How much does the UK government give in grants?

Grants from government are a crucial part of the voluntary sector’s funding mix – but surprisingly, it’s very difficult to find out how much these grants are worth or where they go.

NCVO’s latest UK Civil Society Almanac has a figure of £7.3bn for UK charities’ income from central government for 2016/17 (with a further £7.3bn from local government and £1.2bn from international governments).

The latest Almanac doesn’t break this into grants and contracts. But applying the ratio from previous Almanacs suggests around £2bn in grants from central government and £1bn from local government, giving a total of £3bn worth of government grants to the voluntary sector in 2016/17.

The Almanac uses a sample of data from grant recipients to reach these figures; but this shouldn’t be our only source on this. Surely we can find out how much the government says it has given in grants? Well, we’re getting closer. As part of the Open Government Partnership, the government has committed to publish data about the grants that it makes. But this data isn’t perfect either.

You can read the rest of the blogpost here: http://www.threesixtygiving.org/2019/09/09/how-much-does-the-uk-government-give-in-grants/