Influence, Impact and Publications

TSRC has been engaged in various historical pieces of work which have received attention and contributed to informing policy at the highest level. The impact of this work was on public, professional and policy discussion of the role of third sector organisations in British society and politics.

The impact was on government officials, third sector staff and a wider range of stakeholders, all concerns with how relationships between the state and the voluntary sector have evolved, about how historical evidence has been used, and how examples of good practice from the past might be replicated in the future.

While TSRC was not initially commissioned to conduct historical work, stakeholders found our insights from historical projects valuable in order to help them contextualise important changes, such as the impact of recession (2008-9) and the ramifications of the advent of the Coalition government in 2010.

Our first example was work we conducted on the potential impacts of the 2008-9 recession, at which point the databases we have constructed on the sector did not exist, so there was no real evidence base to which practitioners might turn for guidance. However, Mohan’s previous work on hospital finances in inter-war Britain, combined with an overview of relevant data for the USA in the 20th century, provided the basis of a presentation to senior stakeholders at a third sector / government “recession summit” in 2009, publicised via History and Policy and summarised, reaching a wider audience, in the Guardian. It is our understanding that these contributions featured in discussions of government support for the sector in 2008-9 which led to packages of support for charities and social enterprises.

Our second example was involvement in invited discussions in the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit in 2010. The Unit wished to explore the evidence base around whether or not there were precedents for substantial shifts in the balance between statutory and voluntary initiative in the provision of welfare services. By this point TSRC had reviewed considerable bodies of evidence regarding long-run trends in volunteering and in the formation of voluntary organisations, demonstrating – in some measure confirming quantitatively some previous verdicts – that the post-war advance of the welfare state had in fact been followed by a steady increase in the formation of new organisations. As well as being disseminated via History and Policy the findings were also discussed at a British Academy seminar, attended by a number of prominent third sector personnel.

A third illustration was the involvement of John Mohan in the Inquiry established following the revelations of the criminal activities of Jimmy Savile in various NHS hospitals. The purpose of the Inquiry was to provide oversight of the investigations of individual hospitals and to provide guidance to the NHS as to lessons to be learned from the investigations. Again brokered by History and Policy, we were asked to contribute to an evidence session including a number of scholars that enabled the Inquiry to deepen its knowledge of the context in which Savile had operated. In our case, the evidence concerned the contemporary history of charitable fundraising in the NHS. The Inquiry lead, Kate Lampard, highlighted the value of the academic evidence, which had “added significantly to the rigour, thoroughness and fairness of their investigation reports. 'The historians were quickly able to set the historical context for the allegations about Savile’s behaviour, and do so in a way that was easy to understand and tailored to what we needed.'

Fourthly, we developed an influential longitudinal study of voluntary action in conjunction with Mass Observation, leading to a major book on the theme of continuity and change in volunteering, which has featured widely in the media, gaining coverage in Third Sector and also in The Conversation, as well as in evidence to Parliamentary Select Committees, such as the Lords Committee on charities (2016) in which Mohan gave evidence before the committee. The findings are relevant to understandings of how best to promote engagement in volunteering by citizens.

Our last example is of using historical evidence about attitudes to voluntary action and voluntary organisations, drawing again on Mass Observation and on other sources from the 1940s, in an ESRC-funded project on which TSRC colleagues Angela Ellis Paine, Rob Macmillan and Rose Lindsey were applicants. This has resulted in an end-of-project meeting at the House of Lords, hosted by Baroness Jill Pitkeathley, to reflect on the themes of continuity and change in the experience of individual voluntary organisations. Work by Mohan and Breeze (Kent) also generated a further publication with History and Policy, on attitudes to charitable giving and the continuities between the 1940s and the present day, which has received widespread coverage.

Over the past 20 years, Third Sector Organisations (TSOs) in the UK have faced increasing pressure from public funders to demonstrate outcomes and added value through systematic impact assessment. Early research by the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) identified major challenges: TSOs often lacked the capability and reliable tools to measure social impact effectively.

To address this, TSRC conducted cross-institutional research (Universities of Birmingham, Middlesex, and Southampton) between 2009–2012. This work critically reviewed existing evaluation techniques, especially Social Return on Investment (SROI), and explored TSOs’ perceptions and practices. Findings revealed flexibility in tool use but also confusion and risks, particularly with comparing SROI results across organisations.

TSRC’s efforts included:

• Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs), workshops, and collaborations with stakeholders like New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) and NCVO.
• Development of guidance and a practice manual, downloaded by over 1,100 smaller TSOs.
• Training for more than 200 TSOs, improving awareness and confidence in impact measurement.

Impact:
The research significantly influenced sector practices, leading to:

• Widespread adoption of social impact measurement.
• Improved tools and guidance for TSOs.
• More informed funder expectations.
• Direct engagement with charities such as Citizens Advice.

Influencing impacts on practice has included:

• Collaborative development (with The Guild) of an on-line Guide to improving SROI practice (taken up by over 1,100 organisations).
• Sector knowledge exchange through a TSB Knowledge Transfer Partnership involving 14 training courses for over 200 organisations.
• The research has also been drawn on in individual organisational support including helping Citizens Advice in England and Wales develop impact assessment approaches (2010-11).
• TSRC research harnessed in the Cabinet Office funded Inspiring Impact programme (2011-13) of New Philanthropy Capital to encourage shared approaches to impact measurement.

Wider practice impacts are indicated by the fact that the TSRC working paper (2011) was downloaded nearly 4,000 times.

Influencing policy impacts have included:

• The TSRC theme lead being appointed to the Cabinet Office’s advisory panel on Measuring Social Value and supporting the Cabinet Office with further policy research and advice aimed at a revised policy on social impacts measurement.
• With associated research by DEMOS, a change in government policy that replaced an SROI preference with an emphasis on measuring impact with a multi-faceted approach which recognised the need for a range of approaches.
• Policy briefings and dialogue with funders including the Big Lottery Fund (2010), DFID (2012), and Big Society Capital (2013)
• Advice to Greater London Authority and NESTA (2013) resulting in setting up Project Oracle to build the evidence base on what works in youth policy.

This research has also led to researchers in the TSRC theme leading a number of externally funded impact assessment studies for specific organisations and their use in shaping policy for future direction of programmes and funding organisations.

User experience

New Philanthropy Capital observed:

“The [TSRC] collaboration made all the difference … it put our survey on solid ground. This showed lots of confusion in the sector … and helped TSOs look more critically at what they were doing and how to do it better”.

Of the subsequent awareness raising and new tools one charity reflected:

“ … we were under pressure to measure impact but we could only use it [SROI] because we bought in help. It was costly and not sustainable but the [TSRC] research showed there were other ways … and it was OK to pick and mix the tools."

Lessons learnt

Lessons learned for generating impact have emphasised the value of:

• Multi-disciplinary approaches to translating conceptual findings into practical value.
• Multi-partner activity to widen user engagement and stakeholder dialogue.
• Developing an evidence-base from an opportunistic approach to harnessing multiple funding.
• Closely inter-relating research with progressive knowledge exchange to test findings and build sector awareness, expectations and utility
• Use of multiple methods of communications to translate research and its implications and to increase user exposure and engagement.

Overall, TSRC’s work bridged a critical gap in research and practice, enabling TSOs to better demonstrate their effectiveness and secure resources.

The UK charity sector is highly diverse but historically lacked reliable cross-sector financial data. After a failed non-profit initiative, the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) partnered with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) to create a robust database of nearly 10,000 charities, capturing detailed financial information for longitudinal analysis. This became a key legacy for TSRC, informing policy and even contributing to national accounts via the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

An early impact was TSRC’s role in the debate on charity executive pay. In 2013, TSRC used its data to conduct rigorous statistical analysis of remuneration disclosures (staff earning over £60,000), presenting evidence to the House of Commons Public Administration Committee and underpinning NCVO’s top pay inquiry. TSRC’s findings revealed that media criticism was based on flawed, unrepresentative data. Their evidence shifted the tone of the debate, professionalised pay-setting practices, and informed NCVO’s guidance on executive pay. Sector leaders praised TSRC for turning a “fact-free debate” into one grounded in robust evidence.

Impact:

• Influenced public policy and sector practices on charity executive pay.
• Provided trusted, independent analysis widely disseminated across the sector.
• Strengthened credibility and informed NCVO guidance and parliamentary scrutiny.

Remuneration data for the sector was partial and (where gathered by recruitment agencies or sector trade bodies) often subject to restrictions on its use for research purposes. Recognising the need for robust evidence, NCVO announced in 2013 an independent Inquiry into Charities Senior Executive Pay, to report early the next year. Shortly after, the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) of the House of Commons also announced a review on charity chief executive pay. TSRC contributed directly to both by:

• Developing a special analysis of the TSRC-NCVO data (from 2012) of executive pay across multiple charities
• Extrapolating survey data to cross-sector estimates of pay distribution.
• Providing a stand-alone, policy directed and independent analysis showing sharp top pay distinctions between smaller charities, many of which have no paid staff at all, and (a few) larger charities.
• Providing also for disaggregated evidence and a sophisticated statistical analysis of ‘outlier distortions’ to top pay.

Submitted as written TSRC evidence to PAC, this was also drawn on in witness testimony by the NCVO Chair in December 2013. Subsequently, Prof John Mohan of TSRC submitted similar evidence to the House of Lords Committee on Charities in 2017. The TSRC analysis showed:

• Under 1% of charities paid any senior manager over £60,000 pa.
• Excluding anomalous or exceptional cases substantially reduced the average level of sector remuneration; indicating media reports had been disproportionately influenced by a handful of atypical top pay packages from larger charities.
• Gross top pay (for executives), adjusted to organisation size, was 25% lower across the charitable sector than the private sector
• A broader view of remuneration (beyond base salary) which took into account executive bonuses and other remuneration estimated that charity senior executives were paid 45% less than those in the private sector.

TSRC’s impact, alongside other contributions to PAC, and use in the subsequent NCVO inquiry report, informed and helped change the tone of the [policy] debate. With small charities among the critics of high executive pay, it also provided a baseline informing the sector about itself; influencing Charity Boards and Trustees. A 2013 feature on TSRC evidence in the Third Sector journal was one of the most widely downloaded articles from that journal in 2013. The TSRC analysis also helped inform associated NCVO Guidance to trustees on setting remuneration.

NCVO also acknowledges that the TSRC evidence, combined with their own Inquiry, to see Trustees and Management Boards of some of the larger charities start to rethink issues of transparency in pay policy for executives, and remuneration strategy. At least one very large charitable body has completely restructured its pay differentials and non-salary remuneration as a result; others were likely to be in the process of doing so.

User experience

The TSRC contribution was highly valued with NCVO commenting it:

“The TSRC evidence massively contributed to a public interest issue; influencing PAC thinking. It enabled us to engage with the media, confidently, with authority … and to go beyond ‘you would say that wouldn’t you scepticism’ ”.

New Philanthropy Capital also observed:

“The sector was vulnerable to top pay critics … before [TSRC] it did not have the ability to counter criticism”.

It has also contributed to a longer term impact by shifting the pay debate to the more substantive challenges of low pay among charities.

Lessons learnt

The TSRC experience highlighted the value of a partnership approach which drew on different skills sets in the co-production (with NCVO and others) of the cross-sector database. The ‘top pay’ analyses achieved its impacts by:

• Providing focused and credible evidence for multiple ‘users’.
• Contributing independent and expert evidence-based analysis targeted at a specific policy debate.
• Combining robust cross-sector data, independent analysis, and robust statistical analysis of distributions and variance with TSRC reputation for applied analysis of the sector.
• Working across stakeholders to help in communicating evidence to meet policy-makers needs – in parliament, regulators and individual charities.

The experience also showed that instrumental impacts such as on the top pay debate can also have longer term conceptual impacts. As a result of the analysis, and turning policy makers attention away from what was a misplaced focus on senior executive remuneration, the TSRC data has provided a new focus on wider pay distributions in the sector. This has opened another issue for the sector to start to address, namely the issue of low pay in the sector, which has attracted the interest of the House of Lords Committee on Charities in its wide-ranging 2017 Report.

The Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) made public service delivery a core research focus, identifying criminal justice as a key area. Initial work in 2010 mapped the voluntary sector’s role with offenders, leading to collaboration with Clinks during major probation service reforms under the Government’s Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) agenda (2013 onward). The reforms aimed to increase voluntary sector involvement, but data on participation were lacking. Clinks commissioned TSRC to conduct three surveys (2013–2017), producing the first robust sector-level data on charitable organisations in probation supply chains.

Impact:

• TSRC-Clinks research informed the National Audit Office’s 2016 review of TR and parliamentary scrutiny by the Public Accounts Committee and Justice Select Committee.
• Findings highlighted slow reform, poor communication, and limited diversity in supply chains, influencing Ministry of Justice policy discussions.
• Reports such as Early Doors (2015) and Change & Challenge (2016) shaped sector advocacy and evidence-based engagement.
• TSRC’s independence and flexible approach gave credibility to Clinks’ policy work and strengthened voluntary sector representation in criminal justice reform debates.

Influencing impacts on public policy and policymakers have included:

• National Audit Office requesting use of the data to inform their 2016 review of the Transforming Rehabilitation programme.
• Written evidence submission to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee in 2016. Recommendations from this contribution (informed by the Change & Challenge report) were subsequently cited within the PAC Transforming rehabilitation Seventeenth Report of Session 2016–17, HC 484 (London, House of Commons).
• Oral evidence presentation to the House of Commons Justice Select Committee in 2014.
• Dialogue with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation and the Prison Inspectorate, particularly around the ‘Through the Gate’ Policy.
• Dialogue with Ministry of Justice to discuss the survey combined with requests to add additional questions.
• Submissions to opposition party consultations around the third sector and criminal justice.
• Dialogue with charitable foundations (an unexpected audience) after it was discovered that many expressed concerns over their role in this area of provision.

User experience

Clinks observed:

“[One of the reasons] for partnering with TSRC was that we wanted to make absolutely clear to people like the Ministry of Justice, new probation providers and the National Probation Service was that we were doing this as an enquiry… and we were getting someone independent to do the analysis who knew what they were doing and this wasn’t anecdotal … they [TSRC] brought that to the table, we’re not a research organisation so we needed that specialist support.”

As a result of the work, Clinks noted that there had also been a change over time in attitude towards the sector evidence:

“…when we started out the Ministry of Justice were quite sceptical and maybe a bit nervous that we were doing this, but in the run up to this more recent survey they actually invited us in to talk about the questions we were going to ask and see if they could get a couple of questions included in things they were interested in, so in terms of measuring success I see that as the difference between having to get around the table or being invited to the table.”

Lessons learnt

Lessons learned for generating impact have emphasised the value of:

• The willingness of the research team to adopt a flexible approach in order to work with realities of a rapidly changing policy landscape and changing requirements of a partner organisation.
• The value of genuine co-produced research where both partners engage in a learning process.
• A flexible response to reporting and communications to meet opportunities presented by the developing policy agenda, and policy makers’ needs.
• Working with a specialist academic team from a dedicated research centre focused on the sector, expedited the research minimising the time needed to get the project up and running.
• Engaging with a funded research centre with a broader remit representing greater value for money as an important issue for the charitable sector.

Given the policy salience of our work on voluntarism and voluntary organisations, we have featured on Radio 4 on a number of occasions, listed chronologically below.

Thinking Allowed, 22nd November 2010 – John Mohan discussed TSRC’s work on the civic core (the idea that the great bulk of pro-social behaviours such as volunteering and giving to charity are concentrated among small proportions of the population: (this was also discussed on Hard Talk, 20th December 2010, interview with Sir Stuart Etherington).

You and Yours, 16th June 2011 – John Mohan on the potential impact of public funding cuts on charities, drawing on work he and David Clifford had done for the previous year’s Comprehensive Spending Review, published as a TSRC working paper and in revised form in Urban Studies.

BBC R4 Today programme, 4th October 2011: the 8.10 slot featured the then PM, David Cameron, putting TSRC’s civic core data to him as an illustration of the challenges his “Big Society” ideas faced, to which he responds, somewhat dodging the question, by asserting that the “decline in volunteering has stopped”. Unfortunately the episode is no longer available - the link is https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015ck8w - so you’ll have to take our word for it although you can read a summary of the interview

BBC R4 Documentary, “How new is the ‘new’ philanthropy”, 26th December 2011 - John Mohan was interviewed about historical precedents in the study of the distribution of charitable resources (and also playing the piano…it’s a long story which is explained in the recording)

World at One, 4th September 2012, John Mohan interviewed on the impact of the London Olympics on volunteering.

Analysis, 20th October 2013: John Mohan interviewed on the changing funding mix of charities

Thinking Allowed, 14th March 2016, John Mohan discussed his book, The Logic of Charity.

Our work has featured on numerous occasions in Parliament – below we give some of the more prominent examples.

Quoted in debates or answers to questions

Baroness Warsi, House of Lords, 11 May 2011, referred to the civic core analysis by John Mohan.

Role of the voluntary sector in criminal justice: 5 December 2013, Baroness Massey;

Answers to questions

Public funding of charities: 22 October 2010, N Hurd, MP; 1 November 2010, N Hurd MP; 22 November 2010, N Hurd MP; 1 December 2010, N Hurd MP; 16 December, 2010, N Hurd MP; 17 March 2011, N Hurd MP.

At the time, Nick Hurd was the Coalition Government Minister for Civil Society, and he was acknowledging the input of research by TSRC to deliberations for the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review. Our work had identified the distribution of organisations most likely to be exposed to funding reductions in the context of the government’s austerity measures. This research was acknowledged as forming an input into the Government’s decision to allocate a £100Mn “transition fund” to the voluntary sector, to bail out organisations at risk of substantial public funding cuts.

Quoted in reports

By the Public Administration Select Committee, report on The Big Society, 2012, at paragraphs 34, 45, 46. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubadm/902/902.pdf.

House of Lords Committee on charities, 2017, at paragraphs 48, 90, 121, 293, 305.

A significant investment such as TSRC ought to make an impact through developing research capacity and over twenty former research staff and students in TSRC have gone on to take up academic appointments in British and overseas universities.

Reflecting our approach to research – particularly to collaboration with non-academic partners – we are particularly proud that former PhD students and staff have gone on to research and policy roles in major voluntary organisations. Examples include positions as directors of research / policy in the Church Urban Fund, Scope and the National Development Team for Inclusion; policy roles in NCVO and the Charity Finance Group; and CEO positions in Volunteering New Zealand and the Kent Refugee Action Network.

A direct example of capacity-building through our activities has been that a number of early career researchers and academic staff involved in our work have subsequent obtained funding or other research recognition for work in our field. The following provide examples:

A Fulbright Scholarship (2010), awarded to Rosie Meek, drawing on her TSRC-funded work on the role of third sector in criminal justice.

Funding for an ESRC Seminar series on social enterprise – Simon Teasdale 2012 (with Nicholls, Oxford) – this provided a space for dialogue between social enterprise practitioners and academics to develop an agenda for critical research on social enterprise.

An ESRC Future leaders award 2013 to David Clifford - these awards recognise a small number of individuals across the social sciences who are no more than four years from completing their PhD. David’s research explored new data from the Charity Commission regarding the overseas activities of English and Welsh charities.

An ESRC knowledge exchange project (2013-14) exploring change in the third sector: Rob Macmillan, working with the Timescapes project at the University of Leeds, brought together various prominent research projects with a shared concern about longitudinal change in the third sector, along with practitioners, to reflect on how the findings could inform practice.

Two awards from the ESRC Secondary Data Analysis initiative, the first (2013-4) for a study of Continuity and change in volunteering – Rose Lindsey and Sarah Bulloch (an award which resulted in a major monograph, Continuity and change in voluntary action, published in 2018). This initiated a long-running research collaboration with the social research charity, Mass Observation, which has resulted in two further awards from ESRC. One of them developed the use of Mass Observation as a research resource by producing an online version of Mass Observation’s database about its volunteer writers, whose contributions are a major resource for social scientists and historians. A further award from ESRC (2017-19) on Discourses of Voluntary Action involved Macmillan and Ellis Paine plus various collaborators. The project investigates the debates that have taken place on the role, position and contribution of voluntary action in the provision of welfare in the 1940s and 2010s, and it will contribute to new understandings of voluntary action and to practical action for third sector organisations and policy makers.

Involvement in a major MRC-funded project, Social enterprise as a public health intervention, by Simon Teasdale (former TSRC researcher, 2008-13, now holds a chair at Glasgow Caledonian).

Other significant research projects in which our early-career staff have played central roles include an extension from ESRC of our longitudinal work which tracks a small number of third sector organisations since 2009, involving Rob Macmillan, Angela Ellis Paine, and John Mohan; work funded by NIHR on role of the voluntary sector in mental health crisis care (2016-19), with James Rees, now at the Open University, and a former research fellow at TSRC; and a project led by James Rees, funded by the Lloyds Bank Foundation (2016) on the value of small and medium-sized voluntary organisations, a project which also involved Chris Damm and Vita Terry, former ESRC-funded PhD students at TSRC).

A prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize (2017), awarded to David Clifford for the further development of his large-scale quantitative work on organisational change in the third sector, using TSRC datasets which he played a significant role in creating.

An award from the Marsden Fund, New Zealand (2017) to Alice Mills (formerly TSRC, now at the University of Auckland) on supporting ex-offenders in desistance, building on her work with TSRC.

Charles Rahal, now at Oxford, who has a British Academy postdoc fellowship which develops and extends the work he did with TSRC on the ESRC-funded civil society data partnerships projects – he is developing refined procedures for linking together open data on public sector procurement to financial data on third sector organisations.

This page shows the full ongoing series of TSRC Working Papers, together with the Briefing Papers that precede them where applicable. The papers may be downloaded and they are all in PDF format.

2019

Paper 145: Angela Ellis Paine and Rob Macmillan

• Telling tales of commissioning: insights from a qualitative longitudinal study of third sector organisations (briefing paper)
• Telling tales of commissioning: insights from a qualitative longitudinal study of third sector organisations (working paper)

Paper 144: Emma Taylor-Collins

• Working-class girls and youth social action: ‘hope labour’?

2018

Paper 143: Angus McCabe

• Ten Years Below the Radar: Reflections on Voluntary and Community Action Working paper

Paper 142: Penny Lawrence

• Whither large International Non-Governmental Organisations? Working paper

Paper 141: Phil Ware

• Walking on Treacle: Black and Minority Ethnic Groups’ Experiences of Community Capacity Building Briefing Paper
• Walking on Treacle: Black and Minority Ethnic Groups’ Experiences of Community Capacity Building Working paper

2017

Paper 140: Kevin Harris and Angus McCabe

• Community Action and Social Media: Trouble in Utopia? Briefing paper
• Community Action and Social Media: Trouble in Utopia? Working paper

Paper 139: Kevin Harris and Angus McCabe

• Community Action and Social Media - A review of the literature Working Paper Working paper

2016

Paper 138: Helen Kara

• The Story of G:Up; a regional third sector network Working paper

Paper 137: Angus McCabe, Heather Buckingham and Steve Miller with Marcianne Musabyimana

• Belief in Social Action: Exploring faith groups' responses to local needs Briefing paper
• Belief in Social Action: Exploring faith groups' responses to local needs Working paper

Paper 136: Alison Gilchrist, Plowden Fellow

• Blending, braiding and balancing: combining formal and informal modes for social action Briefing paper
• Blending, braiding and balancing: combining formal and informal modes for social action Working paper

2015

Paper 135: John Mohan

• Shifting the dials? Stability, change and cohort variations in voluntary action Working paper

Paper 134: Daiga Kamerāde (September 2015)

• Third sector impacts on human resources and community: a critical review Working paper

Paper 133: Daiga Kamerāde and John Mohan (July 2015)

• Mapping community-based financial charitable support for community hospitals in England and Wales Working paper

Paper 132: Stephen McKay (July 2015)

• Accounting for the impact of the forthcoming "National Living Wage" on the third sector Briefing paper

Paper 131: Andrian Randall (July 2015)

• Challenging the destitution policy; Civil society organisations supporting destitute migrants Briefing paper
• Challenging the destitution policy; Civil society organisations supporting destitute migrants Working paper

Paper 130: Phil Ware. (June 2015)

• 'Black people don't drink tea...'The experience of Rural Black and Minority Ethnic Community Groups in England Working paper
• 'Black people don't drink tea...'The experience of Rural Black and Minority Ethnic Community Groups in England Briefing paper

Discussion Paper:

• Co-producing knowledge with the Below the Radar communities: Factionalism, commodification or partnership? A Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Case Study (January 2015) (PDF)

Paper 129 Jenny Phillimore and Angus McCabe (January 2015)

Luck, passion, networks and skills: recipe for action below the radar? by Jenny Phillimore and Angus McCabe (January 2015)

2014

Paper 128 Angela Ellis-Paine with Rebecca Taylor, Catherine Needham, Rosemary Littlechild and Heather Buckingham (October 2014)

Maximising older people's use of personal budgets: Programme evaluation summary Briefing paper

Paper 127: Building capabilities in the voluntary sector: A review of the market, by Chris Dayson and Elizabeth Sanderson (September 2014)
Working Paper (PDF)

Paper 126: Third sector partnerships and capability building: What the evidence tells us, by Helen Kara (September 2014)
Working Paper (PDF)

Paper 125: Building capabilities in the voluntary sector: What the evidence tells us, by Rob Macmillan and Angela Ellis-Paine, with Helen Kara, Chris Dayson, Elizabeth Sanderson and Peter Wells (September 2014)
Research report (PDF) | Briefing paper (PDF)

Paper 124: Financing social ventures and the demand for social investment, by Fergus Lyon and Rob Baldock (June 2014)
Working Paper (PDF, 324KB)

Paper 123: From outcomes-based commissioning to social value? Implications for performance managing the third sector, by Jenny Harlock (June 2014)
Working Paper (PDF, 262KB)

Paper 122: Public sector commissioning of local mental health services from the third sector, James Rees, Robin Miller and Heather Buckingham (May 2014)
Working Paper (PDF, 402KB)

Paper 121: Who’s speaking for whom? Exploring issues of third sector leadership, leverage and legitimacy, Heather Buckingham, Angela Ellis Paine, Pete Alcock, Jeremy Kendall and Rob Macmillan (April 2014)
Working Paper (PDF, 218KB)

Paper 120: Reviewing the literature on pay and non-standard employment, taking a cross sector perspective, Rebecca Taylor, Daiga Kamerāde, Stephen McKay (April 2014)
Working Paper (PDF, 272KB)

Paper 119: Fifty at fifty: long term patterns of participation and volunteering among the 1958 NCDS Cohort at age 50, Katherine Brookfield, Jane Parry and Vicki Bolton (February 2014)
Working Paper (PDF, 734KB)

Paper 118: A brave new world for voluntary sector infrastructure? Vouchers, markets and demand led capacity building, Caron Walton and Rob Macmillan (March 2014)
Working Paper (PDF, 599KB)

Paper 117: Evidence and transparency in the open public services reform: perspectives for the third sector, Malin Arvidson (March 2014)
Working Paper (PDF, 357KB)

Paper 116: A review of rural community organising in England, James Derounian
Briefing Paper (PDF, 128KB) | Working Paper (PDF, 291KB)

2013

Paper 115: Support for all in the UK Work Programme? Differential payments, same old problem..., James Rees, Adam Whitworth and Eleanor Carter (December 2013)
Working Paper (PDF, 584KB)

Paper 114: Social innovation, co-operation and competition: inter-organisational relations for social enterprises in the delivery of public services, Fergus Lyon (November 2013)
Working Paper

Paper 113: Patterns of social capital, voluntary activity and area deprivation in England, Andrew McCulloch, John Mohan, and Peter Smith (November 2013)
Briefing Paper

Paper 112: Community capital and the role of the state: an empowering approach to personalisation, Patricia A. Jones (October 2013)
Working paper

Paper 111: Measuring impact: how can third sector organisations make sense of a rapidly expanding marketplace of tools?, Lindsey Metcalf (October 2013)
Working paper

Paper 110: Putting evaluations to use: from measuring to endorsing social value, Marlin Arvidson and Helen Kara (October 2013)
Working paper

Paper 109: The third sector in unsettled times: a field guide, Rob Macmillan, Rebecca Taylor, Malin Arvidson, Andri Soteri-Proctor, and Simon Teasdale (August 2013)
Working paper

Paper 108: Beyond green niches? Growth strategies of environmentally-motivated social enterprises, Ian Vickers and Fergus Lyon (August 2013)
Working paper

Paper 107: Gender balance in the governance of social enterprise, Fergus Lyon and Anne Humbert (August 2013)
Working paper

Paper 106: Impact measurement practice in the UK third sector: a review of emerging evidence, Dr Jenny Harlock (August 2013)
Working paper

Paper 105: Clarity, communication and reciprocity: key ingredients for productive relationships with voluntary organisations in the new health and social care commissioning environment, Heather Buckingham (July 2013)
Briefing paper

Paper 104: Personalisation: a new dawn or the end of the road for third sector support for carers?, Robin Miller and Mary Larkin (July 2013)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 103: “Very small, very quiet, a whisper” – Black and Minority Ethnic groups: voice and influence, Phil Ware (July/October 2013)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 102: What factors predict volunteering among youths in the UK? Matthew Bennett and Meenakshi Parameshwaran (August 2013)
Briefing paper

Paper 101: Decoupling the state and the third sector? The ‘Big Society’ as a spontaneous order, Rob Macmillan (July 2013)
Working paper

Paper 100: Does volunteering improve employability? Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey Angela Ellis Paine, Stephen McKay and Domenico Moro (July 2013)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 99: Oil and water rarely mix: exploring the relative stability of non-profit revenue mixes over time, Simon Teasdale, Janelle Kerlin, Dennis Young and Jung In Soh (June 2013).
Working paper

Paper 98: Mapping the environmental third sector in England, David Clifford, Frida Geyne Rajme, Graham Smith, Rebecca Edwards, Milena Buchs and Clare Saunders (June 2013).
Working paper

Paper 97: International insights into job creation in the social economy, Heather Buckingham and Simon Teasdale (May 2013)
Briefing paper

Paper 96: Doing emotion, doing policy; the emotional role of 'grassroots' community activists in poverty policy-making, Rosie Anderson (May 2013)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 95: What the public think of the Big Society, Dr Rose Lindsey and Dr Sarah Bulloch (April 2013)
Working paper (pdf, 597KB)

Paper 94: Scaling-up or going-viral: comparing self-help housing and community land trust facilitation, Tom Moore and David Mullins (March 2013)
Working paper (pdf, 662KB)

Discussion Paper F: Roma Civil Society: Deliberative Democracy for Change in Europe, Thomas Acton and Andrew Ryder (February 2013)
Discussion paper (pdf, 502KB)

Paper 93: Collecting and classifying data from charity accounts for England and Wales, David Kane, Jenny Clark (NCVO), David Clifford, John Mohan (TSRC), Joy Dobbs, Pete Bass (NCVO Associates) (Feb 2013)
Working paper (pdf, 470KB)

Paper 92: Does sector matter? Understanding the experiences of providers in the Work Programme James Rees, Rebecca Taylor and Chris Damm (February 2013)
Briefing paper (pdf, 136KB) | Working paper (pdf, 742KB)

Paper 91: Seeing and doing: learning, resources and social networks below the radar, Angus McCabe and Jenny Phillimore (December 2012)
Briefing paper (pdf, 169KB) | Working paper (pdf, 465KB)

Paper 90: Making sense of the Big Society: perspectives from the third sector, Rob Macmillan (January 2013)
Working paper (pdf, 406KB)

2012

Paper 89: ‘Distinction’ in the third sector, Rob Macmillan (October 2012)
Working paper (pdf, 509KB)

Research Report 88: Partnership working, James Rees, David Mullins and Tony Bovaird (October 2012)
Working paper (pdf, 1MB)

Paper 87: All Change? Surviving ‘below the radar’: community groups and activities in a Big Society, Angus McCabe and Jenny Phillimore (September 2012)
Briefing paper (pdf, 194KB) | Working paper (pdf, 537KB)

Research Report 86: Commissioning across government: review of evidence, Tony Bovaird, Helen Dickinson and Kerry Allen (Project for the National Audit Office, August 2012)
Research report (pdf, 2.88MB)

Paper 85: Moving beyond ‘refugeeness’: problematising the ‘refugee community organisation’, Teresa Piacentini (August 2012)
Briefing paper (pdf, 332KB) | Working paper (pdf, 686KB)

Paper 84: Hearing the voice of Gypsies and Travellers: the history, development and challenges of Gypsy and Traveller tenants and residents’ associations, Andrew Ryder (September 2012)
Briefing Paper (pdf, 197KB) | Working paper (pdf, 535KB)
Discussion Paper D (pdf, 548KB)

Paper 83: Innovation and social enterprise activity in third sector organisations, Celine Chew and Fergus Lyon (November 2012)
Working paper (pdf, 481KB)

Paper 82: The Big Society: a new policy environment for the third sector?, Pete Alcock (June 2012)
Working paper (PDF, 281KB)

Paper 81: Third sector organisations’ role in pro-environmental behaviour change – a review of the literature and evidence, Milena Büchs, Rebecca Edwards and Graham Smith (May 2012)
Working paper (PDF, 452KB)

Paper 80: The regional distribution of employees in the third sector in England: estimates from the National Survey of Third Sector Organisations (NSTSO), Frida Geyne-Rajme and John Mohan (June 2012)
Working paper (PDF, 347KB)

Paper 79: Scaling-up social enterprise: strategies taken from early years providers, Fergus Lyon and Heather Fernandez (April 2012)
Working paper (PDF, 367KB)

Research Report 78: From crisis to mixed picture to phoney war: tracing third sector discourse in the 2008/9 recession, Rebecca Taylor, Jane Parry and Pete Alcock (May 2012)
Briefing paper (PDF, 84KB) | Research report (PDF, 584KB)

Paper 77: Accommodation for ex-offenders: Third sector housing advice and provision, Dina Gojkovic, Alice Mills and Rosie Meek (March 2012)
Briefing paper (PDF, 95KB)| Working paper (PDF, 410KB)

Paper 76: Third sector leadership: the power of narrative, Rob Macmillan and Vic McLaren (March 2012)
Working paper (PDF, 357KB)

Paper 75: Wherever there is money there is influence: exploring BIG’s impact on the third sector, Angela Ellis Paine, Rebecca Taylor and Pete Alcock (February 2012)
Research Report | Briefing paper (PDF, 173KB)

Paper 74: A dimming of the ‘warm glow’? Are non-profit workers in the UK still more satisfied with their jobs than other workers? Chiara Paola Donegani, Stephen McKay and Domenico Moro (April 2012)
Briefing paper (PDF, 160KB)| Working paper (PDF, 663 KB)

Paper 73: The idea of a ‘civic core’: what are the overlaps between charitable giving, volunteering, and civic participation in England and Wales? Professor John Mohan and Dr Sarah L. Bulloch (February 2012)
Briefing paper (pdf, 79KB)| Working paper (pdf, 573KB)

Paper 72: Women as social entrepreneurs, Dr Anne Laure Humbert (February 2012)
Working paper (PDF, 322KB)

Paper 71: Little big societies: micro-mapping of organisations operating below the radar, Dr Andri Soteri-Proctor (December 2011)
Working paper (PDF, 825KB)

Paper 70: The third sector delivering employment services: an evidence review, Christopher Damm (January 2012)
Briefing paper (PDF, 113KB) | Working paper (PDF, 561KB)

2011

Paper 69: The marketisation of charities in England and Wales, Stephen McKay, Domenico Moro, Simon Teasdale and David Clifford (November 2011)
Working paper (PDF, 510KB)

Paper 68: The role of grassroots arts activities in communities: a scoping study, Hilary Ramsden, Jane Milling, Jenny Phillimore, Angus McCabe, Hamish Fyfe and Robin Simpson (December 2011)
Briefing paper (PDF, 127KB) | Working paper (PDF, 636KB)

Paper 67: First impressions: introducing the ‘Real Times’ third sector case studies, Dr Rob Macmillan, Dr Malin Arvidson, Dr Sobrina Edwards, Dr Andri Soteri-Proctor, Dr Rebecca Taylor and Dr Simon Teasdale (November 2011)
Working paper (PDF, 405KB)

Paper 66: Social impact measurement as an entrepreneurial process, Professor Fergus Lyon and Dr Malin Arvidson (November 2011)
Briefing paper

Paper 65: Voluntary sector organisations working at the neighbourhood level in England: patterns by local area deprivation, Dr David Clifford (August 2011)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 64: Personalisation: what will the impacts be for carers?, Dr Mary Larkin and Dr Helen Dickinson (July 2011)
Working paper

Paper 63: UK Gypsies and Travellers and the third sector, Dr Andrew Ryder (July 2011)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 62: Mapping the Big Society: perspectives from the Third Sector Research Centre, Professor John Mohan (August 2011)
Working paper

Paper 61: Offender engagement with third sector organisations: a national prison-based survey Dr Dina Gojkovic, Dr Rosie Meek and Dr Alice Mills (July 2011)
Briefing Paper | Working paper

Paper 60: Third sector partnerships for service delivery: an evidence review and research project, Dr James Rees, Professor David Mullins and Professor Tony Bovaird
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 59: Low-carbon practices: a third sector research agenda, Milena Büchs, Graham Smith and Rebecca Edwards (May 2011)
Working paper

Paper 58: The black minority ethnic third sector: a resource paper, Lucy Mayblin and Andri Soteri-Proctor (June 2011)
Working paper

Paper 57: Scoping the involvement of third sector organisations in the seven resettlement pathways for offenders, Dr Dina Gojkovic, Dr Alice Mills and Dr Rosie Meek (May 2011)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 56: Seeing things differently? The promise of qualitative longitudinal research on the third sector, Rob Macmillan (March 2011)
Working Paper

Paper 54: Self-help housing – Towards a greater role. Case Study Findings Summary to inform Consultation at St George’s House, Windsor Castle, December 2010. Professor David Mullins, Dr Patricia A. Jones and Dr Simon Teasdale (Feb 2011)
Briefing paper | Case Study Report

Paper 53: Connecting the dots: the potential for self-help housing to address homelessness, Simon Teasdale, Patricia A. Jones and David Mullins (Jan 2011)
Briefing paper | Full report

Paper 52: Social enterprise spin-outs from the English health service: a Right to Request but was anyone listening?, Robin Miller and Dr Ross Millar (Feb 2011)
Working paper

Paper 51: Below the radar in a Big Society? Reflections on community engagement, empowerment and social action in a changing policy context, Angus McCabe (Feb 2011)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 50: Hybridity, diversity and the division of labour in the third sector: what can we learn from homelessness organisations in the UK?, Heather Buckingham (Dec 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 49: The ambitions and challenges of SROI, Dr Malin Arvidson, Professor Fergus Lyon, Professor Stephen McKay and Dr Domenico Moro (Jan 2011)
Briefing paper | Working paper

2009-10

Paper 48: Social enterprise and ethnic minorities, Leandro Sepulveda, Stephen Syrett, Sara Calvo (Nov 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 47: A comparative study of changes in earned income among third sector organisations in England and Wales, and the United states, Simon Teasdale (Oct 2010)
Briefing paper

Paper 46: What's in a name? The construction of social enterprise, Simon Teasdale (Sept 2010)
Working paper

Paper 45: How dependent is the third sector on public funding? David Clifford, Frida Geyne Rajme, and John Mohan (Oct 2010)
Working paper

Paper 44: Opportunity and influence: the third sector and the 2010 general election, Jane Parry, Pete Alcock and Jeremy Kendall (Oct 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper | Full research Report

Paper 43: Approaches to measuring the scale of the social enterprise sector in the UK, Fergus Lyon, Simon Teasdale and Rob Baldock (Sept 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 42: Constituting the third sector, Pete Alcock and Jeremy Kendall (August 2010)
Working paper

Paper 41: Capturing diversity: a typology of third sector organisations’ responses to contracting based on empirical evidence from homelessness services, Heather Buckingham (Sept 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 40: Womens' leadership, employment and participation in the third sector, Simon Teasdale, Stephen McKay, Jenny Phillimore and Nina Teasdale (October 2010)
Briefing paper

Paper 39: Trends in the concentration of income among charities, Peter Backus and David Clifford (June 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 38: Are big charities becoming increasingly dominant? David Clifford and Peter Backus (June 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 37: The value of volunteering in Europe in the Noughties, Jeremy Kendall (September 2009)
Working paper

Paper 36: Mainstreaming the environment? The third sector and environmental performance management, Dr Rebecca Edwards, Professor Graham Smith, Dr Milena Büchs (June 2010)
Working paper

Paper 35: The regional geography of social enterprise in the UK: a review of recent surveys Heather Buckingham, Steven Pinch and Peter Sunley (July 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 34: The role of the third sector in work with offenders: the perceptions of criminal justice and third sector stakeholders, Rosie Meek, Dina Gojkovic and Alice Mills (May 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 33: Understanding the distinctiveness of small scale third sector activity, Jenny Phillimore and Angus McCabe (May 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 32: Partnership and mainstreaming, Professor Pete Alcock (May 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 31: Black boxes in the wreckage? Making sense of failure in a social enterprise, Duncan Scott (March 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 30: The personalisation agenda, Helen Dickinson (March 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 29: Below the radar: a summary review of the literature, Angus McCabe, Jenny Phillimore and Lucy Mayblin (January 2010)
Briefing Paper | Working paper

Paper 28: The growing workforce in the voluntary and community sectors, Domenico Moro and Stephen McKay (February 2010)
Briefing paper

Paper 27: Impact and evaluation of the third sector, Malin Arvidson (December 2009)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 26: Business or third sector, Andrea Westall (December 2009)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 25: Value and the third sector, Andrea Westall (December 2009)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 24: A strategic unity, Pete Alcock (March 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 23: The contradictory faces of social enterprise, Simon Teasdale (December 2009)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 22: Social enterprise and the environment, Ian Vickers (February 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 20: The third sector delivering public services: an evidence review, Rob Macmillan (July 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 19: Housing scoping papers: homelessness advice and support, Ricky Joseph (November 2010)
Briefing paper

Paper 18: Housing scoping papers: the tenants' and community movement, Patricia A Jones (January 2010)
Briefing paper

Paper 17: Cooperative and mutual housing in the social rented sector, Rob Rowlands (August 2010)
Briefing paper

Paper 16: Housing scoping paper: housing associations, David Mullins (November 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 15: Outsider, missing link or panacea? The place of social enterprise (with)in and in relation to the Third Sector, Leandro Sepulveda (November 2009)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 14: Economic analysis and the third sector, Andrea Westall (November 2010)
Briefing Paper | Working paper

Paper 13: Losing political innocence, Jeremy Kendall (November 2009)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 12: User and community co-production of public services: fad or fact, nuisance or necessity?, Tony Bovaird (October 2009)
Briefing paper

Paper 11: Housing scoping papers: self-help housing, David Mullins (October 2009)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 10: Housing scoping papers: overview, David Mullins, Patricia A Jones, Ricky Joseph, Rob Rowlands and Simon Teasdale (November 2010)
Briefing paper

Paper 8: Exploring below the radar: issues of themes and focus, Angus McCabe and Jenny Phillimore (August 2009)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 7: Measuring the value of social and community impact (the role of social enterprises in public services), Fergus Lyon (August 2009)
Full paper

Paper 6: Individual voluntary participation in the UK, Dr. Laura Staetsky (May 2011)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 5: Innovation in the homeless field: how does social enterprise respond to the needs of homeless people?, Simon Teasdale (September 2009)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 4: Mapping social enterprises: past approaches, challenges and future directions, Fergus Lyon and Dr Leandro Sepulveda (August 2009)
Briefing paper

Paper 3: Can social enterprise address social exclusion? Evidence from an inner city community, Simon Teasdale (September 2009)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 2: Devolution or divergence? Third Sector Policy across the UK since 2000, Pete Alcock (August 2010)
Briefing paper | Working paper

Paper 1: Research approach and strategy of TSRC, Pete Alcock (August 2009)
Briefing paper

Articles from TSRC authors, A-Z by first author surname:

Alcock, P. (2010a) ‘A strategic unity: defining the third sector in the UK’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.1 (1).

Alcock, P. (2010b) ‘Building the Big Society: a new policy environment for the third sector in England’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.1 (3).

Alcock, P. (2012) ‘New policy spaces: the impact of devolution on third sector policy in the UK’, Social Policy and Administration, Vol.46 (2).

Alcock, P. and Kendall, J. (2011) 'Constituting the third sector: processes of decontestation and contention under the UK Labour Governments In England’, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Non-profit Organizations, Vol.22 (3).

Alcock, P., Kendall, J. and Parry, J. (2011) ‘From the third sector to the Big Society: consensus or contention in the 2010 UK General Election?’ Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.3 (3).

Arvidson, M., Lyon, F., McKay, S., Domenico, M. (2013) ‘Valuing the social? The nature and controversies of measuring Social Return on Investment (SROI)’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.4 (1).

Bovaird, T. (2013) ‘Attributing outcomes to social policy interventions – ‘gold standard’ or ‘fool’s gold’ in public policy and management?’ Social Policy and Administration, Vol.47 (7).

Bovaird, T. and Löeffler, E. (2009) ‘More quality through competitive quality awards? An impact assessment framework’, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Vol.75 (3).

Bovaird, T. and Löeffler, E. (2012) ‘From engagement to co-production: the contribution of users and communities to outcomes and public value’, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Non-profit Organisations, Vol.23 (4).

Büchs, M. (2014) 'The role of environmental organisations in supporting carbon reduction: comparing direct and indirect involvement', Environmental Politics, published online 30 May 2014.

Buckingham, H. (2009) 'Competition and contracts in the voluntary sector: exploring the implications for homelessness service providers in Southampton’, Policy and Politics, Vol.37 (2).

Buckingham, H. (2011) ‘Hybridity, diversity and the division of labour in the third sector: what can we learn from homelessness organisations in the UK?’ Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.2 (3).

Buckingham, H. (2012) ‘Capturing Diversity: a typology of third sector organisations’ responses to contracting based on empirical evidence from homelessness services’, Journal of Social Policy,Vol.41 (3).

Buckingham, H., Pinch, S. and Sunley, P. (2012) ‘The enigmatic regional geography of social enterprise in the UK’, Area, Vol.44 (1).

Clifford, D, Geyne-Rahme, F. and Mohan, J. (2012) ‘Variations between organisations and localities in government funding of third-sector activity: evidence from the national survey of third-sector organisations in England’, Urban Studies, Vol.50 (5).

Clifford, D. (2012) ‘Voluntary sector organisations working at the neighbourhood level in England: patterns by local area deprivation’, Environment and Planning A, Vol.44 (2).

Clifford, D. and Backus, P. (2012) ‘Are big charities becoming more dominant? Cross-sectional and longitudinal perspectives’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Vol.17 (3).

Clifford, D., Geyne- Rajme, F., Smith, G., Edwards, R., Buchs, M and Saunders, C. (2013) ‘Mapping the environmental third sector in England: a distinctive field of activity’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.4 (2).

Crisp, R., Macmillan, R., Robinson, D. and Wells, P. (2009) ‘Continuity or change: considering the policy implications of a Conservative government’, People, Place and Policy Online, Vol.3 (1).

Dey, P. and Teasdale, S. (2013) ‘Social enterprise and dis/identification: the politics of identity work in the English third sector’, Administrative Theory and Praxis, Vol.35 (2).

Dickinson, H. and Miller, R. (2011) ‘GP commissioning: implications for the third sector’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.2 (2).

Dickinson, H. and Neal, C. (2011) ‘Single point of access to third sector services: the Conwy collaborative approach’, Journal of Integrated Care, Vol.19 (2).

Doherty, B., Haugh, H. and Lyon, F. (2014) 'Social Enterprises as Hybrid Organizations: A Review and Research Agenda', International Journal of Management Reviews, Open Access, Early View (online version published before inclusion in an issue).

Downe, J., Martin, S. and Bovaird, T. (2012) ‘Learning from complex policy evaluation’, Policy and Politics, Vol.40 (4).

Edwards, R., Smith, G., Buchs, M. (2013), ‘Environmental Management Systems and the third sector: Exploring the implications of weak adoption in the UK’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, Vol.31 (1).

Goodson, L. and Phillimore, J. (2010) ‘A community research methodology: working with new migrants to develop a policy related evidence base’, Social Policy and Society, Vol. 9 (4).

Hall, K., Alcock, P. and Millar, R. (2012) ‘Start up and sustainability: marketisation and the Social Enterprise Investment Fund in England’, Journal of Social Policy, Vol.41 (4).

Kamerāde, D. and Ellis Paine, A (2014) 'Volunteering and employability: implications for policy and practice', Voluntary Sector Review, Volume 5, Number 2, July 2014, pp. 259-273(15).

Kendall, J. (2010a) ‘Bringing ideology back in: the erosion of political innocence in English third sector policy’, Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol.15 (3).

Kendall, J. (2010b) ‘The limits and possibilities of third sector Europeanisation’, Journal of Civil Society, Vol.6 (1).

Kendall, J. and Deakin, N. (2010) ‘Editorial: political ideologies and the third sector’, Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol.15 (3).

Lindsey, R. (2013) ‘Exploring local hotspots and deserts: investigating the local distribution of charitable resources’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.4 (1).

Lyon, F. (2012) ‘Gender balance in the governance of social enterprise’, Local Economy, Vol.27 (8).

Lyon, F. and Fernandez, H. (2012) ‘Strategies for scaling up social enterprise: lessons from early year’s providers’, Social Enterprise Journal, Vol.8 (1).

Lyon, F. and Sepulveda. (2009) ‘Mapping social enterprises: past approaches, challenges and future directions’, Social Enterprise Journal, Vol.5 (1).

Macmillan, R. (2009) ‘Continuity and change: considering the policy implications of a Conservative government’, People, Place and Policy, Vol.3 (1).

Macmillan, R. (2011a) ‘Supporting' the voluntary sector in an age of austerity: the UK coalition government's consultation on improving support for frontline civil society organisations in England’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.2 (1).

Macmillan, R. (2011b) ‘The Big Society and participation failure’, People, Place and Policy, Vol.5 (2).

Macmillan, R. (2013a) ‘Distinction' in the third sector’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.4 (1).

Macmillan, R. (2013b) ‘De-coupling the state and the third sector? The ‘Big Society’ as a spontaneous order’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.4 (2)

Macmillan, R. (2013c) ‘Demand-led capacity building, the Big Lottery Fund and market-making in third sector support services’ Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.4 (3).

McCabe, A. and Davis, A. (2012) ‘Community development as mental health promotion: principles, practice and outcomes’, Community Development Journal, Vol.47 (4).

McCulloch, A., Mohan, J. and Smith, P.(2012) ‘Patterns of social capital, voluntary activity, and area deprivation in England’, Environment and Planning A, Vol.44 (5).

Millar, R., Hall, K. and Millar, R. (2012) ‘Right to request social enterprises: a welcome addition to third sector delivery of `English healthcare?’ Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.2 (2).

Mills, A., Gojkovic, D., Meek, R., Mullins, D. (2013) ‘Housing ex-prisoners: the role of the third sector’, Safer Communities, Vol.12 (1).

Mills, A., Meek, R. and Gojkovic, D. (2011) ‘Exploring the relationship between the voluntary sector and the state in criminal justice’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.2 (2).

Minora, F., Teasdale, S, Mullins, D. and Jones, P. (2013) ‘Governing for Habitability. Self-organised communities in England and Italy’, International Journal of Co-operative Management.Vol.2 (1).

Mohan, J. (2012a) ‘Geographical foundations of the “big society”', Environment and Planning A, Vol.44 (5).

Mohan, J. (2012b) ‘Entering the lists: what can we learn about the voluntary sector in England from listings produced by local infrastructure bodies?’ Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.3 (2).

Moore, T. and Mullins, D. (2013) ‘Scaling-up or going viral? Comparing self-help housing and community land trust facilitation’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.4 (3).

Mullins, D. (2009a) ‘The Impact of Direct Public Funding for Private Developers on Non-Profit Housing Networks in England: Exploring a Research Agenda’, European Journal of Housing Policy, Vol.9 (2).

Mullins, D. and van Bortel, G. (2010) ‘Neighbourhood regeneration and place leadership: lessons from Groningen and Birmingham’, Policy Studies, Vol.31 (4).

Mullins, D. and Walker, B. (2009) ‘The impact of direct public funding for private developers on non-profit housing networks in England: exploring a research agenda’, European Journal of Housing Policy, Vol.9 (2).

Mullins, D.(2009b) ‘Market Concepts, Co-ordination Mechanisms and New Actors in Social Housing’, International Journal of Housing Policy, Vol.9 (2).

Mullins, D., Czischke, D. and Gruis, V. (2012) ‘Conceptualizing social enterprise in housing organisations’, Housing Studies, Vol.27 (4).

Mullins, D., Czischke, D. and Van Bortel, G. (2012) ‘Exploring the meaning of hybridity and social enterprise in housing organisations’, Housing Studies, Vol. 27 (4).

Mullins, D., Rees, J., Meek, R. (2012) ‘Open public services and the third sector-what's the evidence?’ Research in Public Policy, Vol.1 (13).

Murdock, A., Wilding, K. and Sharrif, R. (2013) ‘Knowledge Exchange between academia and the third sector’, Evidence and Policy, Vol.9 (3).

Phillimore, J. (2010a) ‘Implementing integration in the UK: lessons for integration theory, policy and practice’, Policy and Politics, Vol.40 (41).

Phillimore, J. (2011b) ‘Refugees, acculturation strategies, stress and integration’, Journal of Social Policy, Vol.40 (3).

Phillimore, J. (2013) ‘Housing, home and neighbourhood renewal in the era of superdiversity: some lessons from the West Midlands’, Housing Studies, Vol.28 (5).

Phillimore, J. and Goodson, L. (2010) ‘Failing to adapt: institutional barriers to RCOs engagement in transformation of social welfare’, Social Policy and Society, Vol.9 (2).

Rees, J. (2014) 'Public sector commissioning and the third sector: Old wine in new bottles?',Public Policy and Administration, January 2014 vol. 29 no. 1 45-63.

Rhodes, M. L. and Mullins, D. (2009) ‘Market concepts, co-ordination mechanisms and new actors in social housing’, European Journal of Housing Policy, Vol.9 (2).

Scott, D. and Teasdale, S. (2012) ‘Whose failure? Learning from the collapse of a social enterprise in Steeltown’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.3 (2).

Sepulveda, L. (2012) ‘Social enterprise and ethnic minorities: exploring the consequences of the evolving British policy agenda’, Environment and Planning C, Vol.31 (4).

Sepulveda, L., Syrett, S. and Lyon, F. (2011) ‘Population superdiversity and new migrant enterprise: the case of London’, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Vol.23 (7-8).

Smith, G. and Teasdale, S. (2012) ‘Associative democracy and the social economy: exploring the regulatory challenge’, Economy and Society, Vol.41 (2).

Soteri-Proctor, A. and Alcock, P. (2012) ‘Micro-Mapping: what lies beneath the third sector radar?' Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.3 (3).

Sunley, P. and Pinch, S. (2012) ‘Financing social enterprise: social bricolage or evolutionary entrepreneurialism?’ Policy and Politics, Vol.8 (2).

Syrett, S. and Sepulveda, L. (2011) ‘Realising the diversity dividend: population diversity and urban economic development’, Environment and Planning A, Vol.43 (2).

Teasdale, S. (2010a) ‘How can social enterprise address disadvantage? Evidence from an inner city community’, Journal of Non-profit & Public Sector Marketing, Vol. 22 (2).

Teasdale, S. (2010b) ‘Explaining the multifaceted nature of social enterprise: impression management as (social) entrepreneurial behaviour’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.1 (3).

Teasdale, S. (2010c) ‘Models of social enterprise in the homelessness field’, Social Enterprise Journal, Vol.6 (1).

Teasdale, S. (2011) ‘What's in a name? Making sense of social enterprise discourses’, Public Policy and Administration, Vol.27 (1).

Teasdale, S. (2012a) ‘Critical perspectives on social enterprise’, Social Enterprise Journal, Vol.8 (2).

Teasdale, S. (2012b) ‘Negotiating tensions: How do social enterprises balance social and commercial considerations?’, Housing Studies, Vol.27 (4).

Teasdale, S. (2013) ‘Oil and water rarely mix: Exploring the relative stability of Non-profit revenue mixes over time’, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, Vol.4 (1).

Teasdale, S., Alcock, P. and Smith, G. (2012) ‘Legislating for a Big Society? The case of the Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill’, Public Money and Management, Vol.32 (3).

Teasdale, S., Lyon, F. and Baldock, R. (2013) ‘Playing with Numbers: A methodological critique of the social enterprise growth myth’, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, Vol.2 (1).

Teasdale, S., McKay, S., Phillimore, J. and Teasdale, N. (2011) ‘Exploring gender and social entrepreneurship: women’s leadership, employment and participation in the third sector and social enterprises’, Voluntary Sector Review, Vol.2 (1).

Van Bortel, G. and Mullins, D. (2009) ‘Critical perspectives on network governance in urban regeneration, community involvement and integration’, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, Vol.24 (2).

Van Bortel, G., Mullins, D. and Gruis, V. (2010) ''Change for the better?’ – Making sense of housing association mergers in the Netherlands and England’, Journal of Housing and the Built environment, Vol.25 (3).

Van Bortel, G., Mullins, D. and Rhodes, M. (2009) ‘Exploring network governance in urban regeneration, community involvement and integration’, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, Vol.24 (2).

2019

Ten Years of the Third Sector Research Centre
This year we marked the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Third Sector Research Centre with a highly-successful day conference at Birmingham Voluntary Services Council in February. Now we publish a retrospective view of the Centre’s activities so far.

2014

Understanding the UK third sector: The work of TSRC
2008-2013 (PDF 3.64MB)

Read the summary and the background to this report.

2013

Unity in diversity: What is the future for the third sector?
Third Sector Futures Dialogue 2012-2013 (PDF, 2.67MB)

2012

Informing civil society: The work of the Third Sector Research Centre 2008-2010 (PDF, 1.82MB)

2010

TSRC annual review, June 2010 (PDF, 1.02MB)

This page brings together TSRC research reports, discussion papers, and other publications which are not part of the Working Paper series.

CULTURAL VALUE

• Understanding Cultural Value: The Amateur and Voluntary Arts, Jane Milling and Angus McCabe, with Robin Simpson and Hamish Fyfe, Arts & Humanities Research Council (PDF)

MAXIMISING OLDER PEOPLE'S USE OF PERSONAL BUDGETS

• Age UK: Maximising Older People's use of Personal Budgets (MOPPU): Project Evaluation Report, October 2014 (PDF)

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION ROMA INTEGRATION STRATEGY

• Gypsy, Traveller and Roma: Experts by Experience - Reviewing UK progress on the European Union framework for National Roma Integration Strategies (PDF)
• Civil Society Monitoring on the Implementation of the National Roma Integration Strategy in the UK 2012 and 2013 (PDF)

BUILDING CAPABILITIES IN THE VOLUNTARY SECTOR

• Research Report 125: Building capabilities in the voluntary sector: What the evidence tells us (PDF)

UNFOLDING TALES OF VOLUNTARY ACTION

• 'Real Times' series of longitudinal research reports

ESRC/TSRC co-centre seminar series:

• Seminar one: the third sector as a public service provider (October 2012)
  PDF download (264KB)
• Seminar two: social enterprise and environmental sustainability (April 2013)
  PDF download (279KB)
• Seminar four: innovations in public services (June 2013)
  PDF download (296KB)

ESRC Public Policy seminar series

• Changing realities of the third sector: seminars one to four
  (December 2011-November 2012)
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TSRC Discussion Papers

• Discussion Paper F: Roma Civil Society: Deliberative Democracy for Change in Europe, Thomas Acton and Andrew Ryder (February 2013)
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• Discussion Paper E: Exploring social media as a tool for knowledge exchange: the #btr11 experiment, Amy Burnage and Roxanne Persaud (September 2012)
  PDF download (1MB) | Summary Review PDF (342KB)
• Discussion Paper D: The real Big Society: Gypsy Traveller tenants and residents’ associations and the role of social capital and empowerment in reversing exclusion
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• Discussion Paper C: Lost in Austerity: rethinking the community sector, Niall Crowley (June 2012)
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• Discussion Paper B: Community engagement in the social eco-system dance, Eileen Conn (July 2011)
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Third Sector Futures Dialogues

• Big Picture Paper 1: The worst of times?
  Pete Alcock, Rob Macmillan and Sarah Bulloch (September 2012)
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• Big Picture Paper 2: No longer a 'voluntary' sector?
  Heather Buckingham (October 2012)
  PDF Download (318KB)
• Big Picture Paper 3: Is the third sector so special? What is it worth?
  Angus McCabe (November 2012)
  PDF Download (463KB)
• Big Picture Paper 4: Is the third sector being overwhelmed by the state and the market?, Teasdale, Buckingham and Rees (January 2013) PDF Download

• Big Picture Paper 5: A strategic lead for the third sector? Some may lead, but not all will ever follow

Survey report for HACT: Community investment by social housing organisations: measuring the impact, Vanessa Wilkes and Professor David Mullins (March 2012)
Report (PDF 1.21MB) | Summary report (PDF, 661KB)

Scoping report: BIG as a Policy Actor: Exploring BIG’s impact on third sector policy and practice, Angela Ellis Paine, Rebecca Taylor and Pete Alcock (May 2011)
Introduction | Report

TSRC annual review, June 2010

Article: Third sector organisation and public service. What can research tell us?, Professor Pete Alcock, Published in ESRC’s annual magazine, Britain in 2010

The rural social economy: Surviving the credit crunch, Angus McCabe

Dr Katherine Brookfield, University of York and Dr Jane Parry, University of Southampton.

As we adjust to another national lockdown, where to help tackle the virus opportunities to meet with others and participate in collective activities have been curtailed, questions have been asked about the possible effects of these restrictions upon individuals. Contributing to this conversation, across three interconnected articles we recently used data from the National Child Development Study, (the 1958 Birth Cohort), and the associated Social Participation and Identity Study (2008), to explore long term patterns of volunteering and participation in meetings, groups and collective activities, and the effects of these forms of engagement on individuals.

Our most recent article, ‘The long arm of the household: Gendered struggles in combining paid work with social and civil participation over the lifecourse, in Gender, Work and Organisation, explored how paid work, volunteering and various forms of social and civil participation are woven together over time. We unpacked a bidirectional relationship between these items, and highlighted the importance of household dynamics and gender in these interactions. Paid work's flexibility, autonomy, predictability, and intensity emerged as important elements in achieving, or frustrating, a sustainable work–participation balance: aspects that have been writ large under lockdown where long-assumed working practices have been fundamentally disrupted. We found that maintaining this balance could be ‘a job of work’ in itself, but individuals persevered in their efforts because of the benefits gained from incorporating social and civil activities, and volunteering, into their lives.

Previously, in Going solo: lifelong nonparticipation amongst the NCDS cohort, in Leisure Studies, we focused on an ‘extreme’ variant of non-participation - lifelong nonparticipation - encompassing individuals who do not, and have never, taken part in collective activities, groups or volunteering. We identified ‘lifelong nonparticipation’ as a minority disposition associated with distinctive demographic traits being, for example, highly gendered and related to lower educational attainment. Time pressures arising from work and caring duties or, more precisely, the feeling of being ‘pressed for time’, were critical in explaining lifelong nonparticipation. More common than a complete absence of activity was limited, ‘informal’ and ad-hoc participation. Dictated by changing interests, work patterns and caring commitments, individuals presenting this behaviour dipped into and out of social and civil engagements across the lifecourse. Although rationed and erratic, meaningful benefits were still derived from these forms of participation. Our research highlighted that non-participation was related to inequalities, and under lockdown the vulnerability of those with heavier caring responsibilities has emerged as a key issue with affected individuals seeking to juggle paid and unpaid work without their usual support structures. On a more positive note, lockdown is providing an opportunity for new informal and digitised forms of participation to evolve, whose formats may yet prove to be more inclusive than formalised organisational frameworks which necessarily restrict participation to specific times and places.

Our third article, Getting the Measure of Prosocial Behaviors, in Non-profit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, investigated how methods shape estimates of volunteering and social and civil participation. We compared participation and volunteering data from the National Child Development Study and the associated Social Participation and Identity Study (2008). We evaluated the studies’ strengths and prosocial behaviour content, and considered possible links between their respective methodologies, and the scale and forms of participation and volunteering each identified. We found that the less structured style of the interview schedule employed in the Social Participation and Identity Study, which encouraged individuals to narrate their wider experiences of volunteering and participation, facilitated the identification of a multitude of prosocial behaviours and a range of benefits arising from these behaviours. A central argument in this paper is that surveys can ‘miss’ informal and ad hoc participation, yet these activities can bring valuable benefits to individuals and communities. There is some evidence to suggest that the pandemic has led to more people taking part in informal volunteering (Informal Volunteering - Community Life COVID-19 Re-contact Survey 2020) while there has been a boom in informal online social activities. To better capture activities that have emerged and thrived in the lockdowns, and which have brought comfort and support to many, survey designers could consider further how social and civil participation, and volunteering, are ‘typically’ defined in survey instruments.

Acknowledgements

This work originated in a collaboration between TSRC and the National Child Development Study team at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, and was funded by ESRC. We would particularly like to thank Sam Parsons and Jane Elliott for their guidance and advice in the course of the project.

• Funder: ESRC
• Partners: University of Southampton, University of Stirling, National Council for Voluntary Organisations

• Funder: ESRC
• Partners: Rob Macmillan, CRESR, Sheffield Hallam university, plus several voluntary organisations

Project outline

Long-run change in the distribution of registered charities in England and Wales

There’s a growing debate in voluntary sector research about spatial inequalities in the distribution of voluntary organisations and their resources. This has long historical roots – John Stuart Mill was making the point in the 1840s that “charity always does too much or too little. It lavishes its bounty in one place, and leaves people to starve in another”. Other historical examples include fivefold disparities in levels of access to hospital treatment prior to the NHS; the influential Wolfenden Committee of the 1970s commented extensively on community-level variations, unrelated to social need, in the distribution of organisations; while the Centre for Social Justice, the thinktank established by Iain Duncan-Smith, referred to “charity deserts” in several publications.

So far most studies have been cross-sectional – that is, they have focussed on one point in time. In this paper we use forty years of data from the Charity Commission for England and Wales to track the distribution of charitable organisations from 1971 – 2011. We link our statistics on charities to population and socioeconomic data from a project which has reaggregated population data to a consistent set of spatial units (there have been significant changes to local authority boundaries over time) and which has also recalculated indicators of disadvantage (the Townsend Index of Deprivation, widely used since the early 1980s) in a consistent way over time.

As a result we can draw a number of conclusions about the pattern of charitable organisations. Firstly, there has been considerable growth in both population and in the numbers of organisations, so that generally the ratio of charities to population has increased (some of this is due to a broadening of the criteria used to determine the eligibility of charities), though we can also identify some outliers, where that ratio has not increased. Secondly, the distribution has been relatively stable. In other words, areas that had larger numbers of charities, relative to population, in the early 1970s were in the same position 40 years later. Thirdly, there is a strongly negative relationship between the distribution of charitable organisations and indicators of disadvantage. Thus, although it is the case that charities have been expected to take on more of a social welfare role over the period in question, we do not see a narrowing of the gap in the distribution of organisations. in fact the negative correlation between disadvantage and the charity: population ratio has strengthened over time, indicating greater inequality. 

This connects to wider discussions about what charity can, and cannot, be expected to do. Plainly, because the distribution of charitable resources is closely related to levels of prosperity, we cannot expect convergence between areas without considerable support for the development of such organisations, including funding to help organisations become established and sustainable. More generally, there are emerging social scientific debates about the contribution that charitable organisations make to neighbourhood social outcomes. North American scholarship makes much of the wider contribution of a strong voluntary sector infrastructure to neighbourhood development and quality of life. Evidence such as this seems to suggest that it is the most prosperous areas which will benefit to the greatest extent.

Continuity and change in the English voluntary sector: community-level perspectives

Despite concerns that British voluntary organisations would face an uncertain future as the welfare state expanded after 1945, there was actually considerable post-war growth (Mohan and Backus, forthcoming). Academic commentary emphasises large national entities, but most British voluntary organisations are small and locally-focussed. There have been studies of community-level variations in the organisational mix but community-level changes in the numbers, types and character of organisations have received little attention.

The study of such changes matters. A better understanding of how the voluntary sector has reinvented itself would provide a firmer basis for evaluating whether the high contemporary expectations invested in voluntary organisations - particularly their perceived responsiveness and ability to meet changing social needs – will be fulfilled.

We want to make three original contributions in this project, which will provide a long-term perspective on themes of: stability, change and innovation in the voluntary sector; community-level changes in the distribution and character of organisations; and relationships with government and major funders:

1. We will revisit previous important studies of the voluntary sector in particular communities and provide a unique perspective on organisational survival, closure/formation, and adaptation. No British research has investigated these issues over the timescale envisaged (1945 to date), although there are longitudinal projects, and repeated cross-sectional surveys, over shorter.
2. We will analyse relationships between the changing nature of communities (e.g. through processes such as deindustrialisation, immigration, and urban renewal), and the changing nature of local voluntary sectors
3. Through case studies of organisations in Birmingham, we consider relationships between voluntary organisations and (i) government policies and (ii) major funders of the voluntary sector, respectively, and in particular how new organisations have been actively created by state intervention and philanthropic investment, and what the long-term results of those strategies have been.

• Funder: ESRC
• Partners: Irene Hardill, Northumbria University; Georgina Brewis, Institute of Education; Rose Lindsey, University of Southampton; Rob Macmillan, CRESR, Sheffield Hallam university; plus voluntary sector partners, NCVO; Children England; Ambition; Age UK.

• Funder: ESRC
• Partner: NCVO

Funder: Local Trust and Big Local

• Funder: ESRC
• Partner: National Council for Voluntary Organisations

• Funder: EU: Seventh Framework programme
• Partners: University of Kent, third sector specialists at numerous European universities

• Funder: ESRC
• Partners: Mass Observation Archive; Rose Lindsey, University of Southampton; University of Surrey.

• Funder: ESRC
• Partners: Mass Observation Archive; ; Rose Lindsey, University of Southampton; National Centre for Research methods, Southampton