Voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations, often referred to collectively as the ‘not-for-profit sector’, are “...any organisation (incorporated or not) working with a social purpose” [1], regardless of size, remit, or operational level. Many VCSEs serve a charitable purpose and are registered as charities. VCSEs provide vital public services, support, and information while promoting and sustaining community cohesion. They are often a lifeline for vulnerable populations who may fall through administrative cracks, particularly in regard to health/mental health advocacy and support [2–4], or have needs which more traditional services cannot address, including social engagement and community interaction [5]. Our position in this paper is that VCSEs should be at the centre of research endeavours because they are uniquely placed to identify critical evidence gaps and to realise the full potential of research findings through improved resource allocation and ability to tailor and target services.

To secure and/or retain funding, VCSEs must regularly provide a significant amount of evidence to demonstrate the positive effect that their endeavours have had on the beneficiary population and society in general. This evidence can take many forms including supporting statistics relating to the population they support, economic evaluation of outcomes of service provision, as well as a comprehensive documentation of impact [6]. VCSEs therefore depend heavily on being able to source and/or produce high-quality evidence from high-quality data [7, 8]. However, VCSE operational budgets commonly prioritise provision of services to their beneficiaries, with less resources available to devote to such research, leading to increased reliance on lower quality evidence [9, 10]. Academic researchers often provide the necessary skills to generate such evidence, by working collaboratively with VCSEs; indeed, such collaborations are reciprocally beneficial as they can also demonstrate research ‘impact’ [11].

There have been initiatives to develop and support more academic researcher and VCSE collaboration, as networks have been established in some council areas in England including Greater Manchester [12] and North and East Cumbria [13]. These projects put the VCSE sector at the heart of research, giving organisations the opportunity to shape and guide the research using their ground-level knowledge of their beneficiary population’s needs [14] and their extensive experience of building relationships and trust with vulnerable or ‘hard to reach’ populations [15]. There have also been successful academic-VCSE collaborations in Northern Ireland (NI), a 6-county region of the United Kingdom (UK), and projects developed to encourage such work [16]. To facilitate these projects gaining traction and running smoothly, the number and remit of organisations and groups that comprise the VCSE sector needs to be understood. Currently however, no centralised, accessible, searchable directory of all VCSE organisations exists here. and so if academic-VCSE collaborations are to be encouraged and supported, such a resource is required. We propose that it is a necessary prerequisite to map the VCSE landscape in NI in order to better understand the sector and its needs.

To realise this, this paper was devised to address the following aims: 1) identify, collate, organise, and make accessible descriptive and contact information for all VCSE organisations in NI along multiple institutional and organisational metrics (e.g., location, size), 2) explore categories of organisational remit, 3) identify key beneficiary populations as well as underserved populations, 4) identify organisations for potential participation in proof-of-concept testing for a planned research engagement networking tool based on remit and beneficiary population, and 5) create a searchable database of VCSE organisations in NI.

VCSE organisations are a central element for successful impact-generating research projects. To facilitate collaborations/partnership, researchers need to be familiar with the local VCSE landscape. We identified a gap in this knowledge base and developed a solution: the production of a detailed searchable directory for operating VCSE organisations in NI in 2025. Using a systematic methodology, our team developed a searchable directory by collecting and summarising information on these VCSE organisation, establishing discreet remit- and beneficiary-based categories, as well as locational and thematic mapping of the sector across all six counties in the region.

Results showed significant variation in remit and service provision from VCSEs in both specific and general beneficiary populations. VCSEs exist to respond to a societal need, thus this ‘map’ of the VCSE landscape offers an approximation of current societal need in NI. However, it is important to note that size is not always a determinant of larger need or greater reach. Additionally, categories such as Community Development and Religious (Worship Communities) are a significant percentage of the VCSE landscape as they serve local communities; there are likely to be multiple of these organisations within each community, and there are a significant number of small communities across NI. Size also cannot be taken as a measure of a met need in the beneficiary population. For example, Youth is the third largest category, largely due to scouting groups (79.2%), but youths remain a vulnerable and underserved population in NI [19].

Smaller remit categories are not necessarily indicative of a lower societal need as single organisations or a small number of organisations may operate sufficiently to negate the creation of additional ones. It is also possible that due to chronic underfunding and competition for limited resources, several remit categories are unable to grow to adequately serve their beneficiary populations. However, the increase of certain categories to meet need is vital in the case of emerging and/or growing beneficiary populations, such as non-native English speakers or those affected by rising cancer rates [20].

Counties with a higher population percentage generally showed higher numbers of VCSEs, as heavily populated areas typically require a greater infrastructure in all sectors. However, more sparsely populated rural areas in the UK often experience higher levels of deprivation along multiple indices [21, 22], which is also evident in NI [23]. Even in more urban areas, organisation count is not indicative of organisation success, as in the climate of a “funding crisis in the UK voluntary sector” [24] and increasing cuts [25, 26], VCSEs can run out of funding quickly, especially smaller/micro-organisations [27].

This only further underscores the need for high-quality evidence-based research which prioritises VCSE organisations while incentivising researcher/VCSE collaboration, and the first step in this process is the ability for VCSEs and researchers to find each other. In building the structure of an engagement networking directory with database functionality, the VCSE-Finder NI, our team focused on an interface which would give users search options to best fit their needs. This includes keyword searches by tag (“cancer”), direct name (“Carers NI”), primary/secondary category, location by county, city, and postal code stem, and beneficiary population. As popular search engine results are becoming increasingly irrelevant and inaccurate [28], the VCSE-Finder NI will allow users to find the organisation they’re searching for, or a range of organisations based on need, including accurate contact information and updated information where relevant.

Planning is underway to host the VCSE-Finder NI as a web-based utility through the [INSTITUTION REDACTED] website, with the above features, a user interface, mapping functionality, and multiple vector search options. Figure 4 below illustrates an example of what form this tool may take. This work, including processes for long-term directory maintenance and site and data management, is ongoing. Currently, the directory has been reposited for testing and proof-of-concept use using the Open Science Framework (OSF; https://osf.io). It is available for download and optional evaluation at https://osf.io/dprb9/. Our team encourages local NI users, users across the UK, and international users to download the VCSE-Finder NI for testing or as a model for similar tools. We look forward to partnering with the NI VCSE community, the statutory sector, and academics across all disciplines for a formal launch of the web-based version of the VCSE-Finder NI once complete.

Compiling and summarising the VCSE sector in NI has enabled our team to ‘map’ and explore trends within the landscape of the sector. From this, a database engagement and networking tool, the VCSE-Finder NI, was created and made available for public use with the goal of centring the VCSE sector in collaborative research for the benefit of the NI population.