NCVO increased its income by 7 per cent to £9.59m in the year to March 2014, according to its annual report and accounts, published today.

The increase was mostly down to a £460,000 rise in income from trading activities, including £1.06m from the conference suite and £380,000 from tenants.

The charity’s membership income also increased by £95,000 to £931,000, a more than 10 per cent increase. NCVO ended the year with 10,846 members and had a retention rate of 94 per cent. Membership has since exceeded 11,000.

Staff numbers rose from 100 to 106.

The charity’s spending also increased 7 per cent to £8.28m. However despite spending being much lower than income, the charity’s balance sheet position worsened during the year because of a £492,000 increase in its pension deficit.

NCVO closed its defined benefit pension scheme to future accruals in 2011, and at the end of the year its pension deficit was £3.83m.

NCVO has started to publish exact remuneration figures since conducting a review of sector reporting on pay in April of this year.

The highest paid member of staff was Sir Stuart Etherington, the chief executive, who earned just over £128,000 in 2013/14.

Martyn Lewis, chair of the charity, said that the organisation had worked on improving the Lobbying Act, and on a large-scale consultation with members on its future priorities.

“Along the way, we also launched substantial new programmes that will help inform and shape the sector’s role in the future of public services and published groundbreaking research on payment-by-results contracts and another successful edition of the UK Civil Society Almanac,” he said. “We launched a new website for NCVO, completed a project to improve accessibility in our building, grew our conference suite income and made significant progress on major IT projects.”