This book has been located within particular policy changes, positioned in place and time, but as Back (2004) argues of contemporary social research, we are also writing against time, often attempting to capture and critically reflect on what may be relatively short-lived social phenomena. A book focused on making sense of a rapidly changing voluntary sector (VS) environment therefore produces significant challenges, not least in considering what the future holds. Most of the empirical research included in this book was undertaken during the New Labour administrations but the subsequent analysis and writing have inevitably been coloured by insights drawn from changes after this period and by historical perspectives.

The book started by questioning how VS autonomy has been circumscribed as the sector gained increased importance in government projects. A retreat from interdependent funding relationships with the state might augur well then for future independence. However, it is clear from preceding chapters that recent political and policy changes foreshadow unprecedented hard times, especially because of the roads that many voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) have travelled during the New Labour years. How VSOs adapt to contemporary challenges will be crucial in sustaining the kinds of social values that have characterised many parts of the sector and for retaining its significant experience in tackling intractable welfare problems.

For VS actors undergoing rapid and destabilising changes, there is little time for thought. This chapter aims to give space to the kind of reflection often absent, drawing together discussion from earlier chapters and implications for the future. Preceding chapters have highlighted a number of themes concerning the exercise of governmental power; the isomorphic pressures of dominant organisational arrangements; and ideologies associated with the state, market and new models of collaborative governance that have framed discourse and processes of change surrounding the VS. Within these frames, concepts around performance, risk, trust and resilience have provided valuable lenses for insights into VS experiences of change and concerns about survival. In particular, the depoliticisation of potentially contested territory, such as in VS advocacy, prompts questions about the extent to which the independent choices and actions of VSOs have been curtailed through being progressively drawn into discharging state purposes.