Capacitybuilders has scrapped its plans to replace the ChangeUp hubs with National Support Services grouped under four strategic themes, and will instead directly commission organisations to deliver nine national programmes. The new structure eliminates the need for ‘main contractors’ which would have then effectively subcontracted bits of work to other organisations. This answers those critics who were concerned that the new model was too similar to the old hub structure and could have led to some larger main contractor organizations awarding work to themselves.

Capacitybuilders’ eleventh-hour change of heart aims to simplify the national element of ChangeUp and was recommended by a special advisory team set up in July and chaired by Julia Kaufmann, a Capacitybuilders board member and chair of its grants committee. The board ratified the advice at an emergency meeting in August.

The new national support programmes will comprise: performance management, income generation; equalities and diversity; modernising volunteering; collaboration and partnership; adapting to social change; marketing and communications; campaigning and advocacy; and leadership and governance. Additional programmes on workforce and IT will be considered by the Capacitybuilders board at its meeting in October. NAVCA and the NCVO are keen to see such themes included.

Volunteering has been reintroduced as a separate programme in the wake of criticism from the volunteering sector of Capacitybuilders’ previous move to incorporate it into a wider theme of ‘People and skills’.