A feasibility study and preliminary framework for a civil society satellite account
Report background
Civil society organisations and the individuals who work and volunteer for them play a critical role in society, fulfilling many functions from service delivery to community building and campaigning. In doing so, they make a significant contribution to the economy.
Yet when it comes to measuring the economic contribution of different sectors in national accounts, the civil society sector is invisible. Its activity is spread across sectors and industries. This means that the scale and nature of civil society’s contribution to the economy is impossible to identify from current government statistics. Perhaps most crucially, one of civil society’s most valuable inputs – the time and talent of millions of volunteers each year – isn’t counted at all.
A satellite account is a set of data tables linked to, but distinct from, the national accounts. They rearrange concepts and provide supplementary information, bringing out information about sectors that are otherwise not identifiable in national account-level data. In the UK, satellite accounts already exist for tourism, household production and environmental topics. This report was commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to investigate the feasibility of creating a satellite account for civil society in the UK.
Key message
Two approaches for building a civil society satellite account in the UK are set out in this report: a ‘Do now’ approach which relies on existing data, and an ‘Intermediate’ approach which we recommend should replace the initial version once further analysis has been completed.
Recommendations for government
1A. Establish a satellite account for civil society in the UK so that its contribution to the economy can be measured and recognised.
1B. Include a measure of the value of volunteering in the satellite account, to ensure more of the economic contribution of the civil society sector is accurately reflected.
2A. Produce the civil society satellite account annually, with a short lag after the end of the reference year, so that data remains up-to-date.
2B. Make the civil society satellite account modular, with the ability for users to identify and include or remove different industries or organisation types, such as social enterprises, in order to increase the usefulness of the satellite account for different data users.
2C. Include a range of economic, employment and organisation statistics in the satellite account. As far as possible, the data should be broken down by geography.
3A. Adopt the ‘Do now’ approach, using existing identifiers on business and employment surveys, to produce a first iteration of a civil society satellite account.
3B. Conduct further research to better understand which organisation types will be caught by these identifiers and which will be missed.
3C. Supplement this approach with additional analysis of social enterprises, working with stakeholders to do so.
3D. Include volunteer time in the ‘Do now’ iteration of the civil society satellite account, using data from the Community Life Survey and shadow wages to estimate the value of volunteer time.
3E. Include a range of variables in the satellite account, including economic variables like GVA and output, labour market variables like employee numbers, volunteer numbers and hours worked; and organisational variables like organisation numbers.
4A. Build on the ‘Do now’ civil society satellite account by creating a reference list of in-scope organisations for a UK civil society satellite account and aggregating data from those organisations. This is the ‘Intermediate’ approach to building a satellite account.
5A. Develop an appropriate deflator for the civil society sector – as a minimum we recommend developing cost-based price indices for different types of civil society output.
5B. Complete a feasibility study to explore measuring volume of outputs for those parts of the civil society sector most amenable to measurement in this way, in line with best practice for public sector outputs.
5C. Consider including additional data in future iterations of the satellite account, particularly more detailed data about volunteering and information about sources of funding.
