The NCVO is to lead two of the new government-funded National Support Services being established by Capacitybuilders to replace the controversial ChangeUp hubs.
As expected, the NCVO will take responsibility for the campaigning and advocacy workstream, and it has also been given control of the leadership and governance stream. This will mean it can build on the work of the Governance Hub, which has been an NCVO-led initative since the hubs launched in April 2005.
This afternoon, Capacitybuilders announced those organisations it has selected to lead seven of the nine new National Support Services (NSS). Acevo will lead income generation; the Women’s Resource Centre will lead equalities and diversity; the Media Trust will take responsibility for marketing and communications; Charities Evaluation Services will lead performance management, and Volunteering England will take on modernising volunteering.
Lead providers for the two remaining Support Services, collaboration and responding to social change, have not yet been awarded.
Capacitybuilders chief executive Simon Hebditch (pictured) said those organisations that had bid to run these two streams had raised issues that had not been properly considered, and so the funder needed more time to clarify “focus and priorities” around both those themes.
Those bidders appointed today will share £11m over the three years from April 2008 to March 2011. Each will now start to put together detailed business plans for the workstreams, and handover from the hubs will be expected to be more or less complete by 1 April 2008.
Hebditch has already announced that certain hub staff may have their employment contracts extended for two months to the end of May 2008 to enable a smooth transition to the new services.
Today’s announcement is the culmination of years of wrangling over the funding provided by the government for the national capacity-building element of the ChangeUp programme.
The original six ‘hubs of expertise’ were beset by power struggles within the sector as various organisations jostled for a stake in delivering the hubs. The NCVO was criticised for empire-building after it successfully bid to lead or co-lead four of the six hubs, and as a result Capacitybuilders was created to restructure the programme, which it has managed to do to the eventual satisfaction of most of the interested parties.
A total of 123 bids were received for the nine programmes from 66 voluntary and private sector organisations. Equalities and diversity attracted the most bids, at 26.
However, the amount of money available for the programmes has dropped substantially. According to the tender documents, the nine programmes will be funded to the tune of about £4.6m a year, compared with £8.9m in 2007/08, with each being allocated around £500,000 each.
Peter Kyle, acevo’s director of strategy and enterprise, said its partners in the income generation workstream provided the “best cross-sector expertise” to deliver a programme that would cover the full spectrum of income generation, “from raffles to primary purpose trading”.
“We will also work to join up social enterprise and VCS infrastructure to share their own expertise,” he said.
Charities Aid Foundation, which ran the Finance Hub but lost out to acevo on the new income generation programme, was gracious in defeat. A spokeswoman congratulated acevo and said CAF looked forward to working with Capacitybuilders to maximise free access to the Finance Hub website.
NCVO deputy chief executive Ben Kernighan said the NCVO was continuing to talk with Capacitybuilders about potential national work around the two as-yet-unallocated services, “and we hope that these discussions will be concluded swiftly”.
He added: “NCVO will continue to provide advice and support in the areas of performance and income generation, funded by other sources.”
