Survey of voluntary organisations in mental health

<p>The survey reported here was conducted to gather information about the scope and scale of activities of non-profit<p><p>organisations in mental health with a remit extending beyond their immediate locality. It included national organisations, some of which had headquarters in the capitals (London, Edinburgh and Belfast) together with regional bodies covering, for example, the South West of England, or North London.

<p><p><p>This survey forms part of a series on the UK component of the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, a thirteen-country study of the voluntary or non-profit sector. The international study was initiated by the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, under the direction of Lester Salamon and Helmut Anheler. The other twelve countries are Brazil, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Thailand and the USA. The full UK study contains a number of local or national surveys, including that which is reported here, and the full UK results will be reported in Kendall and Knapp, 1994.

<p><p><h3>Definitions</h3><p>The nonprofit sector is defined as comprising organisations which are formally constituted, independent of government, not distributing profits to those who control them, self-governing, primarily non-sacramental, not party political and benefiting to a meaningful degree from voluntarism. These criteria are arguably enshrined in UK charity law but also describe many organisations which do not hold charity status.

<p><p><p>Within the broad definition of nonprofit organisations, Salamon and Anheier developed the international Classification of<p><p>Non-Profit Organisations (ICNPO) to permit comparisons between different 'industries', and this codified system has greater detail in those areas where the nonprofit sector has a significant presence. A 'UK-specific' version which locates each of the ICNPO categories in the national context was also developed. Using these common structures, data on income, expenditure and staffing were collected from all types of organisation in every country.