How to get more data
Almanac summary tables
If you are looking at historic change, we recommend using the data from the 2002 spreadsheet rather than data from previous Almanac publications. This data accounts for inflation and includes corrections from previous years.
Accessing Charity Commission data
The Almanac makes extensive use of the Charity Commission register. As the register contains decades of financial records for hundreds of thousands of organisations, it is very large and has been split into a number of tables. The data is available in Text and JSON formats. You can download these tables individually and link them using the registered charity number.
If you only want to browse the register, you can open these files in Microsoft Excel by clicking Data > Get Data > From File and selecting From Text/CSV or From JSON. If you are using a Text file, the delimiter should be set to “tab”.
However, because the datasets are so large, they are likely to open and run very slowly, and some of the files may exceed Excel’s maximum file size, causing rows to be dropped.
If you want to conduct analysis on the register, you should instead use a statistical analysis tool such as SPSS, Stata, Python or R. We can also conduct analysis on a consultancy basis, so if you require bespoke analyses of the register, please contact us as research@ncvo.org.uk to discuss.
Accessing workforce and volunteering data
NCVO uses data from the Labour Force Survey and the Community Life Survey for the Almanac sections on workforce and volunteering. You can download summary tables of the Community Life Survey and the ONS publishes statistical bulletins about the Labour Force Survey.
If you want to access the full data for these surveys, you can download them from the UK Data Service. As these are large files requiring weighting to be analysed correctly, you will need to use a statistical analysis tool such as SPSS, Stata, Python or R.
Almanac charity accounts sample data
Academic institutions are able to access the full, raw data from the sample of charity accounts conducted as part of the Almanac research, free of charge. Non-academic institutions or those looking for more detailed analysis outputs may purchase this. Please contact us on research@ncvo.org.uk for more information.