Big data, open data and the funding base of the UK’s third sector John Mohan TSRC, University of Birmingham mohanj@bham.ac.uk www.tsrc.ac.uk www.johnfmohan.com Thanks to my collaborators on the project: David Kane and Maria Pikoula (NCVO) and Charlie Rahal (Birmingham)

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

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

BIG? OPEN? DATA? Big? Grants – BLF – 119 000 awards, 2004- 31 other funders, 170 000 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

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 (180 000 registered charities; c. 100 000 other TSOs) – this is the main technical challenge

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), 1995-2014 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

Data Sources

Example: Big Lottery Fund’s grants data 119 000 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

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?

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

Public procurement: NHS Commissioning data Disclosure threshold £25 000 – fewer transactions! 330 000 transactions from 208 CCGs covering £75BN C. 10 000 distinct suppliers Monitoring of change over time

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)

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?