Metadata

The following notes explain the basis of the data displayed on this website; the data sources, how it is collected and any limitations, qualifications or explanations needed to best understand the data.

Volunteer-involving organisations

1. Data is collected monthly from a wide cross-section of volunteer-involving organisations across Lancashire, but it is not and does not attempt to be 100% comprehensive in its coverage.
   
2. The allocation of organisations to Volunteer Opportunity Types and Local Area Agreement thematic blocks was made on the basis each organisation's self-description. These are made on the basis of the organisation's main activity e.g. Age Concern will be linked to ‘Older People' (LAA theme) and ‘Elderly' (Volunteer Opportunity Type) but clearly there will be cross-linkages to ‘Health & Well-being', ‘People & Communities' and ‘Community Safety'
3. The number of volunteers is a ‘snapshot' each month
   of the total number of volunteers registered and working for each organisation and in each sector. Volunteers counted in any one month may well still be working for the same organisation and therefore still counted in subsequent months. The figures are not therefore cumulative and cannot be added to give a yearly total. A more meaningful figure for the year would be a monthly average. For this reason, the graphs show only the hours worked as a cumulative annual figure.
   
4. Some but not all volunteer-involving organisations are able to break down their volunteer statistics by District Council area. Where this is not possible, the total for that organisation is allocated to the District Council in which their head office is based, even though they may have volunteers across two or more District Council areas.

Volunteer Centre Data

1. Not all of the volunteers registered and referred on to organisations by volunteer centres will actually take up a volunteer placement. There will be a percentage that will drop out before getting to the point of enrolling with a voluntary or community organisation.
   
2. With the number of opportunities made available through volunteer centres, each unique opportunity is counted just once by each volunteer centre for each District Council Area, even though there may be scope for recruiting two or more volunteers to each role. Some volunteer opportunities, on the other hand, may be available and have relevance across two or more District Council boundaries and would be counted in each of the District Councils in which it is available.