Mapping the VCS in the North East and Cumbria

Submitted by David Kane on Wed, 08/09/2010 - 13:43

David Kane

8th September 2010

David Kane, Research officer at NCVO, 50px One of our key projects over the last couple of years has been the Northern Rock Foundation Third Sector Trends project.

This project is an attempt to map the scale, dynamics and needs of the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector in North East England and Cumbria – as the name suggests it’s funded by the Northern Rock Foundation.

NCVO is just one of the partners on the project alongside Southampton, Teeside and Durham Universities. The latest reports from the project were written by me and John Mohan at Southampton University, and look at the size and scope of the sector in the North East – we were trying to replicate our national level analysis in the Almanac at a regional scale.

You can find out more about the results of our research in the press release, or download the results themselves: for the North East (pdf) and Cumbria (pdf). As a taster, you can see one of the most striking graphs below, which shows the relative proportions of the population, economy and charities in the North East.

In this report we also looked at the role of non-charitable organisations in civil society – it was particularly interesting to look at companies limited by guarantee and industrial and provident societies in more detail. These organisations undertake a wide range of activities – both "social" and "enterprise" – a represent a relatively unstudied part of the sector.

Find out more about the Third Sector Trends project.