Organisations that provide support to charities expect their income to fall, but remain optimistic
Third sector infrastructure bodies believe they are coping well despite the added pressure on services caused by the recession, new research has shown.
In a poll of 289 organisations that provide support to charities, carried out by infrastructure quango Capacitybuilders in April, 53 per cent of support services said they were coping "fairly well" or "very well".
Twelve per cent of respondents said they were not coping very well, and 1 per cent were coping "not at all well". Nearly half the respondents expected their overall income to fall over the next three years.
The research is the first of four surveys to be conducted biannually to examine the impact of the recession on support bodies and whether government funding programmes are being channelled into the right areas.
Seventy-eight per cent of respondents said demand for their services had gone up in the past year. Fifty-nine per cent of enquiries related to funding advice, grants and loans, and 56 per cent were about partnership-building and income generation, respondents said.
The survey also showed that the numbers of people offering to volunteer had increased, with demand for people to recruit, place and manage volunteers up by about 50 per cent.
