Data resource construction: open data, grantmaking data, and the organisational and financial base of the third sector.

The aim of this project is to provide comprehensive data on the contemporary population of third sector organisations in the UK. We will create one accessible & robust data resource that will help charities, third sector infrastructure bodies, funders & policymakers develop a fuller understanding of the sector. In effect this data resource will accurately map the full membership of the third sector. We will then use the growing body of data being made available on grantmaking 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 & 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 & 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.

The project will:

Building on TSRC/NCVO's existing databases, generated by combining registers of charities and the Companies House register of companies, we will:

Classify organisations in the dataset

- We will develop & publish a method for classifying existing organisations (there remain considerable gaps in our classification of the many organisations that are nonprofit but which are also not charitable) & new organisations that come onto the register. This will enable users to select data for particular subsets of the sector, or for organisations operating in particular areas.

- Develop a website where this data can be hosted & accessed, with the ability to generate a list of specific organisations.

Match the data with other data sources

- Develop & publish a method & tools for matching a list of organisations to these databases, based on their name and any other information. This will make it easy to bring together other lists of organisations.

- Matching with lists of grant recipients published by grant makers. The main source of these lists will be the "360 Giving" initiative which is encouraging grantmakers 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. We will also work with grantmakers to help them securely look at more detailed data - including data on applications for funding, making analyses of these possible for the first time.

- Matching with lists of government spending, particularly local government. These lists, often running to several hundred thousand transactions, contain an entry for every organisation that has received money from government departments or authorities. Because of the challenges involved in this - there are over 400 local authorities in England, with much variation in the quality of information - we will pilot this work in a selected region.

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.

Our programme will generate datasets which will be of significant value to a range of national and international, interdisciplinary, academic audiences interested in substantive and theoretical understanding of the third sector, and in particular the flows of resources to, and the funding base of, third sector organisations. Outside the immediate areas of concern, this work will (i) maximise value by re-using existing data sources; (ii) demonstrate the research possibilities of administrative data from regulators and funders of third sector organisations to new networks of users; and (ii) provide a case study of the potential and possible pitfalls of the emerging open data agenda.

Building upon our previous five years of research, we will extend existing data resources to cover a wider range of third sector organisations than previously possible. Academic researchers working on the sector have thus far lacked a comprehensive resource which identifies all relevant organisations in one location; we will also attach appropriate contextual and classificatory information to individual entities. This will be of value to researchers in a range of disciplines (Social Policy, Politics, Business and Management, Geography, Economics) who require authoritative evidence on the numbers and characteristics of third sector organisations.

The linkage of data on public funding flows to our databases will open up analyses of precisely which third sector organisations do and do not receive public funding. At present, administrative data are only readily available for charities and accounting conventions mean that it is difficult to determine precisely which organisations receive funding from which source. The data resources we are constructing will permit comparisons between types of third sector organisation and variations in reliance on public funding which hitherto have been possible only through survey data recording the presence / absence (not amount) of public income.

Linkage of grants data to our charities databases will enable analysts to develop a more refined picture of the importance of such funds to charities, differences between the characteristics of organisations that receive grants with those that do not, and the effect of funding streams on future trajectories of charities. This will be of value to those studying philanthropy and grantmaking, including the distributional effects of grants, particularly from an economic perspective. The incorporation into our data resources of both grants from charitable funders, and public expenditure, will underpin analyses that seek to explore the interaction between such funding sources.

Application data from funders will be of particular value to economists and analysts of the performance of voluntary organisations, who will be interested to analyse pre- and post-award trajectories (e.g. differential probability of survival of organisations, or differential growth rates of revenues). We therefore anticipate generating resources which will underpin novel analyses in this area.

We will present scholarly outputs at both national and international conferences, such as European Research Network on Philanthropy (ERNOP, Paris, 2015). Mohan is on the ERNOP board, and ERNOP has (as a key focus) the enhancement of the evidence base on philanthropy; we therefore anticipate running sessions with a methodological focus. We will also target the ARNOVA (Association for Research on non-profit and Voluntary Action) conference, Chicago (2015). Linkage with the wider research community with interests in open data and in the use of administrative data will be achieved through liaison with National Centre for Research Methods, and the Administrative Data Research Centre for England (ADRC), see Letters of Support. We intend to present at appropriate events, e.g. the Research Methods Festival, and, in conjunction with NCRM/ADRC, run relevant courses and workshops.