Christopher Dayson

Understanding financial vulnerability in UK third sector organisations : methodological considerations and applications for policy, practice and research

Financial vulnerability describes a non-profit organisation’s susceptibility to crisis in the wake of financial turbulence, particularly if such crises are likely to culminate in an organisation failing to deliver its mission.As a concept, ‘financial vulnerability’ has particular resonance in times of economic upheaval and uncertainty and it has emerged as one of the pervading discourses of non-profit–state relations in the United Kingdom (UK) during the past four years. Despite this apparent importance, it has been paid relatively little attention by researchers of the UK third sector.This article draws on lessons from research on the financial vulnerability of non-profit organisations in the United States and UK pilot studies to discuss the benefits, applications and methodological challenges of undertaking such research on the UK third sector, and to set out steps that need to be taken if financial vulnerability in the third sector is to become a clearly defined topic for future research.

The personalisation agenda : implications for organisational development and capacity building in the voluntary sector

This paper provides an overview of research aimed at understanding the implications of the personalisation agenda from the perspective of local infrastructure organisations (LIOs). The findings are considered in terms of the organisational development needs of voluntary sector service providers and the challenges they are likely to face in forthcoming years. The implications of these findings for frontline voluntary organisations and the way they are supported by LIOs are discussed.

Third sector capacity building : the institutional embeddedness of supply

Previous articles in Voluntary Sector Review have documented the evolution of third sector capacity-building policy (Macmillan, 2011) and addressed the focus on ‘market-making’, characterised by a discursive shift since 2010 that favours demand-led over supply-led delivery models (Macmillan, 2013). This article builds on these articles by using data from the National Survey of Charities and Social Enterprises (NSCSE) to investigate the characteristics of third sector organisations on the supply side of the capacity-building ‘market’. We argue that the ambitions of the demand-led model need to be understood in the context of the embeddedness of these organisations. This is based on findings that suggests that, immediately prior to the identified discursive shift, a significant proportion of third sector capacity-building providers were embedded in the supply-led model through relationships with and funding from the public sector locally and nationally. This, we suggest, could thwart the ambitions of the demand-led model.