Civil society data partnerships: open data, grants data and the funding base of the third sector 2004-2015

Mohan, John and Kane, David and Rahal, Charles (2019). Civil society data partnerships: open data, grants data and the funding base of the third sector 2004-2015. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852652

The aim of this project is to provide comprehensive data on funding flows to third sector organisations in England. We exploit the growing body of data being made available on grant making to voluntary organisations, and on public procurement, to build resources which will allow researchers to improve understanding of the funding mix of third sector organisations. The resources we create will help third sector organisations and policy makers because it will improve their understanding of their environment, particularly funding opportunities and also potential competitors or collaborators. This means they will be able to better support their beneficiaries by, for example, targeting their services or co-operating with similar organisations. The data will meet administrative and research challenges facing the sector by providing a "spine" for the growing number of open data initiatives. This new data infrastructure will add new value to existing UK social science infrastructure, and will be able to be reused by academic and non-academic researchers (such as those working in government). This data will also help the Office for National Statistics as they work to improve coverage of non-profit organisations in the National Accounts (see letters of support). It is consistent with ESRC's strategic priorities such as a "Vibrant and fair society", in that it significantly enhances understanding of the resources of third sector organisations. Building on TSRC/NCVO's existing databases, generated by combining registers of charities and the Companies House register of companies, we have developed novel data sources for the third sector in the following way. 1. we will download local authority and clinical commissioning group (CCG) data for England, usually available from relevant authorities on a monthly basis; 2. match the CCG data to our existing third sector databases using string matching techniques, and make available the results; 3. match the local authority procurement data to the same databases; 4. capture listings of grants made by charitable funders to organisations in England, such as those lists of grant recipients collated by the "360 Giving"; initiative which is encouraging grant makers to open up data about who they fund but we will work with other major funders. Published data already includes several hundred thousand awards made to voluntary organisations. the sheer scale and ambition of this project is unprecedented anywhere in the world. it provides much greater granular data on relationships between public sector agencies and those from whom they are commissioning services than is possible anywhere else. The project represents an excellent example of a partnership between a strong academic research centre, TSRC, and a high-profile national voluntary organisation, NCVO, in which research is designed and developed with the needs of user and academic communities equally in mind.

Data description (abstract)

Data collection comprising information about public sector procurement from Local Authorities in the UK and Clinical Commissioning Groups in England from 2013-15, funding awards made by foundations and charitable funders, and data on recipient organisations, mainly charities and social enterprises. Data were sourced from a large number of local authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups by downloading the datasets from authority websites. Each of the datasets were then cleaned, including identifying missing or incomplete rows andconverting dates into a standard format. This data collection represents a formidable resource which has the potential to inform analyses of the distribution of funding to third sector organisations in the form of grants from foundations, government and others; to support further analytical work on the effects of such grants on the subsequent financial trajectories of organisations; to underpin investigations of the extent to which third sector organisations are in receipt of contracts from public sector agencies; and to analyse the balance between public and private provision of welfare services.

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