NCVO and the Third Sector Research Centre are to create a data resource to track ten years of voluntary sector finances.

The data bank will “improve the evidence bank for the voluntary sector, particularly in relation to its finances and resources over the past decade”, the two organisations said.

The project will receive three years’ worth of funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), worth approximately £386,000 in total, which will enable them to collect data from a sample of 10,000 charities from England and Wales to build on research NCVO and TSRC already carry out for the annual UK Civil Society Almanac.

The initiative aims to “increase access to data by the voluntary sector, helping organisations to build their capacity to analyse and use data themselves”. The data bank will be used to estimate the resources of all charities and to “indicate how financially healthy charities are”.

A second part of the grant from the ESRC will build data resources on a wider range of civil society organisations, such as community interest companies, and fund analysis of the voluntary sector through “emerging data sources such as open data released by grant-makers and spending data released by government bodies”.

Nick Ockenden, head of research at NCVO, said: “The information we’ll collect will help to paint an accurate picture of the voluntary sector and help charities demonstrate the difference they make to society. Being able to access and use this data will help charities to become more effective and make an even bigger difference in the longer term.”

As well as the research, NCVO and TSRC will offer outreach events for voluntary organisations to show how the data can be used. It could be used to measure the “financial vulnerability of organisations and risk-based indicators such as exposure to particular funding streams”.

The data bank will be free to use, and will enable organisations and funders to view trends over time, as well as to search by region and work area.

John Mohan, director of the Third Sector Research Centre, said: “TSRC and NCVO have collaborated for several years to develop the evidence base on the third sector. These projects will provide a firm foundation for the future development and enhancement of that evidence base. They will also enable important pilot work on emerging data sources on public sector procurement and grant-making.”

The next edition of the UK Civil Society Almanac, which has been publishing data from the accounts of 10,000 charities in England and Wales since 2006-7, will be published in June.