New report from the NCVO - The state and the voluntary sector

I was reading the NVCO’s new report The State and the Voluntary Sector - Recent trends in government funding and public service delivery this morning and there are some really interesting stats in there.

The third sector’s total income in 2006/07 was £33.2 billion, more than three times that of the car manufacturing industry. Just under a third of this (£12 billion) comes from the public sector. Although this is only 2% of the total spending on public services, the increase in the proportion of public service spending going to the third sector is larger than the total increase in public service spending over the last few years.

Contract income is becoming increasingly important to the sector. Grants worth £4.2 billion and contracts worth £7.8 billion were awarded in 2006/07, the largest proportion, £4.2 billion going to health and social care organisations.

The study also shows that statutory income is much more likely to be received by larger organisations - over three-quarters of public sector income goes to organisations with an annual turnover of over £1 million. This is a problem for smaller organisations - something that we are trying to redress with the creation of 3SC, which bids for large public sector contracts on behalf of third sector delivery organisations.

Finally, social enterprises are much more likely to receive statutory income (21% of them do) than other third sector organisations (13%) and are much more likely to be engaged in public service delivery.

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