A message from Professor Daniel King, Director of the VCSE Data and Insights National Observatory
I’m delighted to invite you to take part in the fifth wave of the VCSE Barometer. Your voice is important, and we really want to hear it! By participating, you continue to play a crucial role in shaping data-driven insight that will spur positive change within our UK Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise sector.
Take part in the short survey now
Why Participate?
By joining the survey, you’re contributing to a new ‘heartbeat’ of valuable data that informs policies, strategies, and decisions affecting the VCSE. Uniquely, you’re also enabling us to gather insight into trends and changes that are happening in the sector right now. A year on from our first survey in November 2022, we can now track the evolving and emerging issues and concerns of the cost-of-living crisis and understand how these are ebbing and flowing over time. This insight continues to inform policymakers about how to best support the sector in these challenging times.
What’s topical now?
In our January survey we’ve chosen to investigate the evolving nature of the VCSE’s relationship with local government. We’re interested in finding out if and how the challenging landscape in which local councils are operating is affecting the sector – in relation to funding, service demand and other aspects such as provision of support, facilities and resources.
What’s new?
In Wave 5, there’s even more time to take part as we’ve extended the survey window to three weeks! We recognise that with increasingly busy diaries and inboxes, two weeks just isn’t enough … We’re also working on exciting developments which will make the Barometer less time-consuming to complete: we’re building our own survey platform so we can draw in data from other publicly available datasets, meaning we can cut down the number of administrative questions we ask you, whilst creating greater insight by combining Barometer data with that of other data collectors such as the Charity Commission. Finally we continue to work on making the Barometer useful for you, the respondent. Later in the year we will prototype bespoke individualised reports, which will provide you with comparable data by geography, organisation size and activity. We’ve got a busy 2024 ahead!
Don’t miss out! Click here to take part in the short survey now
The survey closes at midnight on Wednesday 7 February.
You are also very welcome to join our growing Barometer community at an online seminar on Tuesday 5 March at 2.00pm where we’ll share and discuss the Wave 5 findings. Just respond yes in the relevant spot on the survey and we’ll send you an invite!
Your participation is essential in supporting a thriving VCSE community. We’re grateful for your support and excited to work together to drive meaningful change.
With thanks.
Warm regards
Professor Daniel King
Director, VCSE Data and Insights National Observatory
Daniel.king@ntu.ac.uk / @DanielKing76 / @VCSEObservatory
