What is the Third Sector?
This Monday I’m starting a new sequence about the Third Sector. Recently I’ve written about a specific example of partnership working and I shall return to partnership later.
What is the third sector and is ‘third sector’ the best name for it? You can refer to an earlier post about the scope of third sector organisations.
The Labour government’s Cabinet Office had an Office of the Third Sector between 1997 and 2010. The current coalition government used the term Civil Society or Big Society, and has an Office for Civil Society. Third Sector and Civil Society seem to cover much the same territory.
Terms Used to Describe the Third Sector
- Political parties use ‘Third Sector’ and ‘Civil Society’ for organisations and activities that are not public or private sector. These two terms are useful if you want to refer to the sector but they carry political baggage.
- ‘Voluntary Sector’ covers similar organisations and activities. The term has been around since the late 1970s. Whilst most people have a rough idea what it means, it can be confusing because it covers local groups run by unpaid people and large organisations who employ staff (sometimes called the professional voluntary sector). Organisations with established income streams, often from donations, have little in common with small community organisations.
- ‘Community Sector’ – applies to a narrower range of organisations than ‘voluntary sector’. It covers organisations working locally, usually with no or very few staff. They usually don’t have their own income streams and so are dependent on grants. Some city-wide or national organisations, representing local groups, belong to this sector. It might also include organisations with a national profile that work locally, eg churches.
- ‘Not-for-profits’ describes the third sector or parts of it. Perhaps any third sector organisation is not-for-profit but the term only makes sense where an organisation is trading. Some use the term ‘not-for-personal-profit’ because social enterprises and mutuals do trade and generate a profit. Sometimes people use “surplus” to show an organisation trades but not for personal profit. Surplus cash is not always spent for community or charitable purposes and so many of these organisations could just as easily be described as private sector. Sometimes it is difficult to see how small traders, adding value to a neighbourhood, are making less of a socio-economic contribution to their neighbourhood than social enterprises. So, not-for-profit describes those organisations that generate surplus to be used locally and collectively but perhaps does not adequately convey a full picture of the local economy.
Do you have other names for the sector I have not identified? Which terms do you use and how do you use them?