The Third Sector Research Centre carried out research on the key issues affecting charities and voluntary organisations, community groups, social enterprises, cooperatives and mutuals. This specific data collection contains organisational characteristics and financial history information from UK-based charities, non-charity organisation, mutual societies and co-operative organisations. Organisational characteristics include charities' area of operation, area of benefit and standard industrial classification 2007 system code (SIC07). These characteristics were extracted from: (1) information held by the Charity Commission for charities registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, (2) information held by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) for Scottish charities, (3) information on co-operative organisations operating in the UK held by CoopsUK, (4) information on Mutual Societies provided by the Financial Conduct Authority (these include Industrial and Provident Societies, credit unions, building societies and friendly societies). The dataset also contains cross-matches between organisations found in the different lists of these bodies. The financial history data contains income and expenditure data for charities registered with the Charity Commission for the period 1985 - 2006. A further five data collections resulting from research by the Third Sector Research Centre can be accessed via related resources. The Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) is a Venture Funded Centre, in partnership with the Office for Civil Society and the Barrow Cadbury Trust. TSRC is based at the University of Birmingham, but is a joint venture with the University of Southampton, with additional contributions from Middlesex and Kent. Third sector policy has now been devolved to the separate administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and research includes analysis of the impact of this devolution. TSRC employs a Knowledge Exchange Team to ensure that its work has a direct impact on policy and practice. Research activity includes: (1) Analysis of theoretical issues and development of a critical understanding of the policy environment for the sector; (2) Securing and analysing reliable data about the size, shape, structure and dynamics of the sector - including quantitative data, drawn from administrative sources and large scale surveys, and in-depth qualitative research with a selection of sector organisations; (3) Analysis of the economic and social impact of the sector, including the role of the sector in delivering public services, the development of social enterprise, the role of organisations in the environmental field, and the mapping and analysis of smaller community organisations operating 'below-the-radar'.

Data were collected from the following sources. (1) The Charity Commission: the majority of charities which operate within England and Wales are legally obliged to register with the Charity Commission, whose data are now available publicly. The Charity Commission provided a comprehensive data extract each month; the work which contributed to the files described here was based on the September 2012 extract which contained data on 288,690 charities - 162,740 of which were ‘live’ (registered) at the time, and 125,950 had ceased to operate (removed). (2) The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator: all organisations wishing to operate as charities in Scotland must be registered with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator; a list of all currently-registered Scottish charities was provided by OSCR in August 2011, comprising 23,329 organisations. (3) The Financial Conduct Authority: this authority recently took over from the Financial Services Authority the regulation of mutual societies, and maintain a list of all mutual societies currently or previously registered; a copy of the list was provided in October 2013, containing 28,069 organisations - 9,458 of which were currently registered. (4) CoopsUK: they are not a regulator in a formal sense but instead maintain a watching brief on organisations within the UK which are, to some extent, co-operative in the way they operate; CoopsUK provided a copy of their list of co-operative organisations in July 2010. (5) Companies House: the majority of the organisations registered with, and/or regulated by, Companies House are for-profit organisations but some are of interest to third sector researchers, such as Community Interest Companies and Companies Limited by Guarantee though the precise allocation of these to the third sector is a matter of judgement; Companies House offer, through their website, a complete list of active registered companies as a free download, updated monthly. (6) The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations: they provided a copy of their work-in-progress cross-match list linking OSCR and CC serial numbers of charities registered both sides of the Scottish border. The various documentation files provide further details on the content of the data files and how and where the data were obtained.