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20th Quarterly Confidence Report

A survey on the experiences and outlooks of voluntary and community organisations across Yorkshire and the Humber, published October 2014.

Involve Yorkshire & Humber started its Quarterly Confidence Survey (QCS) in December 2009, with the aim of gathering views from voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations. The survey is carried out each quarter and covers issues such as the economic conditions charities have been facing; their own organisational plans and how they think government and other policy makers could support the sector.

This report is based on an online survey carried out over two weeks in October 2014. The 97 respondents of this survey were asked questions relating to the next three and 12 months. There are also some comments to open-ended questions, which we hope illuminate some of the quantitative information. 

In this latest survey we asked respondents a one-off question regarding participant’s views on the resources they expected to receive from their local authority or public health body.

Key results from the latest survey:

• 63.5% of respondents believe economic conditions for the voluntary and community sector will deteriorate over the next 12 months;

• 46.4% of respondents expect their organisation’s financial situation to remain stable over the next 12 months. 34.5% expect it to deteriorate and 19% expect it to improve;

• 45.9% of respondents expect their organisation’s general situation to remain stable over the next 12 months.  28.2 % expect it to improve and 25.9% expect it to deteriorate;

• 44.3% of respondents have no plans to change the extent of services they offer in the next quarter, although 42% plan to increase services and 13.6% intend to decrease services offered;

• Most respondents (66.3%) have no plans to change the number of paid staff over the next three months. 19.3% have plans to increase paid staff and 14.5% are planning to decrease staff numbers;

• A small majority of respondents think they will increase volunteer numbers (51.8%) whilst 47% of respondents see no change in volunteer numbers over the next three months. 1.2% expect they will decrease;

• Most respondents (77.6%) expect they will increase the level of collaboration with other organisations over the next 12 months. A quarter of respondents expect no change;

•  87.6% of respondents expect their involvement in decision-making to remain the same or increase in the next 12 months;

• Three quarters of respondents feel their involvement in decision making is important (76.1%). 45.7% feel their involvement is appreciated although only 37% of respondents feel it is productive and 28.3% feel they can point to tangible achievements. A majority (65.1%) are not funded at all for their involvement;

• 38.5% of respondents expect their local authority to have a positive influence on their organisation’s success over the next 12 months and 28.9% expect their local clinical commissioning group (CCG) to have a positive influence;

• Most respondents do not expect central government departments to have any influence on their success. The two central government departments deemed most influential are the Department of Health (DoH) and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG);

• The majority of respondents (67.1%) are not currently involved in a campaign to influence policy. 77.3% of those state that they do not have the capacity or resources to do so;

• 42% of respondents expect to receive resources from their local public sector in 2015/2016 whilst 29% expect they won’t receive any resources from their local public sector. 34% of those who do anticipate these resources will come in the form of contracts and 29% expect this will come in the form of a grant.

Please download our October 2014 QCS here.