Play Your Almanac Cards Right

It’s the Almanac time of year again, and we’re getting ready for the launch of the latest edition tomorrow. The Almanac (the UK Civil Society Almanac 2014 to give it its full title) is NCVO’s flagship publication showing the size and scope of the voluntary sector in the UK.

There’s lots of interesting findings this year, which you’ll hear more about tomorrow. As usual we’ve got something extra for our members. Members receive a free copy of the Almanac (a free download of the PDF for community members), and this year we’ll have an exclusive guide for members on how to use the Almanac to help your work.

Tomorrow we’ll be talking about the findings, and analysing the implications for the sector. But I thought we could have a little fun before the serious work tomorrow. In a tribute to Brucie’s “Play Your Cards Right”, I’ve put together five stats below from the year before the one covered in this year’s Almanac. What you need to do is work out whether you think the equivalent number in the new Almanac (which mostly covers the 2011/12 financial year) is higher or lower.

Let us know in the comments, or using #ncvoalmanac, what you think the changes in this years Almanac will show.

732,000 paid staff in 2011

£15.0 billion income from government in 2010/11

25% of adults volunteer once a month in 2010/11

£50.8 billion reserves in 2010/11

£4.8 billion grants made in 2010/11

Note

A quick note on the data used here: those of you who know the Almanac off by heart will see that the financial numbers I’ve used here are different to those we published in the last Almanac. There’s a couple of reasons for this. Firstly I’ve used figures adjusted to 2011/12 prices so you can make real terms comparisons for your higher/lower judgement, and secondly because we do make some small adjustments to previous years data in the Almanac on the basis of new data that we’ve received.
Playing card picture via Mark Anderson on Flickr