Much social policy research shares the problem of dating, and of mapping continuities and new directions across periods of time. Over the last quarter century, the voluntary sector in the United Kingdom (UK), along with similarly constructed organisations in other countries, has seen an intensification of changes, as the political ideology surrounding welfare services and their delivery has been transformed. While this book primarily addresses changes in the UK, themes from UK research resonate elsewhere. Similar trends observed in Australia, New Zealand and North America, and more recently, in parts of Europe, make it relevant for readers outside the UK. The concept of a UK voluntary sector has itself undergone fragmentation with the growth of devolved government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (Danson and Whittam, 2011); and in discussion of recent times, this book focuses mainly on empirical study of the English experience.

There are, of course, significant differences across different countries, not least in the language used to describe the voluntary, third or non-profit sector, and this preface offers a brief clarification for non-UK readers. The UK voluntary sector has had a particular historical set of relationships with the state, including that embedded in UK Charity Laws. This both enables and restricts the organisations entitled to be identified as ‘charities’ – that is, those registered with the Charity Commission. There are many voluntary and community-based organisations that despite broadly philanthropic aims are not included within this register because of size, turnover or primary, often political, purposes. Throughout the book, the traditional UK term ‘voluntary sector’ is used to encompass a wider range of organisations than charities only; and the first chapter addresses these questions of terms and definitions further. However, much of the quantitative data that informs research on the size and shape of the UK voluntary sector have been drawn from the charities register. Charities therefore remain an important category within the UK voluntary or non-profit sector since they are the organisations about which most is publicly known but this visibility often obscures the complexity and diversity of other parts of the sector.

This book concerns organisational and policy changes through the period of the New Labour government especially, during which time the voluntary or third sector was aligned with ‘Third Way’ policies and was given a significant role in tackling the perceived failures of both state and market to address social problems.