IJPDS International Journal of Population Data Science

A newly created directory of Voluntary, Charity and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations in Northern Ireland aims to place the sector at the heart of research collaboration. Researchers hope the initiative will help shift the traditional model of academic partnerships by centring VCSEs organisations and the communities they support.

Research partnerships between academics and VCSEs can produce valuable evidence that organisations can use to secure the funding needed to sustain their services. In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, and amid the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, many VCSEs organisations have increasingly stepped in when public services are stretched, helping to ensure that vulnerable people do not fall through the cracks. However, declining funding has intensified competition for grants, leading to closure of some organisations and raising expectations for evidence demonstrating meaningful service provision.

Facilitating impactful partnerships between researchers and VCSEs requires a collaborative research environment where organisations with direct knowledge of community needs can help shape research priorities. The project team recognised that the overall ‘landscape’ of the VCSE sector in Northern Ireland was not well understood. in fact, no one had ever ‘mapped’ or summarised the sector. While some larger membership organisations maintain records of their members, there has never been a comprehensive, searchable directory of VCSE organisations across the region.

In a new study published in the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS), the research team describes how they addressed this gap by systematically compiling information from multiple membership organisations, including the Northern Ireland Charity Commission, CommunityNI, and the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA). Using this approach, the team identified 7,706 organisations across 40 service categories and distributed across Northern Ireland in a pattern broadly reflecting population distribution.

The result is the VCSE-Finder NI directory, a database containing publicly available information on organisations, including their addresses, websites, phone numbers, email contacts, and descriptions of the services they provide. The directory has been released in an early beta version https://osf.io/dprb9/, with plans to develop it into a free web-based tool with searchable smart tags and mapping functions.

Lead author, Dr Eric Spikol said “By making this information openly available, the project aims to help researchers identify potential partners, enable organisations to connect with one another, support policymakers seeking to engage with the sector, and help members of the public find relevant services.”

 

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Dr. Eric Spikol, Ulster University, Northern Ireland, UK

Spikol, E., Redican, E., McBride, O., Murphy, J. and Shevlin, M. (2026) “Putting Voluntary, Charity, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Organisations at the Heart of Research: Creating a Northern Ireland VCSE Research Directory”, International Journal of Population Data Science, 11(1). doi: 10.23889/ijpds.v11i1.3361.