The Centre will be offering free ‘pre-consultancy’ support service to around 20 organisations, and will liaise with organisations such as Social Enterprise London and NCVO to identify potential clients. It will also accept approaches from individual organisations.

Consultants will work with organisations with the aims of: exploring why a consultant may be needed; identifying the resulting management requirements if a consultant were to be used; drawing up a brief for proposed consultancy; and helping organisations with their consultancy search or to draw up plans for the use of internal organisational capacity where appropriate.

The Centre plans to work with each organisation over a three day period with the aim of producing a report which will be the subject of a joint review, eventually resulting in an Impact Study examining the results of the interventions. The ultimate goal is the creation of a ‘good practice guide’ to building capacity around commissioning and managing consultants.

For further information visit www.centreforcharityeffectiveness.org