improvingsupport.org.uk

New workstreams launched to support the supporters

Nine new national services are now ready to start helping those who provide support to England’s third sector.

Known as the National Support Services (NSS), the nine national workstreams form a refocus of investment by Capacitybuilders away from the six national hubs that supported core elements of the ChangeUp programme from 2004 to the end of March 2008. The hubs reflected ChangeUp’s initial six themes: governance, volunteering, information and communications technology, finance, performance improvement and workforce development.

While continuing to build on the hubs’ achievements, the NSS workstreams seek to respond to new and wider needs identified within the sector. They will ‘support the supporters’ with resources, evidence, networking and good practice guides so that support providers can improve their offerings to frontline organisations.

Jon Fox, Capacitybuilders’ Director of Strategy and Policy, commented:
“We are working with the lead agencies to maximise coordination of activities and all the workstreams have contributed to a joint web presence which will act as a gateway to the NSS programme. Some lead agencies are able to build immediately from the work of the hubs, but inevitably there will be setup time and during this period we will work with the leads to develop business plans and align with local and regional priorities. The plans from lead agencies include a range of exciting and innovative proposals for improving support.”

The new workstreams and their lead agencies are:

Campaigning and advocacy – National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)

Equalities and diversity - Women's Resource Centre (WRC)

Income generation – The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (acevo)

Leadership and governance - NCVO

Marketing and communications - Media Trust

Modernising volunteering - Volunteering England

Performance - Charities Evaluation Services (CES)

Collaboration – The British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres (bassac)

Responding to social change - NCVO

The level, priorities and pattern of activity in each workstream will vary according to current gaps in provision identified through consultation and assessment and the changing needs of the sector. Capacitybuilders is working with the lead agencies to maximise coordination of activities and all the workstreams will contribute to this joint web-portal.

The NSS programme is one of Capacitybuilders’ principal funding streams running for three years from April 2008. It sits alongside funding through local and regional Consortia and the Improving Reach programme. It is also supported by directly commissioned work at a national level in workforce, ICT projects and new Social Enterprise and Capital investment programmes.

Although the national hubs are now winding up their main areas of work, their resources and assets will continue to be available to the sector. Signposts to this work are available via the national hubs portal.

More information about Capacitybuilders funding for 2008-2011 is available on the organisation’s website.