This study explores the impacts of contractual government funding and competitive tendering on voluntary organisations (VOs) providing homelessness services in Southampton, UK. Although service quality has arguably improved, the interview data suggest that implementing competitive tendering within the voluntary sector is not unproblematic. Three key issues are discussed: changing demands for expertise, increasing job insecurity, and tensions between competition and cooperation among VOs. The article argues that if VOs are to retain the distinctive qualities for which politicians have lauded them, procurement and monitoring procedures must be carefully attuned to the social relations and practices of the voluntary sector.

The impacts of government contracting on third sector organisations (TSOs) have attracted much discussion; however, the diversity of the organisations that comprise the third sector means that these impacts in fact vary considerably between TSOs. In order to better understand this complexity and to analyse and articulate TSOs' experiences more effectively, it is useful to think about different response types. Based on empirical evidence from a study of homelessness TSOs in two South East England local authorities, this paper presents a typology of organisational responses to contracting. The four types identified are: Comfortable Contractors, Compliant Contractors, Cautious Contractors, and Community-Based Non-Contractors. The varied experiences of these different types of organisation with regard to contracting are described in the paper and point to the need for greater precision and differentiation within academic debates, and in the formulation of social policy relating to the third sector.

Social enterprise (SE) has attracted increasing attention from policymakers, practitioners and academics over recent years and it has often been argued that there is a strong geographical dimension to social enterprise growth. However, a lack of reliable and extensive quantitative data about these organisations has prevented any rigorous analysis of their geographical distribution. This paper offers an exploratory theoretical framework for understanding the causes of geographical variations in SE, focusing on the relations between capacities/resources and demand. It then examines what can be learned from existing national surveys about the regional geography of SE. It is argued that these datasets are difficult to compare because of their different sampling frames, and in most cases the regional findings are only provisional and indicative. However, when considered in concert, some consistent themes emerge: London, for example, has a disproportionately high share of SE activity, as to a lesser extent do the South West and North East regions. It is concluded that regional populations of SEs are the product of often countervailing forces in supply and demand that act to level out the degree of regional variations. These totals are also likely to mask significant differences in their characteristics in different places and more pronounced spatial variations at smaller spatial scales (e.g. between inner city, suburban and rural areas). Figure 1 A diagrammatic representation of the interaction of supply and demand factors affecting the regional geography of social enterprise in the UKThe enigmatic regional geography of social enterprise 85

While the boundaries between different sectors within the welfare mix have always been indistinct, increasing involvement of third sector organisations (TSOs) in government contracts has accentuated the ‘blurring’ of these boundaries over recent decades. This paper builds on existing analyses of hybridity in the third sector and presents the welfare pyramid as a theoretical framework within which hybridisation and its implications for TSOs of different types can be explored. Taking homelessness TSOs as an example, it highlights the existence of a division of labour among these organisations (which seems to have been exacerbated by contracting) and underlines the need for policy makers to carefully consider TSOs’ varied roles, strengths and limitations.

The concept of commissioning has risen in prominence