What is VCS?

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) identifies the following distinctive characteristics of the voluntary and community sector (VCS):

• self-governing organisations, some being registered charities, some incorporated non-profit organisations and some outside both these classifications
• a great range of size and structure of organisations
• work delivered for the public benefit, beyond the membership of individual voluntary and community organisations (VCOs)
• independence of both formal structures of government and the profit sector
• an important reliance on volunteers to carry out its work.

~Capacity Builders - Investment for infrastructure organisations supporting Frontline organisations~

An independent, innovative, flexible, responsive and sustainable voluntary and community sector, which achieves its full potential in:

·       Service delivery;

·       Policy analysis;

·       Community development; and

·        Campaigning

We will:

• Respect VCOs’ independence;
• Take full account of diversity;
• Take account of front-line VCO’s experience;
• Recognise that a variety of approaches to capacity building may be successful; and keep to the Nolan Report’s public service principles

Infrastructure is the physical facilities, structures, systems, relationships, people, knowledge and skills that help front-line organisations to achieve their aims.

ChangeUp is a Government funding program, developed with VCOs, to build capacity and infrastructure front-line VCO's, so that local communities will be able to experience a real difference in the quality of their services. It will do this by improving the capacity and capability’s of organisations that offer services to the front line.

Our expected budget for the next two financial years is £70 million, some of which is already committed for 2006/7. £7million is committed to the Continuation Fund supporting local and regional consortia.

The national hubs will account for £8.7 million and the Netgain/RuralNet project for £680,000. Our central overheads and operational costs will amount to approximately £2.2 million per year. So we will have discretionary funds of at least £48 million over the two year period.

This funding will enable infrastructure organisations to improve their support for VCOs. This will allow VCOs increasingly to concentrate their resources on their core activities.

Part of the ChangeUp programme has been to set up six national ‘hubs’ to address voluntary and community sector (VCS) infrastructure issues.

The six national hubs are:

• Financing voluntary and
• Community sector activity;
• Information and communication
• Technologies (ICT);
• Governance;
• Workforce development;
• Performance; and
• Volunteering;