Summary data captured from a representative sample of registered charities in England and Wales on their funding sources and expenditures. The dataset created by the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) captures accounts data for registered charities in England and Wales. The data underpin the NCVO Almanac Of Civil Society. The purpose of this project was to gather information about the income sources of organisations in an economical manner which would allow estimation of both proportions (e.g. what percentage of organisations receive funding of a particular kind) and amounts (e.g. how much of the charity sector’s income is derived from fees for services).

Accounts data accessed via the Charity Commission website through which recent reports and accounts are available for all charities with incomes greater than £25 000. Within each income range, organisations are sampled randomly and if (as is often the case for administrative reasons) a particular charity’s accounts are not available, the next available one in the sample is captured. Data entry is conducted from the notes to charity accounts. Sampling weights are calculated using inverse probabilities of being sampled – thus, if there are 1000 charities in a particular income range, of which half are sampled, these are assigned a weighting of 2 in the organisation weight (weighting_orgs). Other weights are calculated by NCVO to allow estimation of the total assets of the sector (weight_a), total income (weight_i) and total expenditure (weight_e). More details about the methodology in the documentation files.