The total amount of the voluntary sector’s reserves plummeted by nearly a third in the first year of the recession, as stock markets crashed and the value of assets tumbled.

The fall, from £50.1bn in 2007/08 to £37.4bn in 2008/09, is one of hundreds of facts and figures outlined in the NCVO’s UK Civil Society Almanac 2012, published today with support from Civil Society Media.

The biennual report is the most comprehensive study of the macro-economics of civil society in the UK.  The latest version, covering the years 2008/09 and 2009/10, reveals that by the end of the last decade, overall sector income was £36.7bn – up £300m on the previous year, but still lower than 2006/07.

And crucially, expenditure was almost as high, at £36.3bn. This means that by the end of 2009/10, the sector as a whole was spending 99 per cent of its total income.

The NCVO’s head of research, Karl Wilding, told civilsociety.co.uk: “Everything that is coming in is being spent, and this is something we should be worrying about as a sector.”

After a decade of steady income growth and a healthy balance sheet, the sector is now facing tougher times ahead, he said. “The party is definitely over, and even the recent period of life-support is over.”

For a full report of Karl’s analysis of the Almanac, click here.

Other key findings from the 2012 Almanac include:

• There were an estimated 900,000 civil society organisations in the UK in 2010.  They had income of £170.4bn and controlled assets worth £228bn.
• Some 163,763 of these organisations were general charities and between them they served an estimated 124.9m beneficiaries.
• These charities’ total voluntary income, which includes donations from the public, legacies, statutory grants and the National Lottery, nosedived from £16bn to £13.9bn between 2007/08 and 2008/09.  This drop was mainly driven by the loss of government grants.
• Inflation cost the sector £2.3bn over the two years 2008/10
• Grants from statutory agencies reduced by £800m in 2007/08 and by another £400m the following year. The value of contracts, however, continued to rise steadily, almost doubling since 2004/05.
• By 2009/10, £10.9bn of all statutory funding came from contracts, with just £3bn derived from grants.
• Four sub-sectors receive more than half their total income from statutory sources: employment and training (75 per cent); law and advocacy (58 per cent); social services (56 per cent); and umbrella bodies (51 per cent).
• Rates of formal volunteering declined during the recession, from 43 per cent of people formally volunteering once a year in 2007/08 to 39 per cent of people in 2010/11.
• An estimated 765,000 people work in voluntary sector organisations – 2.7 per cent of the UK workforce.  This is roughly the same number as are employed in the restaurant and catering trade.
• 73,100 organisations get the bulk of their income from individuals.
• Some 45 per cent of registered charities identify themselves as a social enterprise.
• Since 2003/04, earned income has been the voluntary sector’s most important type of funding.  By 2009/10 it accounted for 55 per cent of the sector’s total income (£20.1bn).