4. Achieving change

  Comment on this chapter

4.1 Capacitybuilders’ vision is of a third sector that is independent, innovative, flexible, responsive and sustainable, and that achieves its full potential in:

• service delivery;
• social innovation;
• policy analysis;
• campaigning; and
• exercising its voice or representational role.

Q1 Do you agree with Capacitybuilders’ vision for the third sector? Comment

4.2 To support this vision, Capacitybuilders will:

• commission work to improve the sector’s:
  • knowledge, skills and staff/trustee development;
  • use of ICT and other resources;
  • ability to plan, evaluate and improve performance;
  • ability to raise and manage money; and
  • deployment and organisation of the work of volunteers; and

• understand and influence:
  • the public policy agenda and sector links to local government;
  • the sector’s role in engaging with the public policy agenda;
  • decisions taken by other organisations about their relationships with the wider third sector; and
  • the need in the sector for long-term funding agreements.

Comments

[John Baxter]

Would not disagree but who is going to do all the above? Some generalist infrastructure organisations have only one member of staff - something to do with a LACK OF CAPACITY I think.

[Taher Qassim]

This strategy looks great when reading it on the screen. I have heard about changeUp for more than a year. I still do not know what they do and how the network I represent could benefit from what they do? I have been searching for information and got hold of this CapacityBuilders. My concern and question is this. NRF is finishing soon. Who will enable my network the Black and other Racial Minorities (BRM) in Liverpool to work on the the above seven hubs to enable them move forward?

[Rachael Lawrence]

If you would like to find out more about ChangeUp the best place to start is the website which can be found at: www.changeup.org.uk

Capacitybuilders is the new national agency with responsibility initially for managing the £70million ChangeUp programme until 2008. To find out more information please visit: www.capacitybuilders.org.uk

Hope this helps.

[Mick Smith]

Yep I agree this all looks good until you begin to understand what capacity builders actually want of us...they want what change up should have provided but failed miserably to do.
How much of the £70m will actually go to us in the VCS and how much will be used to run capacitbuilders and to pay the Go's etc, etc?

[Gilbert George]

Dear Mick

I have posted a response to your comment on this page as it is not possible to format the information fully here. On that page is a copy of the Capacitybuilders’ forecast expenditure in support of this agreement, to help alleviate your fears.

[Mark Reading]

Don't want to appear to be confrontational Mick, but what did ChangeUp fail to do? As I see it, we are still working on ChahgeUp everyday, and if anyone is to blame for lack of infrastructure development - it is the respective Consortia. When I read the original documentation, the outcomes were clear. We lacked effect support from GONW at various stages, but the real onus was with us. We needed and need to change, the investment was pumped in for that purpose. The investment was (and is) viewed by too many as a funding stream to keep organisations afloat until the next funding stream came along. ChangeUp is about improving what we do. Doing this as a collective is the way our stakeholders want us to do it, and how the original literature guided us to do it. We should by now all recognise this fact. When Consortia do that, then they can develop effectively.

[stephen woollett]

3.1 We think that CapacityBuilders vision for the "third sector" should emphasise the need for organisations to retain their core values. We also think it is inappropriate to identify "service delivery" as the first bullet point. The foundation of most organisations is essentially about meeting social and other needs rather than delivering services.