn in 2012, which could be positive news for the sector. But this data only covers the headcount – the total number of people employed in the sector. Other data from the survey shows that a large proportion of the voluntary sector workforce are part time, and a significant proportion of those part time workers would like to have full time work.
- And in volunteering, we have seen an upturn in the latest Community Life Survey, which asks people to look at how many people have formally volunteered at least once a month, and once a year, compared to the final edition of the Citizenship Survey two years before.The caveat on this data is that it is only for three quarters of the year, and that it isn’t an exact continuation of the previous survey.
- Almanac data – we had questions. How does it compare to what’s expected, what next?
- Overall govt spending pictire: fiscal mandate, AME rising, significant DEL cuts, local govt hit hardest and first. For the sector, long term trend of grants in decline, contracts growth….
- Assuming that voluntary sector’s share of government spending were to remain constant – ‘proportionate scenario’Assuming voluntary sector gained new opportunities because of open public services agenda & social value act – ‘contract winning scenario’Assuming voluntary sector experienced deeper cuts (based on Compact Voice analysis of 2011/12 LA spending data) – ‘disproportionate scenario’
- Our assessment:Some charities have won new contracts – including PBRMany charities have experienced further cuts/loss of opportunitiesOur forecast: closer to disproportionate cuts line, but charities have varied experiences