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The State of the Sector Panel Survey is made up of 5,600 third sector organisations. The Panel is recruited to reflect the range of voluntary and community organisations and social enterprises in England and to pay particular attention to those that provide public services. Panel members are contacted each year to take part in a postal survey and telephone interviews, and approximately 3,600 take part in each of these stages.
The Panel was established by the Active Communities Directorate in the Home Office and the first survey was conducted in 2003. Responsibility for conducting the survey has since transferred to Communities and Local Government, on behalf of the Office of the Third Sector.
The Panel Survey enables the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) to gather information about the sector's activities, concerns and needs in a systematic way – to reach the parts that other, smaller or narrower, consultations, do not reach. The OTS uses this information to support the sector's activities, responding to its concerns and providing for its needs.
The Panel also allows OTS to monitor progress in meeting its commitment to increase voluntary and community sector activity under the 2004 Spending Review. It also contributes to measuring the second element of the Cabinet Office Public Service Agreement (PSA) 4 (formerly Home Office PSA 6): “to increase the capacity and contribution of the voluntary and community sector to deliver more public services”. This element of the PSA covers the period 2002/03 to 2007/08.
The Panel is the second of two research initiatives originally sponsored by the Home Office: the other is the Citizenship Survey. These provide robust and complementary information and statistics about the voluntary and community activities of organisations (through the Panel) and of individuals (through the Citizenship Survey).
The Panel provides an opportunity for third sector organisations to have their say about the Government's work with the sector and their concerns as organisations operating in a changing environment. Members of the Panel have embraced this opportunity and have let us know in robust terms what they think and what they want.
Further newsletters will look at the following topics:
We need to recruit new members on a rolling basis in order to reduce the burden on any one organisation and to keep a balance of members that have different levels of income, operate in different regions, provide different kinds of services and have different types of clients.
We would particularly like to hear from you if your organisation is not registered with the Charity Commission.