Over the last three years, Clinks has regularly surveyed voluntary sector organisations through our State of the Sector survey to collect information about how healthy the sector is, the role it is playing, and the wellbeing of its service users. Our latest State of the Sector survey is now open and we would really like to hear from you. The closing date is the 29th September – please complete the survey now.

Why this is so important

The information we collect is hugely important as it informs how we support the sector, and provides us with evidence that we can draw upon when lobbying decision makers and the government.

We want to make sure as many voluntary sector organisations as possible complete the survey to enable us to get a clear picture of what issues the sector is experiencing. We anonymise all the information from the survey, but we do ask that you provide contact details so that we are able to analyse the results with accuracy, and to ensure we have reached a good range of organisations.

The survey will take between 20-30 minutes to complete and you will need information about your organisation’s finances, staffing, number of beneficiaries and strategy to hand. Much of this can be found on the Charity Commission website.

What the last surveys told us

Our last survey showed that many voluntary sector organisations were experiencing financial uncertainty and were focused on delivering one project at a time. Redundancies were also continuing across the sector and there was an increasing use of volunteers. We also found that half of voluntary sector organisations who completed the survey were not receiving full cost recovery on their contracts and the percentage of organisations using their reserves to meet costs had risen from 58% to 65%.

For more information and to see our previous surveys, please click here.

Getting the most from your data

The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (CESI) will also be supporting us to analyse the data we collect. They have provided us with invaluable advice and support to make sure the results are more robust than ever before. This will further strengthen our voice by ensuring the data we collect is more representative of the sector working with offenders and their families.

We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Please click here to complete the survey