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21st Quarterly Confidence Report

A survey on the experiences and outlooks of voluntary and community organisations across Yorkshire and the Humber, published April 2015.

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 February 2015. The 122 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 the following one-off question: ‘What impact has Rob Wilson, Minister for Civil Society, had on your organisation since his appointment?

Key results from the latest survey:

• 60.5% of respondents believe economic conditions for the voluntary and community sector will deteriorate over the next 12 months;

• 54.5% of respondents expect their organisation’s financial situation to remain stable over the next 12 months. 32.7% expect it to deteriorate and 12.9% expect it to improve;

• 52.5% of respondents expect their organisation’s general situation to remain stable over the next 12 months.  25.7% expect it to improve and 21.8% expect it to deteriorate;

• 51.8% of respondents have no plans to change the extent of services they offer in the next quarter, although 34.2% plan to increase services and 14% intend to decrease services offered;
  
• Most respondents (69%) have no plans to change the number of paid staff over the next three months. 19.4% have plans to increase paid staff and 11.1% are planning to decrease staff numbers;

• A small majority of respondents (52.8%) expect no change in volunteer numbers over the next three months. 45.4% think they will increase volunteer numbers whilst 1.9% expect they will decrease;

• Most respondents (71.3%) expect they will increase the level of collaboration with other organisations over the next 12 months. 27.7% expect no change;

• Half of respondents expect their involvement in local/sub-regional and regional decision-making to remain the same in the next 12 months, 35.4% expect to become more involved in decision-making, and just 4.2% expect to be involved less.

• Of those who are involved in local, sub-regional and regional decision-making, 66.7% feel their involvement is important and 57.4% feel it’s appreciated; but just 38.9% feel their involvement is productive and only 29.6% can point to tangible achievements.

• 39.4% of respondents expect their local authority to have a positive influence on their organisation’s success over the next 12 months and 31.9% 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 (72%) are not currently involved in a campaign to influence policy. 67.2% of those state that they do not have the capacity or resources to do so;

• 93.4% of organisations reported that the new Minister for Civil Society Rob Wilson had had no impact on their organisation. 5.5% reported he’d had a negative impact, and just one organisation reported a positive impact.