Type of work of voluntary organisations

The NCVO’s Almanac considers the most common areas that charities in the UK work in by the amount spent. These are:

• social services: by far the largest category of work, accounting for around 22% of the sector’s spending. Social services is a broad definition including organisations such as Barnados, Age UK and Crisis as well as charities engaged in emergency relief like the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI)

• culture and recreation: the second most common category, with around 11% of spending, includes theatres, museums, galleries, sports clubs and zoos, for example the Royal Opera House, the Royal Shakespeare Company or the North of England Zoological Society.

The activities of voluntary organisations within their area of work vary, and can be summarised as:

• providing a service: many charities offer a service directly to those they’re set up to support. Macmillan Cancer Support provide services to cancer patients, for example.

• campaigning: some organisations find services only have a limited effect and that they can achieve a more significant impact by trying to influence others to change. For instance, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) runs large public campaigns to change the opinion on smoking.

• giving grants: some funders are charities themselves and provide grants of money to individuals or organisations to enable them to carry out their work, for instance the Garfield Weston Foundation or Comic Relief.

• acting as umbrella or resource body: a number of voluntary organisations make a difference indirectly by supporting other charities to achieve their goals. For example, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations is a charity acting as an umbrella body with a goal to support and represent other charities. These umbrella or resource bodies are often called infrastructure organisations.