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Support bodies coping well with recession, says survey 1

Finance | Tania Mason | 30 Jun 2009

More than half of the organisations that provide support services to local frontline charities say they are coping very well or fairly well with the recession, despite nearly four in five reporting higher demand for help.

The findings were revealed in a survey by Capacitybuilders of local consortia that provide support to other sector groups – the first of four such surveys which will be conducted every six months. They aim to establish how the economic climate is affecting support bodies and whether government funding programmes are targeting the right areas.

The first study, carried out in April 2009, was completed by 289 support groups, representing around a third of the UK’s total infrastructure contingent. Most are funded either by ChangeUp or by their local authority, or both.

Some 78 per cent said demand for their services had risen in the last 12 months. Most enquiries were about funding advice, grants or loans (59 per cent); partnership building (56 per cent), and income generation (56 per cent).

The increasing willingness of people to volunteer was also reflected in the results, with 54 per cent of respondents seeing heightened demand for help in recruiting and placing volunteers and 49 per cent fielding more calls for support to manage and develop volunteers.

Some 46 per cent also saw more charities wanting to develop contracting skills.

Capacitybuilders chief executive Matt Leach (pictured), who was to present the findings at the NCVO’s Value of Infrastructure event today, said they showed that funding streams and initiatives recently launched by Capacitybuilders and the Office of the Third Sector were hitting the right spot. He cited the Modernisation Fund, which aims to help charities merge or collaborate; the OTS-funded Funding Central website just launched by NCVO, and Capacityuilders’ Volunteer Management Programme.

Nearly half of respondents expected their overall income would fall over the next three years, but for now 53 per cent said they were coping fairly or very well with the recession. Just 12 per cent felt they were coping ‘not very well’ and 1 per cent ‘not at all well’.

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Directory: National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)
Who's Who: Tania Mason