The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has today announced that its merger with Charities Evaluation Services has been finalised and will take effect on Saturday.

CES will be merging into NCVO, with CES staff moving into the NCVO’s Society Building offices from next week. Eight of a total of 11 members of staff from CES will join NCVO as staff members, while CES’s chief executive Sam Matthews and two finance and administration staff will provide consultancy services to NCVO following the merger. Jenny Field, an existing trustee at CES, will be appointed to join NCVO’s board.

The merger is being undertaken to secure the future of CES, which began seeking a merger partner earlier this year to help it achieve the scale it needs to remain sustainable. The announcement that the two charities were to merge came last month.

Richard Williams, director of enterprise at NCVO, said: “I’m very much looking forward to welcoming our new colleagues. With their knowledge and expertise we will be able to do more than ever to support our members and help them make the biggest difference.”

Staff from CES will join two departments in NCVO. CES’s quality accreditation experts, who are responsible for its PQASSO quality standard, will join NCVO’s volunteering and development department.

NCVO said that the PQASSO standards, which are considered best-in-class for quality management and are in use by charities in the UK and overseas, will complement its other quality standards – Investing in Volunteers and Volunteer Centre Quality Accreditation.

CES’s consultants, who specialise in outcome and impact, will join NCVO’s enterprise department, where they will work alongside NCVO’s consultancy team.