1. Big data, open data and the funding base of the UK’s third sector
John Mohan
TSRC, University of Birmingham
Thanks to my collaborators on the project: David Kane and Maria Pikoula (NCVO) and Charlie Rahal (Birmingham)

2. Why? Advantages of these sources
Greater detail – better handle on financial flows, especially for small organisations
Assessing overlapping of funding
Targetting of funding
Substantive questions about
identity of sector (how voluntary / dependent on public funding is it?)
Balance between public and voluntary provision

3. SOURCES Grants: 360 Degree Giving See http://www.threesixtygiving.org/
Persuading funders to make available on recipients of awards
Ad hoc, voluntary initiative – progress is slow
UK government Transparency Code
Public disclosure of information on procurement by public sector agencies: local authorities and NHS commissioning groups

4. BIG? OPEN? DATA? Big? Grants – BLF – 119 000 awards, 2004-
31 other funders, awards
Procurement – 26 Mn transactions
Open?
Mandatory data not present – conformity with code
Formats not easy to work with
Data?
Quality – referencing and linkage to other sources
Classification of applicants

5. Local authority procurement data
Key features of LA procurement (payments>£250/£500) dataset:
Contains data from of 303 out of 326 potential districts – 4 LAs had no data, 19 not machine readable.
10,919 input files, with a total of 39,249,943 transactions parsed.
2,580,744 had redacted information, 13,108,029 were missing at least one piece of key information (supplier, date, amount).
Final dataset has 23,561,170 payments, with 623,765 unique suppliers.
Suppliers need to be linked to organisational databases ( registered charities; c other TSOs) – this is the main technical challenge

6. Grants data 32 funders (including 10 lottery funders)
291,000 grants worth £22.8 billion (265,000 and £16.7 billion of which are lottery funds),
Mean grant size is £76,000 and the median £8,300.
Possibilities:
overlap between funders
Significance of funding to individual organisations
Funding “histories”
Distribution of awards

7. Data Sources

10. Example: Big Lottery Fund’s grants data
awards, 2004-
Most of these are through open schemes
E.g. Awards for All – max £10 000
No particular restrictions or targetting and any organisation can apply for it
83000 unique organisations
48000 are charities – link through charity ID or other name matching

12. Developments of funder data
Overlap / complementarity between funders
Meaningful? Need eligibility data
To whom is this useful?
Relationship to public programmes
Austerity means that large funders like Big and Community foundations are much more significant players
Will we see awards to public agencies
Normative questions
What should the pattern be? Applicant-driven therefore don’t expect any particular outcome?

13. Other uses of data
Insights into:
Organisational dynamics
Numbers of grassroots groups
Application process – particularly if application data can be obtained
Relative shares of private vs nonprofit government contracts

14. Public procurement: NHS Commissioning data
Disclosure threshold £ – fewer transactions!
transactions from 208 CCGs covering £75BN
C distinct suppliers
Monitoring of change over time

15. Public procurement: NHS Commissioning data
Work in progress but “top 500” CCG transactions shows:
registered charities: only 16 charities, receiving £300Mn out of £75Bn total; mainly hospice care
Community Interest Companies (CICs) new social enterprise form to spin services out of the NHS: 26 of these, £1.35Bn
Commercial provision: 53 providers, £1.8Bn, which were for-profit (but some claim social enterprise credentials while others are investor-owned)

16. Public procurement: uses of data
These figures could be an underestimate – contracts to NHS providers may hide payments to subcontractors
But data can provide crucial evidence in analyses of:
Shifting balance of public and private provision
Success of public sector spinoffs: “largest social enterprise sector in the world” according to David Cameron…
What should normative share of third sector provision be?