NCVO reports on scale of UK voluntary sector

Howard Lake | 5 June 2002 | News

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) next week publishes the UK Voluntary Sector Alamanac 2002, its bi-annual snapshot of the voluntary sector.

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) next week publishes the UK Voluntary Sector Alamanac 2002, its bi-annual snapshot of the voluntary sector.

It reveals that the sector’s income increased from £14.2 billion in 1998-99 to £16.5 billion in 2000-01, while expenditure grew even faster from £13.4 billion to £15 billion over the same period.

Income from government contracts rose by £3m, from 15.3% of total income to 16.1%. Income from grants and donations dropped from 46.1% to 43.6%. The percentage of donations received as personal donations also fell from 20.2% to 19.7%.

Charities are clearly trying to diversify their income: income from the sale of goods and services incrased from £4.8 billion to £5.5 billion, from 33.7% of total income to 35.1%.

Fundraising and publicity expenditure has jumped from £398m to £825m, but still accounts for only 5.5% of total expenditure.

Charity funds investment increased by £400m to £3.3 billion.

The sector’s contrasts are still extreme. The top 200 charities, or 0.4% of the sector, generate over a third of the sector’s total income. Meanwhile 75% of all charities raise less than £100,000 a year each.

Read Charities’ sales by Alison Benjamin at SocietyGuardian. (11/1/2002)

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.