By now most of you in the know will have heard about the decision by the Office of Third Sector to withdraw grants previously offered to a number of small to medium sized charities. I won't go into the details behind the case, information about that is already available in abundance but needless to say, I and my colleagues at Red Foundation are shocked at the way this situation has been handled and extend our sympathy and support to those charities affected.
What I want to reflect upon is how we, as the third sector, have to unite to make our voices heard on this issue. NCVO, supported by NAVCA, have taken up this case and have so far led the call for charities and voluntary groups to sign a petition to lobby the OTS, and are exploring the legal ramifications to ascertain if a case can be brought against them. Both NCVO and NAVCA are to be applauded. Both charities rely heavily on OTS funding and are showing considerable courage and leadership on an issue that affects us all.
And this is an issue that affect us all, make no mistake about that. If we allow the OTS to get away lightly with this decision then we open the doors for future governments to feel it is acceptable to treat the third sector in this way. These projects may have been small previously unheard of charities, but they are part of our sector and as such we need to show our support for them.
The petition set up by NCVO via their www.Louder.org.uk website has so far only attracted 200 signatures. Frankly that's a pretty poor show so far. There are at least a thousand charities on Twitter alone, not to mention those on Facebook and the charities that subscribe to NCVO, NAVCA etc. So why the poor turnout? It's not for lack of awareness I'm sure - Third Sector magazine alone have given the issue extensive coverage so far - so I suspect it may be more down to apathy.
It's very easy to sit back and ignore issues that may not affect us directly and I can understand that many charities that receive government funding may not want to rock the boat and be seen to be biting the hand that feeds them. But one day it could be any of us on the receiving end of such an outrageous policy decision and who would we look to to support us in our time of need?
The one thing that we as a sector have in abundance is our voice, and now is the time to make it heard. The government cannot be allowed to treat any charity in this way and only by uniting our voices to create a big enough noise will government, and the other powers that be, hear us and take notice.
NCVO and NAVCA cannot fight this case alone. They need every CEO, director, co-ordinator and manager of every charity and third sector organisation out there to make sure that the Office of the Third Sector understands in no uncertain terms that this sort of decision making is unacceptable.
Please show your support by signing this petition www.louder.org.uk/otscampaign today and offering any support you can. Your help today could make all the difference.
Jamie Thomas is Chief Executive of Red Foundation
Friday 27 November 2009
Monday 26 October 2009
Does High Unemployment Necessarily Have a Direct Impact on Increased Volunteering?
There is a tendency at the moment to look towards charities to help with our recession recovery process. It is hoped charities can provide volunteering opportunities which will help people gain work experience, confidence, motivation and references to support them in job-seeking. But do we already have evidence that there is a questionable link between the need for volunteering and the take-up of volunteering opportunities?
Looking at two sources of regional data, the Place Survey and the Annual Population Survey, it is apparent that the places which have the highest levels of worklessness also have lowest levels of volunteering. This is perhaps surprising for those of us who believe that volunteering increases at times (and in places) of high worklessness.
The 2008 Place Survey asked respondents if they had given unpaid help at least once per month over the last 12 months. In England 23.2% said that they did so – just over one in five of each people asked.
The Place Survey looked at this question, and many others, on a national level, local authority level and regional level. Of the nine English regions, the three with the lowest levels of unpaid help were the West Midlands (22%), London (21%) and the North East (19%). The highest were the South East (25%, Eastern England (25%) and the South West (28%).
Interestingly, these regions correlate almost entirely with the regions which have the highest and lowest levels of unemployment (Office for National Statistics, Annual Population Survey 2007). The worklessness data includes people who are unemployed and people who are economically inactive, for example, people who are sick/disabled, students, people looking after the family and home, and retired people. Those regions with the highest levels of worklessness are London (31%), North East, North West and the West Midlands. Those with the lowest levels of worklessness are South East (22%), South West and the East of England.
There has been much talk of late about the role of the third sector in our recovery from the recession. They are cited as not only being the source of support for those in dire straits but of as providers of volunteering opportunities for those who are looking for work, people who are unemployed, students and so forth. The Place Survey data above suggests that the relationship is just not that simple. The ‘need’ for volunteering as a way out of worklessness and the time individuals have available to volunteer are not necessarily the driving factors towards increased regular volunteering.
It is useful to note that the Place Survey did not restrict itself to formal within-charity volunteering but used a wider definition looking at help given to any club, group or society. It did exclude, however, family-based care.
There are myriad reasons why times and areas of high worklessness do not correlate with high levels of unpaid help being given. Not least is the fact that voluntary and community organisations each have a set of aims and objectives, some of which are met by using volunteer help. Few organisations are set up specifically to take on volunteers solely for the volunteers’ sake which is a time-consuming and costly business.
What is clear is that we cannot assume that worklessness increases volunteering. Much more work is needed to understand the relationship with investment in the voluntary and community sector to develop appropriate measures to encourage volunteering.
Posted by Gudrun Limbrick, Associate Director (Research), Red Foundation
Looking at two sources of regional data, the Place Survey and the Annual Population Survey, it is apparent that the places which have the highest levels of worklessness also have lowest levels of volunteering. This is perhaps surprising for those of us who believe that volunteering increases at times (and in places) of high worklessness.
The 2008 Place Survey asked respondents if they had given unpaid help at least once per month over the last 12 months. In England 23.2% said that they did so – just over one in five of each people asked.
The Place Survey looked at this question, and many others, on a national level, local authority level and regional level. Of the nine English regions, the three with the lowest levels of unpaid help were the West Midlands (22%), London (21%) and the North East (19%). The highest were the South East (25%, Eastern England (25%) and the South West (28%).
Interestingly, these regions correlate almost entirely with the regions which have the highest and lowest levels of unemployment (Office for National Statistics, Annual Population Survey 2007). The worklessness data includes people who are unemployed and people who are economically inactive, for example, people who are sick/disabled, students, people looking after the family and home, and retired people. Those regions with the highest levels of worklessness are London (31%), North East, North West and the West Midlands. Those with the lowest levels of worklessness are South East (22%), South West and the East of England.
There has been much talk of late about the role of the third sector in our recovery from the recession. They are cited as not only being the source of support for those in dire straits but of as providers of volunteering opportunities for those who are looking for work, people who are unemployed, students and so forth. The Place Survey data above suggests that the relationship is just not that simple. The ‘need’ for volunteering as a way out of worklessness and the time individuals have available to volunteer are not necessarily the driving factors towards increased regular volunteering.
It is useful to note that the Place Survey did not restrict itself to formal within-charity volunteering but used a wider definition looking at help given to any club, group or society. It did exclude, however, family-based care.
There are myriad reasons why times and areas of high worklessness do not correlate with high levels of unpaid help being given. Not least is the fact that voluntary and community organisations each have a set of aims and objectives, some of which are met by using volunteer help. Few organisations are set up specifically to take on volunteers solely for the volunteers’ sake which is a time-consuming and costly business.
What is clear is that we cannot assume that worklessness increases volunteering. Much more work is needed to understand the relationship with investment in the voluntary and community sector to develop appropriate measures to encourage volunteering.
Posted by Gudrun Limbrick, Associate Director (Research), Red Foundation
Sunday 6 September 2009
Recession – good or bad for volunteering?
I am not surprised to see Volunteering England’s latest research findings published today – the recession is increasing demand for volunteering placements. It’s hardly rocket science to see why this is the case, especially as it comes on the back of a lot of work in recent years to promote volunteering and highlight the potential for it to develop skills and build your CV.
Volunteer Centres have always been a barometer for changes in the volunteering movement; their activity has been a clear indication in the growth that we have seen. I think that the fact they have done this when they face continual battles for resources is a mark of their dedication and commitment to the importance of volunteering within our communities.
But – this extra work for Volunteer Centres means that there are additional pressures on volunteer involving organisations. Volunteering may be freely given, but it is not cost free. Involving volunteers has financial implications for organisations, and it is worrying to see at a time of increased volunteering that some organisations are reducing their volunteer management capacity (last week I heard of yet another national organisation doing this).
I wonder how many volunteer involving organisations have thought about the value of the gift of time their volunteers give them, looked at how much they would invest in their fundraising efforts to secure this level of income and then invested the same in their volunteer management. I’m fairly sure that they are few and far between. Similarly, I wonder whether volunteer involving organisations have looked at how much they invest in each of their members of staff (recruitment, management, development) and applied a similar figure to their volunteers.
Yes, Volunteer Centres need funding – and it’s about time there was a national agreement for this to happen. But Volunteer Management needs investment as well. Volunteer involving organisations need to be realistic about the costs they face in securing and maintaining their volunteering programme, adding these as core costs, and ensuring that their Volunteer Manager has an appropriately senior role. This is not a time for cutting resources allocated to volunteering, it’s a time for investment by government and volunteer involving organisations.
We all need to accept the reality that Volunteer Centres and volunteer management cannot continue to deliver the nation’s vision for volunteering if they are not invested in; if investment continues to be cut during the recession not only will volunteering suffer, so will the all of our communities – especially those who are most vulnerable. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?
Chris Penberthy is Managing Director of Red Foundation and South West Regional Chair of the England Volunteering Development Council; he was formerly Chief Executive of Volunteer Development England and a Director of Volunteering England - Chris blogs in a personal capacity.
Volunteer Centres have always been a barometer for changes in the volunteering movement; their activity has been a clear indication in the growth that we have seen. I think that the fact they have done this when they face continual battles for resources is a mark of their dedication and commitment to the importance of volunteering within our communities.
But – this extra work for Volunteer Centres means that there are additional pressures on volunteer involving organisations. Volunteering may be freely given, but it is not cost free. Involving volunteers has financial implications for organisations, and it is worrying to see at a time of increased volunteering that some organisations are reducing their volunteer management capacity (last week I heard of yet another national organisation doing this).
I wonder how many volunteer involving organisations have thought about the value of the gift of time their volunteers give them, looked at how much they would invest in their fundraising efforts to secure this level of income and then invested the same in their volunteer management. I’m fairly sure that they are few and far between. Similarly, I wonder whether volunteer involving organisations have looked at how much they invest in each of their members of staff (recruitment, management, development) and applied a similar figure to their volunteers.
Yes, Volunteer Centres need funding – and it’s about time there was a national agreement for this to happen. But Volunteer Management needs investment as well. Volunteer involving organisations need to be realistic about the costs they face in securing and maintaining their volunteering programme, adding these as core costs, and ensuring that their Volunteer Manager has an appropriately senior role. This is not a time for cutting resources allocated to volunteering, it’s a time for investment by government and volunteer involving organisations.
We all need to accept the reality that Volunteer Centres and volunteer management cannot continue to deliver the nation’s vision for volunteering if they are not invested in; if investment continues to be cut during the recession not only will volunteering suffer, so will the all of our communities – especially those who are most vulnerable. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?
Chris Penberthy is Managing Director of Red Foundation and South West Regional Chair of the England Volunteering Development Council; he was formerly Chief Executive of Volunteer Development England and a Director of Volunteering England - Chris blogs in a personal capacity.
Tuesday 25 August 2009
Money For Old Rope Anyone?
Volunteer Centres across the country are not happy. The reason? Well, according to Third Sector magazine, it’s due to the ‘cash and grab’ approach perceived to be coming from BTCV and CSV, two of the charities running of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) volunteer brokerage scheme. Third Sector have claimed that both are offering Volunteer Centres as little as 10% of the funding available from DWP to do what is claimed to be 95% of the work.
If this is true then Volunteer Centres are right to be angry. Both charities have placed themselves in a position that is, on the face of it, hard to justify. In the current climate of national apathy towards public servants who are seen to be abusing the system for personal gain, this sort of behaviour does little to invoke confidence within our sector. Big national charities like these should be leading by example and not taking advantage of their smaller local colleagues. Although I’ve not seen the budget breakdown for this scheme, I’m finding it hard to see how either could justify their cost allocations. The fact that one felt able to up their initial offer of £20 to £65 per volunteer placement, after a local Volunteer Centre showed them the proverbial finger, exposes the level of their mark up and implies that their involvement in the scheme has been primarily motivated to make money. It seems ironic that VCs, the agencies that need the funds the most, are the least prepared to sell out, preferring to stick to their guns and challenge the big boys – hats off to them for standing up for themselves in this way.
To me this incident is symptomatic of a wider issue in our sector that has been bugging me for some time. Libby Purvis wrote a piece in The Times back in December which really struck a chord with me (link here http://bit.ly/UZktL). In it she laments about the over professionalisation of the sector, where charities are trying to mirror the corporate world and in doing so “create a whole cadre of employees whose expectations and behaviours rapidly become expensive, potentially wasteful and at times merely self-aggrandising.”
Although I don’t agree with all of Libby’s views, I do agree that many larger, national charities seem to have morphed themselves into quasi corporations, who treat their funds as their own private profits rather than the generosity of the public and statutory grant makers. When I worked in the Home Office I was often approached by be-suited, slick CEOs looking for new funding opportunities. Often they would boast about their turnover and the number of staff they had, and seemed to think that this qualified them to be in the best position to deliver a particular scheme or initiative - rather than a passion for the cause or a unique approach to the problem we were trying to solve.
Of course charities do need to be professional – public money after all has to be accounted for and we need competent administrators to ensure this is done. But not at the expense of trying to ape our commercial cousins by screwing the competition, especially when you need them to deliver the goods. Stephen Bubb, the head of ACEVO, has recently called for a national campaign to help ‘educate’ the public about the work of charities. His call seems to be as much about justifying to the public why charities need to spend vast amounts of money on marketing and salaries, as to reminding them why we are here and why they should continue to support us. I don’t believe that this approach will yield anything other than further scepticism and confusion from the public and I just hope that no one is daft enough to fund it.
I wonder if we are about to witness the demise of the big national charity. I think that the public wants to see charity as an independent and alternative way to respond to social issues – led by people that care enough about people or places to do something rather than wait for the government to respond. Yet many of the nationals appear so commercialised, so far from their roots that they are becoming almost inappropriate in this context. Those that think it’s ok to pay commercial companies to ‘chug’ the public for cash seem to be more about making money and expanding their empires, than standing up for an unpopular cause or innovating in the solution of social problems and challenging the government of the day. Indeed many have simply become agents of government, delivering government services and brokering government cash. Of course not all are the same, you only have to wander round Comic Relief’s offices to see how a big charity can still be beautiful, but they seem to me to be the exception rather than the rule.
But all is not lost. Thankfully local charities are still out there, innovating and rarely losing sight of their reason for being. And in recent years we’ve seen the rise of the 'social entrepreneur'. Not a new concept as such, more a new avenue for those frustrated and creative people that really care about the world but can’t see how to make their ideas happen within the established charity sector. Many are volunteering their time, some are running sustainable social businesses, and all are out there to make things happen, driven by a real hunger for change and passion for their chosen cause. It is these people that will represent the future spirit of charity in my opinion.
Jamie Thomas
(Jamie writes in a personal capacity and his views are not those of Red Foundation)
If this is true then Volunteer Centres are right to be angry. Both charities have placed themselves in a position that is, on the face of it, hard to justify. In the current climate of national apathy towards public servants who are seen to be abusing the system for personal gain, this sort of behaviour does little to invoke confidence within our sector. Big national charities like these should be leading by example and not taking advantage of their smaller local colleagues. Although I’ve not seen the budget breakdown for this scheme, I’m finding it hard to see how either could justify their cost allocations. The fact that one felt able to up their initial offer of £20 to £65 per volunteer placement, after a local Volunteer Centre showed them the proverbial finger, exposes the level of their mark up and implies that their involvement in the scheme has been primarily motivated to make money. It seems ironic that VCs, the agencies that need the funds the most, are the least prepared to sell out, preferring to stick to their guns and challenge the big boys – hats off to them for standing up for themselves in this way.
To me this incident is symptomatic of a wider issue in our sector that has been bugging me for some time. Libby Purvis wrote a piece in The Times back in December which really struck a chord with me (link here http://bit.ly/UZktL). In it she laments about the over professionalisation of the sector, where charities are trying to mirror the corporate world and in doing so “create a whole cadre of employees whose expectations and behaviours rapidly become expensive, potentially wasteful and at times merely self-aggrandising.”
Although I don’t agree with all of Libby’s views, I do agree that many larger, national charities seem to have morphed themselves into quasi corporations, who treat their funds as their own private profits rather than the generosity of the public and statutory grant makers. When I worked in the Home Office I was often approached by be-suited, slick CEOs looking for new funding opportunities. Often they would boast about their turnover and the number of staff they had, and seemed to think that this qualified them to be in the best position to deliver a particular scheme or initiative - rather than a passion for the cause or a unique approach to the problem we were trying to solve.
Of course charities do need to be professional – public money after all has to be accounted for and we need competent administrators to ensure this is done. But not at the expense of trying to ape our commercial cousins by screwing the competition, especially when you need them to deliver the goods. Stephen Bubb, the head of ACEVO, has recently called for a national campaign to help ‘educate’ the public about the work of charities. His call seems to be as much about justifying to the public why charities need to spend vast amounts of money on marketing and salaries, as to reminding them why we are here and why they should continue to support us. I don’t believe that this approach will yield anything other than further scepticism and confusion from the public and I just hope that no one is daft enough to fund it.
I wonder if we are about to witness the demise of the big national charity. I think that the public wants to see charity as an independent and alternative way to respond to social issues – led by people that care enough about people or places to do something rather than wait for the government to respond. Yet many of the nationals appear so commercialised, so far from their roots that they are becoming almost inappropriate in this context. Those that think it’s ok to pay commercial companies to ‘chug’ the public for cash seem to be more about making money and expanding their empires, than standing up for an unpopular cause or innovating in the solution of social problems and challenging the government of the day. Indeed many have simply become agents of government, delivering government services and brokering government cash. Of course not all are the same, you only have to wander round Comic Relief’s offices to see how a big charity can still be beautiful, but they seem to me to be the exception rather than the rule.
But all is not lost. Thankfully local charities are still out there, innovating and rarely losing sight of their reason for being. And in recent years we’ve seen the rise of the 'social entrepreneur'. Not a new concept as such, more a new avenue for those frustrated and creative people that really care about the world but can’t see how to make their ideas happen within the established charity sector. Many are volunteering their time, some are running sustainable social businesses, and all are out there to make things happen, driven by a real hunger for change and passion for their chosen cause. It is these people that will represent the future spirit of charity in my opinion.
Jamie Thomas
(Jamie writes in a personal capacity and his views are not those of Red Foundation)
Thursday 30 July 2009
Volunteering – The Cure For All Our Ills?
I don’t know about you but I’m a tad concerned. Volunteering has never had such a high profile, it’s like its's suddenly acquired celebrity status. On many levels this is great, but as most celebrities will testify fame is a fickle mistress and I’m waiting for the inevitable backlash, when volunteering will be caught in a compromising position with a senior member of the establishment, with its pants round its ankles and its vulnerabilities and limitations exposed for all to see.
So why am I concerned? Volunteering is increasingly being seen by government as the answer to our society’s ills – from combating youth anti social behaviour through enforced service, responding to the unemployment crisis and more recently as a way to measure a migrant’s suitability to become a UK citizen. Now we hear that volunteers could be the nation’s solution to the Swine Flu pandemic! Ok I’m being a tad flippant on that last one - getting volunteers to help distribute swine flu medication is probably a good thing and if cash strapped Volunteer Centres can make a buck out of it then good for them.
My main grumble here are the increasing attempts by government to manipulate the volunteering landscape to combat a growing list of social issues. This sort of pressure and expectation on volunteering is simply unrealistic and sooner or later it’s going to have a breakdown. Even the Prime Minister’s former Volunteering Champion, Julia Neuberger, has condemned government plans to use volunteering as a measure to fast track citizenship – and too right, I’d love to know who the hell dreamt that one up! For a government that has hitherto been so good for our sector, I’m disappointed that they are resorting to such initiatives that seem to have little or no support from volunteers or those that work with them.
Neuberger has also argued that volunteers and the act of volunteering cannot and should not be controlled by the state or anyone else. I wholeheartedly agree with her. Personally I’m not even convinced that volunteers can or should be ‘managed’. Enabled yes, supported definitely and cajoled, pampered and loved, without question. Yes it does take someone with the right mix of skills and experience to maximise the gift that volunteers make but I’m not sure that this is, or should be perceived as, the same as ‘managing’ paid staff. Volunteers are there because they want to be and because they care enough about something to get in there and help. They may well want something in return, whether it’s to enhance their employment prospects or to go and see Lady GaGa in concert, and this is cool and all part of the mutual arrangement that we have with them. Don’t get me wrong I’m not dissing volunteer managers – put away those swords AVM members! – far from it, if anything I’m saying that the term does the often complex and frequently challenging job of harnessing volunteer time and effort a disservice, in that it’s both restrictive and in my view misleading.
But I digress. The main issue here for me is that the act of volunteering is exactly what it says on the tin. People volunteer, they step forward and give their time, skills and passion for a whole variety of reasons and causes, and this act is not something that can or should be managed or manipulated by us or the state. Likewise we should not spend too much time trying to define, analyse or measure volunteers either. We should just accept that we are lucky in this country to have so many people willing to give up their time to make a difference and let them get on with it. Of course we do need some support structures in place, like properly funded high street Centres for volunteers to get help and information, we have to safeguard the vulnerable and we also need to be more responsive to what volunteers want to do instead of expecting them to always fit in with what we need, but much beyond that we should leave well alone.
So what’s next? Volunteering seen as the answer to regulate our banking system? Or perhaps we should call on volunteers to serve as MPs and civil servants? At least then they’d get their expenses paid...
Jamie Thomas is CEO of Red Foundation and blogs in a personal capacity.
So why am I concerned? Volunteering is increasingly being seen by government as the answer to our society’s ills – from combating youth anti social behaviour through enforced service, responding to the unemployment crisis and more recently as a way to measure a migrant’s suitability to become a UK citizen. Now we hear that volunteers could be the nation’s solution to the Swine Flu pandemic! Ok I’m being a tad flippant on that last one - getting volunteers to help distribute swine flu medication is probably a good thing and if cash strapped Volunteer Centres can make a buck out of it then good for them.
My main grumble here are the increasing attempts by government to manipulate the volunteering landscape to combat a growing list of social issues. This sort of pressure and expectation on volunteering is simply unrealistic and sooner or later it’s going to have a breakdown. Even the Prime Minister’s former Volunteering Champion, Julia Neuberger, has condemned government plans to use volunteering as a measure to fast track citizenship – and too right, I’d love to know who the hell dreamt that one up! For a government that has hitherto been so good for our sector, I’m disappointed that they are resorting to such initiatives that seem to have little or no support from volunteers or those that work with them.
Neuberger has also argued that volunteers and the act of volunteering cannot and should not be controlled by the state or anyone else. I wholeheartedly agree with her. Personally I’m not even convinced that volunteers can or should be ‘managed’. Enabled yes, supported definitely and cajoled, pampered and loved, without question. Yes it does take someone with the right mix of skills and experience to maximise the gift that volunteers make but I’m not sure that this is, or should be perceived as, the same as ‘managing’ paid staff. Volunteers are there because they want to be and because they care enough about something to get in there and help. They may well want something in return, whether it’s to enhance their employment prospects or to go and see Lady GaGa in concert, and this is cool and all part of the mutual arrangement that we have with them. Don’t get me wrong I’m not dissing volunteer managers – put away those swords AVM members! – far from it, if anything I’m saying that the term does the often complex and frequently challenging job of harnessing volunteer time and effort a disservice, in that it’s both restrictive and in my view misleading.
But I digress. The main issue here for me is that the act of volunteering is exactly what it says on the tin. People volunteer, they step forward and give their time, skills and passion for a whole variety of reasons and causes, and this act is not something that can or should be managed or manipulated by us or the state. Likewise we should not spend too much time trying to define, analyse or measure volunteers either. We should just accept that we are lucky in this country to have so many people willing to give up their time to make a difference and let them get on with it. Of course we do need some support structures in place, like properly funded high street Centres for volunteers to get help and information, we have to safeguard the vulnerable and we also need to be more responsive to what volunteers want to do instead of expecting them to always fit in with what we need, but much beyond that we should leave well alone.
So what’s next? Volunteering seen as the answer to regulate our banking system? Or perhaps we should call on volunteers to serve as MPs and civil servants? At least then they’d get their expenses paid...
Jamie Thomas is CEO of Red Foundation and blogs in a personal capacity.
Monday 6 July 2009
Twitter Ye Not
I can’t deny it, I am a bit of a geek when it comes to technology. To give you an example I was, rather sadly now I think about it, sat at my computer at 1am on the 17th June eagerly awaiting the much hyped release of the new iPhone software OS 3.0 which was due for download that day - although it failed to materialise until 6pm so muggings here was chained to the desk all day. Although I’m not a fully fledged nerd – you have to go to conventions and be able to talk in binary code to achieve that status - I am what the industry calls an ‘early adopter’. I do love a gadget. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the first version of the Psion Organiser, quickly followed by the wonderful Palm Pilot, I was using smart phones as far back as 2002 (remember the Sony Ericsson P800 anyone?) and was pretty near the front of the queue for the first generation of iPods and its evolved cousin the iPhone.
My geekiness is not just confined to my personal life. I’ve been rubbing my hands with glee over technological advancements for the cause of volunteering since I joined the sector. Back in 1997, when the internet was still seen by many volunteering organisations as a passing fad, I proudly claimed the title of ‘First Volunteer Bureau To Have a Website’, sharing ‘VOIS’, the voluntary organisations internet server, with the likes of NCVO and the former National Centre for Volunteering. The following year I piloted a ‘virtual volunteer centre’, making our opportunities available to the general public 24/7 and so it was not a big surprise that I ended up working with Youthnet, then the country’s only charity that was successfully exploiting new media, to set up do-it.org.uk and learn all about online marketing plus have much fun into the bargain.
So where am I going with this nostalgic ramble? Well here we are, a full ten years after the proto type of do-it and life on the web is still evolving at a right old pace. One of the biggest developments has been the rise of the social network, from amateur tinkerings in the bedrooms of teenagers to the world wide phenomena that is Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, to name but a few. With the sheer numbers of people that engage with these networks on a daily basis – and we’re talking millions across the world - chances are that you or someone you know has a profile on at least one of them.
Unless you work in the volunteering sector that is. Last year Red Foundation consulted hundreds of volunteer managers and leaders of volunteer projects across the country, through the Modernising Volunteering project of which we are a partner. It's part of our workstream to explore new ways to support volunteering professionals and given our passion for new media we wanted to suss out how volunteering organisations were utilising social networks. I was genuinely surprised, and a tad disappointed, to find out that overall social networks seem to have passed most volunteering organisations by.
Understandably for many volunteer managers the reason for this is a lack of knowhow on how to use them. If you’ve got a million and one things to do every day, making time to keep up to date with new technology just isn’t a priority and I totally get that. I was disheartened though to hear how some volunteering organisations viewed these networks with outright suspicion and just couldn’t see how they could be of relevance to their work. This reminded me of when we first launched do-it where there was much initial resistance from the volunteer centre network, many of whom worried it would put them out of business, but which has since become an integral recruiting tool for nearly all of them. The same issue applies here, we need to show these agencies why working with social networks can be good for their business.
Of course there are some organisations that already use these networks with success – check out Make A Difference (in Milton Keynes), National Trust, RSPB and Whizz Kids on Facebook and you’ll get an idea of what I’m on about. And there are clearly some volunteer managers that really get and embrace the web for peer support. The UKVPM Yahoo Group is still thriving many years after it was set up by Volunteering England’s Rob Jackson, and the Association of Volunteer Managers have recently re-launched their website to include a ‘wiki’ of good practice compiled by their members – check it out at www.volunteermanagers.org.uk.
But if you’re not a geek like me then keeping up with technical developments can be a chore – if you’ve only really just got to grips with V-Base then working out what the hell Twitter is all about can be daunting. But social networks and social network approaches to communications are here to stay, of that there is no doubt. Social newtorks offer huge potential to volunteering organisations to reach out to and support each other and to engage with their volunteers in new ways. Our sister charity, the Red Trust, is piloting a new bespoke social network for volunteering called i-volunteer (www.i-volunteer.org) – it’ll be launching in the autumn but you can get in early and become a beta tester, just register your details on the holding page to take part – which I believe will offer an interesting experiment for volunteer managers and volunteers to interact and share their volunteering experiences.
For those of you that still can’t tell your ‘Flickr’ from your ‘Linked In’ then don’t fret as help is at hand! Modernising Volunteering is running a series of regional seminars to provide a basic introduction to these networks, and why and how they can help you, and yours truly will be facilitating them - and I promise to speak in plain English. Check out our website (www.redfoundation.org) for details odf the seminars which will be available next month – or email me at modvol@redfoundation.org to book an advance place.
There you go, blatant sales plug done, now off to tweet and talk about tagging with my techie, could my life BE more exciting?!
Jamie Thomas is CEO of Red Foundation and founder of i-volunteer.org
The Modernising Volunteering report ‘Fresh Thinking’ which examines the role of social networks and volunteering, is now available at the Red Foundation website http://www.redfoundation.org/admin/whatwedo/pdfs
My geekiness is not just confined to my personal life. I’ve been rubbing my hands with glee over technological advancements for the cause of volunteering since I joined the sector. Back in 1997, when the internet was still seen by many volunteering organisations as a passing fad, I proudly claimed the title of ‘First Volunteer Bureau To Have a Website’, sharing ‘VOIS’, the voluntary organisations internet server, with the likes of NCVO and the former National Centre for Volunteering. The following year I piloted a ‘virtual volunteer centre’, making our opportunities available to the general public 24/7 and so it was not a big surprise that I ended up working with Youthnet, then the country’s only charity that was successfully exploiting new media, to set up do-it.org.uk and learn all about online marketing plus have much fun into the bargain.
So where am I going with this nostalgic ramble? Well here we are, a full ten years after the proto type of do-it and life on the web is still evolving at a right old pace. One of the biggest developments has been the rise of the social network, from amateur tinkerings in the bedrooms of teenagers to the world wide phenomena that is Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, to name but a few. With the sheer numbers of people that engage with these networks on a daily basis – and we’re talking millions across the world - chances are that you or someone you know has a profile on at least one of them.
Unless you work in the volunteering sector that is. Last year Red Foundation consulted hundreds of volunteer managers and leaders of volunteer projects across the country, through the Modernising Volunteering project of which we are a partner. It's part of our workstream to explore new ways to support volunteering professionals and given our passion for new media we wanted to suss out how volunteering organisations were utilising social networks. I was genuinely surprised, and a tad disappointed, to find out that overall social networks seem to have passed most volunteering organisations by.
Understandably for many volunteer managers the reason for this is a lack of knowhow on how to use them. If you’ve got a million and one things to do every day, making time to keep up to date with new technology just isn’t a priority and I totally get that. I was disheartened though to hear how some volunteering organisations viewed these networks with outright suspicion and just couldn’t see how they could be of relevance to their work. This reminded me of when we first launched do-it where there was much initial resistance from the volunteer centre network, many of whom worried it would put them out of business, but which has since become an integral recruiting tool for nearly all of them. The same issue applies here, we need to show these agencies why working with social networks can be good for their business.
Of course there are some organisations that already use these networks with success – check out Make A Difference (in Milton Keynes), National Trust, RSPB and Whizz Kids on Facebook and you’ll get an idea of what I’m on about. And there are clearly some volunteer managers that really get and embrace the web for peer support. The UKVPM Yahoo Group is still thriving many years after it was set up by Volunteering England’s Rob Jackson, and the Association of Volunteer Managers have recently re-launched their website to include a ‘wiki’ of good practice compiled by their members – check it out at www.volunteermanagers.org.uk.
But if you’re not a geek like me then keeping up with technical developments can be a chore – if you’ve only really just got to grips with V-Base then working out what the hell Twitter is all about can be daunting. But social networks and social network approaches to communications are here to stay, of that there is no doubt. Social newtorks offer huge potential to volunteering organisations to reach out to and support each other and to engage with their volunteers in new ways. Our sister charity, the Red Trust, is piloting a new bespoke social network for volunteering called i-volunteer (www.i-volunteer.org) – it’ll be launching in the autumn but you can get in early and become a beta tester, just register your details on the holding page to take part – which I believe will offer an interesting experiment for volunteer managers and volunteers to interact and share their volunteering experiences.
For those of you that still can’t tell your ‘Flickr’ from your ‘Linked In’ then don’t fret as help is at hand! Modernising Volunteering is running a series of regional seminars to provide a basic introduction to these networks, and why and how they can help you, and yours truly will be facilitating them - and I promise to speak in plain English. Check out our website (www.redfoundation.org) for details odf the seminars which will be available next month – or email me at modvol@redfoundation.org to book an advance place.
There you go, blatant sales plug done, now off to tweet and talk about tagging with my techie, could my life BE more exciting?!
Jamie Thomas is CEO of Red Foundation and founder of i-volunteer.org
The Modernising Volunteering report ‘Fresh Thinking’ which examines the role of social networks and volunteering, is now available at the Red Foundation website http://www.redfoundation.org/admin/whatwedo/pdfs
Sunday 7 June 2009
Be Positive and Say 'Thank You!'
As I was wandering around town earlier this week I was struck by how many Volunteers' Week tee shirts were being worn – Volunteer Centre Plymouth are having a massive week of celebrations and events right in the heart of the town centre here. It was really good to see their marquee was buzzing with conversations as a wide variety of organisations were speaking to local residents about volunteering. I am sure that just about everyone who visited that marquee in the middle of Plymouth today would not know that they were at an event delivered by our Volunteer Centre – it was branded as Volunteers Week, and the Volunteer Centre had given itself the least prominent stall in order to more actively promote their local members. I think Simon and his team deserve a big pat on the back for the work they have put into Volunteers Week in Plymouth.
Visiting that marquee today reminded me of the NAVCA and Volunteering England joint statement challenging the received wisdom that only 2% of people find their way into volunteering through their local Volunteer Centre (www.navca.org.uk/news/volunteeringtwopercent.htm) that I read yesterday. What NAVCA and Volunteering England are saying is so true. If I was asked whether any of my current volunteering activities had been brokered by a Volunteer Centre, I would have to say ‘no’. But that misses the point. Despite having volunteered since I was young, I had gradually fallen out of the habit and about 10 years ago I realised that I was no longer doing anything at all. So I’d like to say a very big thank you to Volunteer Centre Wandsworth for the help they gave me to find a local opportunity and the enormous enjoyment and satisfaction that I have received from all of my volunteering since then – they might not have brokered all of the opportunities (in fact they only did 2 of them), but it was because of their fantastic service that I got back into doing something I enjoy and started to use Volunteer Centre services in the organisations for which I worked.
I have been privileged to work with Volunteer Centres across the country. Reflecting back on 10 years of involvement I can see how far the network has come. By and large they are delivering what they have been asked to do, and have radically progressed their own development – all with limited resources. I think it is about time someone put their money where their mouth is and started putting the resources in to really deliver what the network is capable of and radically enhancing the volunteering experience – but I know that is what Jamie said earlier this week...
We often hear negatives about our Volunteer Centres. I know that some of these comments might be deserved by a few of them - but they are not representative of all (I know – I’ve read hundreds of quality accreditation portfolios). So let’s change the way we talk about the network. Let’s not promote the fallacy that one bad experience in one Volunteer Centre means that the hundreds that serve our country always act in that manner – it’s just not true. Let’s be constructive in any criticism we have – finding solutions and improving services might take a bit more thought, but it will improve things for all of us next time we need to use their services. Let’s praise them for all the good things they do – it is so easy to forget to say ‘thank you’ or ‘well done’ – and let’s start doing that now and keep on doing it – they deserve it.
Posted by Chris Penberthy, Managing Director of Red Foundation and former CEO of Volunteer Development England and a Director of Volunteering England
Visiting that marquee today reminded me of the NAVCA and Volunteering England joint statement challenging the received wisdom that only 2% of people find their way into volunteering through their local Volunteer Centre (www.navca.org.uk/news/volunteeringtwopercent.htm) that I read yesterday. What NAVCA and Volunteering England are saying is so true. If I was asked whether any of my current volunteering activities had been brokered by a Volunteer Centre, I would have to say ‘no’. But that misses the point. Despite having volunteered since I was young, I had gradually fallen out of the habit and about 10 years ago I realised that I was no longer doing anything at all. So I’d like to say a very big thank you to Volunteer Centre Wandsworth for the help they gave me to find a local opportunity and the enormous enjoyment and satisfaction that I have received from all of my volunteering since then – they might not have brokered all of the opportunities (in fact they only did 2 of them), but it was because of their fantastic service that I got back into doing something I enjoy and started to use Volunteer Centre services in the organisations for which I worked.
I have been privileged to work with Volunteer Centres across the country. Reflecting back on 10 years of involvement I can see how far the network has come. By and large they are delivering what they have been asked to do, and have radically progressed their own development – all with limited resources. I think it is about time someone put their money where their mouth is and started putting the resources in to really deliver what the network is capable of and radically enhancing the volunteering experience – but I know that is what Jamie said earlier this week...
We often hear negatives about our Volunteer Centres. I know that some of these comments might be deserved by a few of them - but they are not representative of all (I know – I’ve read hundreds of quality accreditation portfolios). So let’s change the way we talk about the network. Let’s not promote the fallacy that one bad experience in one Volunteer Centre means that the hundreds that serve our country always act in that manner – it’s just not true. Let’s be constructive in any criticism we have – finding solutions and improving services might take a bit more thought, but it will improve things for all of us next time we need to use their services. Let’s praise them for all the good things they do – it is so easy to forget to say ‘thank you’ or ‘well done’ – and let’s start doing that now and keep on doing it – they deserve it.
Posted by Chris Penberthy, Managing Director of Red Foundation and former CEO of Volunteer Development England and a Director of Volunteering England
Saturday 6 June 2009
What Makes Volunteers' Week Happy?
Happy Volunteers Week!! And it should be a happy time, volunteering as an activity is increasing and I would hope that that is an indicator that people are happy doing it.
Over the past few years there has been an increase in the amount of money that has been invested in the development of volunteering. There has been project funding for the recruitment of specific groups of volunteers such as young people, disabled people and people from socially disadvantaged groups for example.
And the recent economic situation has lead to more investment in volunteering with programmes dedicated to enabling people who are out of work to retain their skills or develop new ones, there should be more people than ever before having a Happy Volunteers week this year.
So, my question is – is volunteering the happy experience we hope it will be? The 1997 National Survey of Volunteering in the UK found that the benefits that people reported from volunteering include enjoying the activity, the satisfaction of seeing results, meeting people and a sense of personal achievement. These were in addition to more tangible benefits such as the opportunity to learn new skills, get a qualification and gain a position within the community.
With changes in public policy such as CRB checks and health and safety, as well as changes in funding patterns many organisations have increased the range of responsibilities laid on volunteers.
However, in the 2008 study on the impact of public policy on volunteering in community based organisations some organisations have reported that the withdrawal, or non continuance of funding has led to a cut down in organisational activities, reduction in the range and scope of volunteering activities and fewer resources to support volunteers.
The variable project funding that organisations use to resource volunteering has a direct impact on the support and development offered to volunteers. While those organisations who received funding to employ a volunteer co-ordinator were able to demonstrate increases in the support and development of volunteers, some organisations found that funding cuts meant that staff had less time to for training or supervision of volunteers. Some organisations had also made cuts in the less formal aspects of thanking volunteers including social events which are often highly valued by volunteers.
The 2008 research bulletin Management Matters: a national survey of volunteer management capacity found that volunteer management was a full-time occupation for only 6 per cent of respondents. Nonetheless, the numbers of volunteers supported by individuals ranged from one or two to several hundreds or even thousands. With increased paperwork as a result of policy and funding changes it is hardly surprising that most staff responsible for managing volunteers report increased pressure of work.
Volunteer involving organisations are increasingly turning to external sources of funding for the resources that they need to manage volunteers, and yet this type of project funding makes it difficult for organisations to effectively plan sustainable programmes of support and development for volunteers.
With seven out of ten volunteers reporting dissatisfaction with the way in which their voluntary work was organised in the 1997 survey, let us call on volunteer involving organisations to find core funds to develop and implement sustainable programmes of support and development of volunteers, and those who manage them so that every week can be a Happy Volunteers Week.
Posted by Debbie Usiskin, Associate Director (Volunteer Management) at Red Foundation and vice-chair of the Association of Volunteer Managers
Over the past few years there has been an increase in the amount of money that has been invested in the development of volunteering. There has been project funding for the recruitment of specific groups of volunteers such as young people, disabled people and people from socially disadvantaged groups for example.
And the recent economic situation has lead to more investment in volunteering with programmes dedicated to enabling people who are out of work to retain their skills or develop new ones, there should be more people than ever before having a Happy Volunteers week this year.
So, my question is – is volunteering the happy experience we hope it will be? The 1997 National Survey of Volunteering in the UK found that the benefits that people reported from volunteering include enjoying the activity, the satisfaction of seeing results, meeting people and a sense of personal achievement. These were in addition to more tangible benefits such as the opportunity to learn new skills, get a qualification and gain a position within the community.
With changes in public policy such as CRB checks and health and safety, as well as changes in funding patterns many organisations have increased the range of responsibilities laid on volunteers.
However, in the 2008 study on the impact of public policy on volunteering in community based organisations some organisations have reported that the withdrawal, or non continuance of funding has led to a cut down in organisational activities, reduction in the range and scope of volunteering activities and fewer resources to support volunteers.
The variable project funding that organisations use to resource volunteering has a direct impact on the support and development offered to volunteers. While those organisations who received funding to employ a volunteer co-ordinator were able to demonstrate increases in the support and development of volunteers, some organisations found that funding cuts meant that staff had less time to for training or supervision of volunteers. Some organisations had also made cuts in the less formal aspects of thanking volunteers including social events which are often highly valued by volunteers.
The 2008 research bulletin Management Matters: a national survey of volunteer management capacity found that volunteer management was a full-time occupation for only 6 per cent of respondents. Nonetheless, the numbers of volunteers supported by individuals ranged from one or two to several hundreds or even thousands. With increased paperwork as a result of policy and funding changes it is hardly surprising that most staff responsible for managing volunteers report increased pressure of work.
Volunteer involving organisations are increasingly turning to external sources of funding for the resources that they need to manage volunteers, and yet this type of project funding makes it difficult for organisations to effectively plan sustainable programmes of support and development for volunteers.
With seven out of ten volunteers reporting dissatisfaction with the way in which their voluntary work was organised in the 1997 survey, let us call on volunteer involving organisations to find core funds to develop and implement sustainable programmes of support and development of volunteers, and those who manage them so that every week can be a Happy Volunteers Week.
Posted by Debbie Usiskin, Associate Director (Volunteer Management) at Red Foundation and vice-chair of the Association of Volunteer Managers
Friday 5 June 2009
It's Time Young Volunteers Were Put in Charge
We’ll all be aware of how young people as volunteers can benefit communities, service development, delivery and provide an excellent opportunity for young people to develop their skills, understanding and gain experience for further education and employment.
But are organisations ready for young people to be involved as volunteers at a strategic level – more than just designing a poster or being consulted with, but in deciding on council spending on services, involvement in decision making on local, regional and national programming and being equal parties on statutory bodies such as the Children’s Trust Board?
Some of the issues faced by young people is an unwillingness of the system to devolve power to them as a cohort, or to be piece meal in their approach. For example, it is currently exam time for thousands of young people across the country – how many councils, national governing bodies (sports), national charities and central government have new initiatives, agenda’s or projects that are being consulted on during this time that affect young people?
There is also the concern that young people can’t be controlled. What if they come up with an idea that is challenging to the organisation? Or ask to be involved in other decisions? The 10 year strategy for Positive Activities produced by the Treasury last year expects local authorities to devolve an increasing proportion of their funding for positive activities to young people’s influence – up to 5% of their budget for youth services in 2010 and 2011, with an aspiration of 25% by 2018. Can local authorities cope with this power shift?!
Time is always a big factor / excuse* (delete accordingly!). Over the last 12 years of working within youth volunteering or youth participation, I have had countless requests to involve young people in service planning and development with a one week turn around. Where possible I endeavour to return the request with an options paper outlining the level of involvement one week’s notice will bring, and the difference that an extra three weeks might be (from an email / phone conversation with 5 young people through to a full day event for 50 young people).
The big challenge for managers, large organisations and local authorities is in recognising that involvement of young volunteers can take longer to ensure it is not tokenistic, and use up more resources (in providing briefing sessions ahead of meetings so that where knowledge is power, young people have had the chance to prepare ahead with workers).
This recognition, along with being clear about roles, expectations, having excellent support and the chance for young people to influence, challenge and work collaboratively with workers at every level in organisations is what makes strategic involvement of young volunteers a success and can lead to fantastic outcomes both individually and organisationally.
Posted by Emma Sparrow, Associate Director (Youth Engagement) at Red Foundation
But are organisations ready for young people to be involved as volunteers at a strategic level – more than just designing a poster or being consulted with, but in deciding on council spending on services, involvement in decision making on local, regional and national programming and being equal parties on statutory bodies such as the Children’s Trust Board?
Some of the issues faced by young people is an unwillingness of the system to devolve power to them as a cohort, or to be piece meal in their approach. For example, it is currently exam time for thousands of young people across the country – how many councils, national governing bodies (sports), national charities and central government have new initiatives, agenda’s or projects that are being consulted on during this time that affect young people?
There is also the concern that young people can’t be controlled. What if they come up with an idea that is challenging to the organisation? Or ask to be involved in other decisions? The 10 year strategy for Positive Activities produced by the Treasury last year expects local authorities to devolve an increasing proportion of their funding for positive activities to young people’s influence – up to 5% of their budget for youth services in 2010 and 2011, with an aspiration of 25% by 2018. Can local authorities cope with this power shift?!
Time is always a big factor / excuse* (delete accordingly!). Over the last 12 years of working within youth volunteering or youth participation, I have had countless requests to involve young people in service planning and development with a one week turn around. Where possible I endeavour to return the request with an options paper outlining the level of involvement one week’s notice will bring, and the difference that an extra three weeks might be (from an email / phone conversation with 5 young people through to a full day event for 50 young people).
The big challenge for managers, large organisations and local authorities is in recognising that involvement of young volunteers can take longer to ensure it is not tokenistic, and use up more resources (in providing briefing sessions ahead of meetings so that where knowledge is power, young people have had the chance to prepare ahead with workers).
This recognition, along with being clear about roles, expectations, having excellent support and the chance for young people to influence, challenge and work collaboratively with workers at every level in organisations is what makes strategic involvement of young volunteers a success and can lead to fantastic outcomes both individually and organisationally.
Posted by Emma Sparrow, Associate Director (Youth Engagement) at Red Foundation
Thursday 4 June 2009
We Need to Challenge The Challenge
So - unskilled volunteers are the least valuable way in which a company can support charities and yet charities feel that they’re the most likely form of support they’ll be offered…….so says a recent report from CAF. Hardly unexpected, but why is this STILL the case?
Many years ago I worked for a job training programme. In my first week we had a team of volunteers from one of the large banks come in to paint the walls of our classrooms. For this we had to close the offices meaning our clients missed out on a day of training, employment and counselling services. At the end of the day a group of volunteers overheard one of our staff complaining that the young men and women from deprived neighbourhoods in the city were losing out ‘just so a group of overpaid bankers could get a free team building day’. Not exactly what we were hoping for!
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of community centres, schools, country paths and other places that really benefit from these ‘challenge events’ and they can be an invaluable way of achieving dramatic change in a very short period of time. But for each successful event, there is at least one that was not necessary and left everyone frustrated. So why do they still form the mainstay of almost all Employer Supported Volunteering Programmes?
The vast majority of companies, and certainly of their staff who are volunteering, have good intentions and would like their time to be as valuable as possible. But just as we have fundraising targets to achieve and grants to deliver on, so they have middle managers who don’t want to lose their staff on a regular basis, and senior managers who are demanding ever higher numbers of volunteers. The appeal of challenge events to them is obvious.
About 5 years ago I was chairing a meeting of the wonderful and now inexplicably defunct Employees in the Community Network run by Volunteering England when, after some minutes of this sort of talk one of the corporate delegates burst out with “but if you don’t want us to run challenge events, why the hell don’t you just tell us?”. It was a good question then and it remains a good question now. Is it because we think it’s a foot in the door – we might get more support, even financial, in the future. Is it because we think we could convert the individuals to regular volunteering opportunities. Or is it simply because we’ve been approached, it sounds like a good idea and we don’t want to turn down any help from a company? We complain that Challenge Events are all we are being offered – but why are we waiting for companies to come and offer things to us? Why aren’t we the proactive ones, showing them how they could best help us and themselves?
We can talk about developing the business case for skilled volunteering, creating new models for evaluation or even a massive marketing campaign but until we, the voluntary sector, take responsibility the situation is unlikely to change. What do we actually want from volunteers? If we need specific skills let’s go out and try and find them. If we’re approached about a team of 20 accountants who want to paint our wall, again, we need to have the guts, and the integrity, to say ‘thanks, but no thanks’. The current financial situation means far more companies are setting up Employee Volunteering Programmes – let’s make sure they’re really valuable to all of us.
And that job training programme? We went back to the company, told them what our real needs were, they explained why they contacted us in the first place, and we created a completely new system of volunteering with mock interviews, mentoring and champions to lobby their HR departments – oh, and one challenge event a year at a community project suggested by our clients!
Posted by Fabia Bates, Director of Corporate Community Involvement at Red Foundation and former Employee Volunteering Development Director at Business in the Community
Many years ago I worked for a job training programme. In my first week we had a team of volunteers from one of the large banks come in to paint the walls of our classrooms. For this we had to close the offices meaning our clients missed out on a day of training, employment and counselling services. At the end of the day a group of volunteers overheard one of our staff complaining that the young men and women from deprived neighbourhoods in the city were losing out ‘just so a group of overpaid bankers could get a free team building day’. Not exactly what we were hoping for!
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of community centres, schools, country paths and other places that really benefit from these ‘challenge events’ and they can be an invaluable way of achieving dramatic change in a very short period of time. But for each successful event, there is at least one that was not necessary and left everyone frustrated. So why do they still form the mainstay of almost all Employer Supported Volunteering Programmes?
The vast majority of companies, and certainly of their staff who are volunteering, have good intentions and would like their time to be as valuable as possible. But just as we have fundraising targets to achieve and grants to deliver on, so they have middle managers who don’t want to lose their staff on a regular basis, and senior managers who are demanding ever higher numbers of volunteers. The appeal of challenge events to them is obvious.
About 5 years ago I was chairing a meeting of the wonderful and now inexplicably defunct Employees in the Community Network run by Volunteering England when, after some minutes of this sort of talk one of the corporate delegates burst out with “but if you don’t want us to run challenge events, why the hell don’t you just tell us?”. It was a good question then and it remains a good question now. Is it because we think it’s a foot in the door – we might get more support, even financial, in the future. Is it because we think we could convert the individuals to regular volunteering opportunities. Or is it simply because we’ve been approached, it sounds like a good idea and we don’t want to turn down any help from a company? We complain that Challenge Events are all we are being offered – but why are we waiting for companies to come and offer things to us? Why aren’t we the proactive ones, showing them how they could best help us and themselves?
We can talk about developing the business case for skilled volunteering, creating new models for evaluation or even a massive marketing campaign but until we, the voluntary sector, take responsibility the situation is unlikely to change. What do we actually want from volunteers? If we need specific skills let’s go out and try and find them. If we’re approached about a team of 20 accountants who want to paint our wall, again, we need to have the guts, and the integrity, to say ‘thanks, but no thanks’. The current financial situation means far more companies are setting up Employee Volunteering Programmes – let’s make sure they’re really valuable to all of us.
And that job training programme? We went back to the company, told them what our real needs were, they explained why they contacted us in the first place, and we created a completely new system of volunteering with mock interviews, mentoring and champions to lobby their HR departments – oh, and one challenge event a year at a community project suggested by our clients!
Posted by Fabia Bates, Director of Corporate Community Involvement at Red Foundation and former Employee Volunteering Development Director at Business in the Community
Wednesday 3 June 2009
Going By The Board
When I was first asked to be a trustee, I had no idea what it meant. I gathered that, rightly or wrongly, someone was going to trust me with something but that was about as far as my understanding went. While I accepted and duly became a trustee I have to admit that it was several months before the fog cleared and I fully grasped the legal, ethical and financial responsibility I had taken on.
While this experience was many years ago now, I remain unconvinced that things have changed. How much does the person on the street really understand about trusteeship? Mention trusteeship to anyone not involved in the voluntary and community sector and you are likely to receive a blank look.
There are approximately 190,000 charities registered with the Charity Commission each of which has a board with, on average, around five trustees. A rough calculation suggests that there are around a million filled trustee positions at this time. Many other trustee positions are vacant. Additionally there are many thousands of voluntary and community organisations which are not registered as charities but which are still run by a board or management committee.
These volunteers are generally not paid for their work, they rarely take the limelight and yet they are responsible, in registered charities alone, of ensuring that £49bn of income and £78bn of investments are used appropriately, ethically and according to the letter of the law. This is a heavy burden on anyone’s shoulders.
It is not unusual for trustees not to receive formal training in relation to governance and charity law. It is not unusual for campaigns to promote and support volunteering to forget the million-strong band of volunteer trustees. It is not unusual for an organisation to invest nothing in its board as front-line work has to take priority. It is not unusual for trustees to be wholly dependent on their staff to supply legal briefings and project updates. It is not unusual for trustees to be a rubber stamp sanctioning the activities of the organisation with no real understanding or ability to effect change.
The voluntary and community sector is vast. In difficult times, it is currently struggling to support a society in financial strife. Ultimately, the responsibility for the sector is in the hands of volunteer trustees who are largely under-trained, under-supported and under-appreciated. And what do we need? More of them. We also need to broaden the range of people sitting on boards to reflect the diversity of the communities in which they work and we need them to bring a wider range of skills, experiences and understanding to support their boards and, ultimately, their charities.
I would argue that these changes are fundamental to the success of organisations and the sector as a whole. Greater understanding of trusteeship is needed so that the general public can appreciate the role and why it might be of interest to them. Existing trustees need access to support, information and advice which is free both in terms of finance and in terms of time. Crucially, this means presenting complex legal and financial information in a form which is accessible and clear to people who may not be used to reading about such things. It also means using community languages.
There is also an argument for improving our flexibility in terms of trusteeship. Gradually, there are some moves away from the (dare I say dull?) bi-monthly around-the-table trustee meetings of standard agenda, typewritten papers and dry reports. Being able to sit through a long meeting does not have to be a prerequisite for being a trustee. And yet all too often it feels like it is.
So this Volunteers’ Week, don’t forget the trustees!
Posted by Gudrun Limbrick, Associate Director of Research at Red Foundation and author of ‘One in A Million – a user-friendly guide to trusteeship’ (WordWorks ISBN 1903210194)
While this experience was many years ago now, I remain unconvinced that things have changed. How much does the person on the street really understand about trusteeship? Mention trusteeship to anyone not involved in the voluntary and community sector and you are likely to receive a blank look.
There are approximately 190,000 charities registered with the Charity Commission each of which has a board with, on average, around five trustees. A rough calculation suggests that there are around a million filled trustee positions at this time. Many other trustee positions are vacant. Additionally there are many thousands of voluntary and community organisations which are not registered as charities but which are still run by a board or management committee.
These volunteers are generally not paid for their work, they rarely take the limelight and yet they are responsible, in registered charities alone, of ensuring that £49bn of income and £78bn of investments are used appropriately, ethically and according to the letter of the law. This is a heavy burden on anyone’s shoulders.
It is not unusual for trustees not to receive formal training in relation to governance and charity law. It is not unusual for campaigns to promote and support volunteering to forget the million-strong band of volunteer trustees. It is not unusual for an organisation to invest nothing in its board as front-line work has to take priority. It is not unusual for trustees to be wholly dependent on their staff to supply legal briefings and project updates. It is not unusual for trustees to be a rubber stamp sanctioning the activities of the organisation with no real understanding or ability to effect change.
The voluntary and community sector is vast. In difficult times, it is currently struggling to support a society in financial strife. Ultimately, the responsibility for the sector is in the hands of volunteer trustees who are largely under-trained, under-supported and under-appreciated. And what do we need? More of them. We also need to broaden the range of people sitting on boards to reflect the diversity of the communities in which they work and we need them to bring a wider range of skills, experiences and understanding to support their boards and, ultimately, their charities.
I would argue that these changes are fundamental to the success of organisations and the sector as a whole. Greater understanding of trusteeship is needed so that the general public can appreciate the role and why it might be of interest to them. Existing trustees need access to support, information and advice which is free both in terms of finance and in terms of time. Crucially, this means presenting complex legal and financial information in a form which is accessible and clear to people who may not be used to reading about such things. It also means using community languages.
There is also an argument for improving our flexibility in terms of trusteeship. Gradually, there are some moves away from the (dare I say dull?) bi-monthly around-the-table trustee meetings of standard agenda, typewritten papers and dry reports. Being able to sit through a long meeting does not have to be a prerequisite for being a trustee. And yet all too often it feels like it is.
So this Volunteers’ Week, don’t forget the trustees!
Posted by Gudrun Limbrick, Associate Director of Research at Red Foundation and author of ‘One in A Million – a user-friendly guide to trusteeship’ (WordWorks ISBN 1903210194)
Tuesday 2 June 2009
Battle of the Brands - RockCorps vs v
Looks like the heat is most definitely on in the world of youth volunteering. Following the huge success of their inaugural outing in the UK last year, new kids on the block RockCorps have recently announced two gigs for this year, the first to be held in July with Lady Gaga as the first of their headline acts. Gaga is the pop act of the moment and will no doubt provide a massive incentive for many teenagers and young adults to come forward and volunteer for the first time. RockCorps have also managed to repeat their media partnership with Channel 4 who will be broadcasting content about volunteering and the gigs on their prime time youth slot T4. With the other concert planned for September, RockCorps has already raised the stakes this year and I for one can’t wait. With this sort of exposure youth volunteering is really going mainstream - I know that there a large number of young people that are already buzzing about it – and this is exactly what we had in mind at the Russell Commission.
Things are also warming up at youth volunteering charity v. They’ve recently announced grime star Bashy as an ambassador for the forthcoming national vinspired awards. Bashy may not have the chart and public profile of Lady Gaga but he does have a strong fan base and is much more underground and likely to appeal to young people who shun the mainstream. v have also announced the appointment of Shine Communications to execute a digital and traditional PR campaign. I don’t know Shine but their brand portfolio seems impressive – youth brands include computer games giant EA – and frankly anything that helps them to move on from ‘Favours’ gets my vote, although I wonder if the £100k budget v has made available is really enough to have a big national impact. In addition v have signed up creative agency Cake, who I know are very cool and who will no doubt come up with some pretty exciting design for them.
So this year it looks as though we’ll see a bit of a bun fight out there, with both organisations competing for the time and attention of 16-25 year olds throughout the country. My money is on RockCorps. Given their success last year I can only see their national campaign getting bigger and bigger. But v seem to be heading in the right direction and having controversial acts like Bashy supporting their awards event later this year should go some way to generating some main stream media coverage.
But will it be enough? It seems increasingly likely that we will have a change of government next year. Nick Hurd, the shadow minister for charities and volunteering, has publicly criticized v on a number of occasions, calling it a top down ‘vanity project’ for the current government with questionable impact at a local level, which suggests that he may well seek to dissolve it should he have the opportunity. I think that v really needs to up its game in the public arena to combat this perception, ensuring that the programme has such a high profile that closing it down becomes an unpopular decision that any new government would wish to avoid.
And do we need two different brands competing for the same market? Personally I don’t think we do, and perhaps v should just get together with RockCorps - combine the Corps’ ability to secure corporate sponsorship and high level media exposure with v’s infrastructure and investment capacity and I reckon you’d have a real force for good that no future government would dare to tamper with.
Posted by Jamie Thomas, CEO Red Foundation
Things are also warming up at youth volunteering charity v. They’ve recently announced grime star Bashy as an ambassador for the forthcoming national vinspired awards. Bashy may not have the chart and public profile of Lady Gaga but he does have a strong fan base and is much more underground and likely to appeal to young people who shun the mainstream. v have also announced the appointment of Shine Communications to execute a digital and traditional PR campaign. I don’t know Shine but their brand portfolio seems impressive – youth brands include computer games giant EA – and frankly anything that helps them to move on from ‘Favours’ gets my vote, although I wonder if the £100k budget v has made available is really enough to have a big national impact. In addition v have signed up creative agency Cake, who I know are very cool and who will no doubt come up with some pretty exciting design for them.
So this year it looks as though we’ll see a bit of a bun fight out there, with both organisations competing for the time and attention of 16-25 year olds throughout the country. My money is on RockCorps. Given their success last year I can only see their national campaign getting bigger and bigger. But v seem to be heading in the right direction and having controversial acts like Bashy supporting their awards event later this year should go some way to generating some main stream media coverage.
But will it be enough? It seems increasingly likely that we will have a change of government next year. Nick Hurd, the shadow minister for charities and volunteering, has publicly criticized v on a number of occasions, calling it a top down ‘vanity project’ for the current government with questionable impact at a local level, which suggests that he may well seek to dissolve it should he have the opportunity. I think that v really needs to up its game in the public arena to combat this perception, ensuring that the programme has such a high profile that closing it down becomes an unpopular decision that any new government would wish to avoid.
And do we need two different brands competing for the same market? Personally I don’t think we do, and perhaps v should just get together with RockCorps - combine the Corps’ ability to secure corporate sponsorship and high level media exposure with v’s infrastructure and investment capacity and I reckon you’d have a real force for good that no future government would dare to tamper with.
Posted by Jamie Thomas, CEO Red Foundation
Monday 1 June 2009
Volunteer Centres - Our Unsung Heroes
After hearing recently that my local Volunteer Centre is being closed down following the redundancy of its manager, I was glad to finally hear some good news. The Big Lottery Fund has committed £500k to build the capacity of London’s Volunteer Centre network to involve and support more volunteer involving organisations. And about blinking time! I’m frankly fed up with this government’s persistent refusal to spend any money on developing a sustainable local volunteering infrastructure for the general public. And if I see one more person look down their nose when I mention a Volunteer Centre... Ok, so at some time you or someone you know might have had a less than perfect experience with your local Centre - get over it!
Volunteer Centres (VCs) are, in my humble opinion, the unsung heroes of the volunteering sector. As a network they are more often than not under-funded, over looked and constantly criticized for what some might see as questionable levels of service, yet in the majority of cases they are forever pulling proverbial rabbits out of hats to ensure they stay open and continue to provide a lifeline to local third sector organisations and volunteers. VCs have proven time and time again that they are extremely effective at engaging the hard to reach, especially the unemployed and those with special needs, and have kept many a volunteering project open for business through their invaluable support.
So why do they get seem to get such a bum wrap? When I joined the Active Community Unit in 2003, the view there of VCs was not a positive one. Yet when I tried to pin down why all I could seem to fathom was that a handful of civil servants and the odd Minister had had unfavourable experiences of a VC in the past. I’m the first to admit that not all VCs are perfect but I’ve always felt that this is because they are constantly having to justify their existence in an ever decreasing funding environment – if they are only funded for one part time worker then it’s hardly surprising that they are not going to be open five days a week, let alone evenings and weekends. And constantly being criticized can create a negative ‘bunker’ mentality that some VC managers find hard to shake off. Yet despite this they will more often than not help you find the volunteering opportunity you’re looking for and will go the extra mile to do what they can. And where they are well funded they can do amazing things. I know this because I used to run one where the local council saw volunteering infrastructure as a sensible investment. Because of this it meant that we spent less time running after funds to pay the heating bill and more time supporting organisations, engaging volunteers and innovating new developments. And we were by no means alone, almost without exception a consistently well funded VC delivers exceptional value for money and is able to demonstrate significant community impact – common sense really, you get more out than you put in, like volunteering itself.
Given how much money this government has invested in various national initiatives, I’m amazed at how little of this has been directly spent on Volunteer Centres, especially as many of these national schemes have been dependent on their goodwill and support to succeed. The official government line has been that it is not their job to fund local infrastructure; but this does not stop them from funding local infrastructure for nationally driven schemes such as the Experience Corps, MV, v, and Mentor Points. And given that they have funded VCs for the odd emergency or to respond to the huge surge of interest during the Year of the Volunteer, this line is pretty flawed.
I’m not alone in my feelings here. The Commission on the Future of Volunteering recommended that the country needed to have a well funded and robust local volunteering infrastructure, and Volunteering England have consistently lobbied government to address this issue. VCs themselves have worked hard to get their house in order, adopting a common brand identity and adhering to a national quality framework that would make much of the corporate sector break into a sweat. So what else must they do? And why is this government not taking any notice? Ironically it was the previous government that last took this issue seriously. Their Make a Difference programme match funded the creation of local VCs where none had previously existed – a modest programme by today’s standards but one that has nevertheless left a lasting legacy, with many of those newly created VCs still thriving today.
If we really want to make it easy for people to volunteer then we need to put our money where our mouth is and fund a service that is at least as accessible and visible as the local Job Centre. The DWP brokerage scheme, although not perfect, is a step in the right direction but it is not enough and it looks as though for the time being we must continue to rely on the hard work and ingenuity of the likes of Greater London Volunteering to persuade the powers that be to invest in this much needed network.
I just hope that given the huge increase in volunteering enquiries the recession has brought we don’t lose more Volunteer Centres to funding cuts, otherwise volunteers coming forward will be turned away and that is not good for them or the communities that need their help.
Posted by Jamie Thomas, CEO of Red Foundation and former executive director of the Kensington & Chelsea Volunteer Centre
Volunteer Centres (VCs) are, in my humble opinion, the unsung heroes of the volunteering sector. As a network they are more often than not under-funded, over looked and constantly criticized for what some might see as questionable levels of service, yet in the majority of cases they are forever pulling proverbial rabbits out of hats to ensure they stay open and continue to provide a lifeline to local third sector organisations and volunteers. VCs have proven time and time again that they are extremely effective at engaging the hard to reach, especially the unemployed and those with special needs, and have kept many a volunteering project open for business through their invaluable support.
So why do they get seem to get such a bum wrap? When I joined the Active Community Unit in 2003, the view there of VCs was not a positive one. Yet when I tried to pin down why all I could seem to fathom was that a handful of civil servants and the odd Minister had had unfavourable experiences of a VC in the past. I’m the first to admit that not all VCs are perfect but I’ve always felt that this is because they are constantly having to justify their existence in an ever decreasing funding environment – if they are only funded for one part time worker then it’s hardly surprising that they are not going to be open five days a week, let alone evenings and weekends. And constantly being criticized can create a negative ‘bunker’ mentality that some VC managers find hard to shake off. Yet despite this they will more often than not help you find the volunteering opportunity you’re looking for and will go the extra mile to do what they can. And where they are well funded they can do amazing things. I know this because I used to run one where the local council saw volunteering infrastructure as a sensible investment. Because of this it meant that we spent less time running after funds to pay the heating bill and more time supporting organisations, engaging volunteers and innovating new developments. And we were by no means alone, almost without exception a consistently well funded VC delivers exceptional value for money and is able to demonstrate significant community impact – common sense really, you get more out than you put in, like volunteering itself.
Given how much money this government has invested in various national initiatives, I’m amazed at how little of this has been directly spent on Volunteer Centres, especially as many of these national schemes have been dependent on their goodwill and support to succeed. The official government line has been that it is not their job to fund local infrastructure; but this does not stop them from funding local infrastructure for nationally driven schemes such as the Experience Corps, MV, v, and Mentor Points. And given that they have funded VCs for the odd emergency or to respond to the huge surge of interest during the Year of the Volunteer, this line is pretty flawed.
I’m not alone in my feelings here. The Commission on the Future of Volunteering recommended that the country needed to have a well funded and robust local volunteering infrastructure, and Volunteering England have consistently lobbied government to address this issue. VCs themselves have worked hard to get their house in order, adopting a common brand identity and adhering to a national quality framework that would make much of the corporate sector break into a sweat. So what else must they do? And why is this government not taking any notice? Ironically it was the previous government that last took this issue seriously. Their Make a Difference programme match funded the creation of local VCs where none had previously existed – a modest programme by today’s standards but one that has nevertheless left a lasting legacy, with many of those newly created VCs still thriving today.
If we really want to make it easy for people to volunteer then we need to put our money where our mouth is and fund a service that is at least as accessible and visible as the local Job Centre. The DWP brokerage scheme, although not perfect, is a step in the right direction but it is not enough and it looks as though for the time being we must continue to rely on the hard work and ingenuity of the likes of Greater London Volunteering to persuade the powers that be to invest in this much needed network.
I just hope that given the huge increase in volunteering enquiries the recession has brought we don’t lose more Volunteer Centres to funding cuts, otherwise volunteers coming forward will be turned away and that is not good for them or the communities that need their help.
Posted by Jamie Thomas, CEO of Red Foundation and former executive director of the Kensington & Chelsea Volunteer Centre
Friday 29 May 2009
Make Them Do Community Service
Imagine if you will that you’re running a volunteer brokerage scheme. You’re funded by a statutory authority to place individuals into volunteering opportunities. You’re paid on a per head basis, so you submit monthly invoices for those volunteers placed. You’re also able to claim for your volunteer’s travel and subsistence, up to a set amount, and this also goes on your monthly invoice. Payment is fairly simple, the local authority takes it on trust that your claims are legit, occasionally they might query something but you’re always able to justify your costs. Now imagine that after a few years of operating on this basis, the statutory authority decides to audit you. They send in a team of pencil pushers that go through your claims for the last three years and, lo and behold, their investigation throws up a number of anomalies. You’ve been double claiming for a number of volunteers, you’ve claimed for travel and subsistence where there are no corresponding receipts, and some of the volunteers claimed for have died or since moved on; the amount after three years runs into thousands. Your excuses are lame, it was an oversight, it was the volunteer’s fault, the finance officer had a breakdown, but the fact is you’ve made claims on public money for costs that were either inflated or in some cases did not even exist. Naughty, naughty.
So what would happen if this were true? Well I imagine the authority in question would come down on you like a ton of bricks. Chances are your trustee board would fire you, as the responsible officer, for gross misconduct and your organisation (and possibly you depending on what you did with the money) would probably be sued and steps taken to recover the funds. The charity may even have to be closed down, and at the very least it would be prevented from running similar projects in the future. All a big mess, but at least those involved would have been punished and steps taken to prevent this from happening again. And rightly so. This is public money and theft of this kind is theft against us all and needs to be dealt with.
So as I was watching Sir John Butterfield, the Conservative MP for Bournmouth West, try and justify to Kirsty Young the other night why it was fine for him to use his MP’s expenses to fund a number of building extensions to his ‘second home’ in Woking, including one to accommodate his servants quarters, I couldn’t help but think why is he, along with the many other MPs who have made similar outlandish claims, not being prosecuted let alone still allowed to keep his job? And why do this in the first place? £65k is a more than decent salary for a public servant that gets almost half the year off and only manages a small team of people.
I’m incensed by the whole MP expenses debacle. In a climate where everyone is having to tighten their belts, where businesses and third sector groups are having to cut back or close down, it sickens me to see public servants abuse their position in such a blatant way. The fact that they were not technically breaking the rules in some cases simply does not wash with me. Even if the expenses office passed their claims the fact was they were claiming for things that were clearly not justifiable in their line of work and they must have known this. As the fictional example above demonstrates, if this were in any other area of publicly funded life, those concerned would be removed from their jobs pretty quickly and no amount of ‘I made a mistake’ or ‘it was an accounting error’ would make any difference. Such statements just smack of incompetence and reiterate the justification for their swift removal.
Given that many voluntary projects cannot even afford to pay basic expenses for volunteers and those that do will often come under close scrutiny by their funders to ensure they are spending only what is absolutely necessary, not to mention the DWP constantly on the lookout for a reason to cut benefits for unemployed volunteers, this whole debacle smacks of double standards from the powers that be who impose such heavy sanctions on the rest of us. For me the biggest crime of all is the aftermath it will bring of increased voter apathy and the real risk that extremist parties will make significant gains as the populace seeks to place their vote elsewhere.
Perhaps those MPs that have been caught with their trousers down should forgo their summer recess and be made to do some community service? Given how the government is looking to introduce enforced service for teenagers this seems the least they could do and would set a positive example. I reckon a day’s service for every misclaimed pound should do the trick, who knows we could end up with a whole new national ‘force for good’, all we need is a good catchy name, ideas anyone?
Posted by Jamie Thomas
So what would happen if this were true? Well I imagine the authority in question would come down on you like a ton of bricks. Chances are your trustee board would fire you, as the responsible officer, for gross misconduct and your organisation (and possibly you depending on what you did with the money) would probably be sued and steps taken to recover the funds. The charity may even have to be closed down, and at the very least it would be prevented from running similar projects in the future. All a big mess, but at least those involved would have been punished and steps taken to prevent this from happening again. And rightly so. This is public money and theft of this kind is theft against us all and needs to be dealt with.
So as I was watching Sir John Butterfield, the Conservative MP for Bournmouth West, try and justify to Kirsty Young the other night why it was fine for him to use his MP’s expenses to fund a number of building extensions to his ‘second home’ in Woking, including one to accommodate his servants quarters, I couldn’t help but think why is he, along with the many other MPs who have made similar outlandish claims, not being prosecuted let alone still allowed to keep his job? And why do this in the first place? £65k is a more than decent salary for a public servant that gets almost half the year off and only manages a small team of people.
I’m incensed by the whole MP expenses debacle. In a climate where everyone is having to tighten their belts, where businesses and third sector groups are having to cut back or close down, it sickens me to see public servants abuse their position in such a blatant way. The fact that they were not technically breaking the rules in some cases simply does not wash with me. Even if the expenses office passed their claims the fact was they were claiming for things that were clearly not justifiable in their line of work and they must have known this. As the fictional example above demonstrates, if this were in any other area of publicly funded life, those concerned would be removed from their jobs pretty quickly and no amount of ‘I made a mistake’ or ‘it was an accounting error’ would make any difference. Such statements just smack of incompetence and reiterate the justification for their swift removal.
Given that many voluntary projects cannot even afford to pay basic expenses for volunteers and those that do will often come under close scrutiny by their funders to ensure they are spending only what is absolutely necessary, not to mention the DWP constantly on the lookout for a reason to cut benefits for unemployed volunteers, this whole debacle smacks of double standards from the powers that be who impose such heavy sanctions on the rest of us. For me the biggest crime of all is the aftermath it will bring of increased voter apathy and the real risk that extremist parties will make significant gains as the populace seeks to place their vote elsewhere.
Perhaps those MPs that have been caught with their trousers down should forgo their summer recess and be made to do some community service? Given how the government is looking to introduce enforced service for teenagers this seems the least they could do and would set a positive example. I reckon a day’s service for every misclaimed pound should do the trick, who knows we could end up with a whole new national ‘force for good’, all we need is a good catchy name, ideas anyone?
Posted by Jamie Thomas
Friday 15 May 2009
The Compact – Without Teeth It Can’t Bite the Hands that Feed Us
It’s been an interesting few weeks in the volunteering world. We’ve seen the government announce that all teenagers will be made to ‘serve’ their community – I'm still wondering what will happen to those young people that fail to show up or complete the programme? I have visions of voluntary sector ASBOs, with young people painting community centres dressed in fluorescent clothing so we can all point and laugh at them, along with a national network of ‘vPressGangs’ funded to scour the streets for truants! In addition we’ve also heard that volunteering organisations have had their arms twisted to rush through the new DWP volunteer programme for the unemployed, despite its obvious flaws.
What particularly interested me about the latter was that a ‘senior source who preferred not to be named’ described the process of negotiating the DWP scheme as ‘having a gun held to the head’. One can only assume that the source quoted desired anonymity for fear of having their participation revoked by funders for daring to criticise them in public. And understandably so, for even in this day and age – more than a decade since the Compact, the Government’s holy grail of third sector relations was launched – it appears we are still working in an environment where charities and voluntary organisations feel unable to challenge statutory funders for fear of having their proverbial throats cut.
Following my last blog entry ('vDaft') I received a lot of emails from organisations across the country thanking me for speaking out on this issue. The strength of feeling and apparent pent up frustration from both large and small organisations, who seem unable to speak publicly about their experiences of this funder both shocked and saddened me.
But they're not alone. Talking to a regional infrastructure body recently I was told how members were increasingly being forced to maintain levels of service despite ongoing cuts, from local authority funders who were clearly abusing their position and effectively gagging charities who felt unable to speak out for fear of losing all of their funding. Faced with the choice of no funding or having something that at least keeps your doors open, it’s no surprise that many organisations will opt for the latter and just quietly get on with it.
I also spoke to a national charity who informed me of a disagreement they’d had with a government body were they'd questioned the way a funded programme was being delivered. The intention was to try and shift the focus of the project to ensure it had the best potential success, but their pleas fell on deaf earss and the subsequent row saw their funding being cut when it came up for review – of course the funder in question refused to admit that their decision had anything to do with said disagreement. The charity quite rightly referred the matter to the Compact Commission – and as I understand their case has since sat with them without any further action.
I was one of the many people that applauded the Compact when it was first announced. Aside from the somewhat ambiguous name – ‘Small and densely packed’ is a definition that springs to mind, although I suspect they were leaning towards ‘To form or make close by union’ – I considered the concept sound even though the first document appeared a tad vague. But most of the intentions were well meant, not least providing an outlet for the third sector to seek recourse should they face unfair treatment by a statutory funder. Surely this above all should be the cornerstone to such an initiative? After all where else can we go for help when funders decide to go bad? Not to the variety of infrastructure and membership bodies that exist as most of them are in the same boat, often totally reliant on government funds and therefore not in a position to challenge government with confidence on behalf of their constituents.
What is apparent is that many local authorities are actively using the Compact as a model by which to engage with and involve the third sector in the planning and development of services. This is of course a good thing and there is evidence that links observance to the Compact's code with a more active third sector. But without having the ability to formally chastise funders that decide to abuse their positions it is really no more than a voluntary code of conduct to which statutory authorities can ultimately opt out of should they wish. We need more than this. Maybe we should introduce an eBay style ‘star rating’ mechanism on the forthcoming grants portal that the Office of Third Sector is building. At least fundees could be warned by others about particular funders and grant managers and have some idea of what they might be getting themselves into!
With the recent announcement that the Compact will not receive any statutory powers to enforce its code, it seems unlikely that the third sector can rely upon it in the longer term to take action on their behalf in real times of need. Although I’m all for keeping bureaucracy to a minimum I think this decision is short sighted. We’ve all seen how voluntary codes can be ignored – the banks are a case in point – and I believe we must have a Compact that has the teeth to bite back on our behalf when we need it to.
Jamie Thomas is CEO of Red Foundation and writes in a personal capacity
What particularly interested me about the latter was that a ‘senior source who preferred not to be named’ described the process of negotiating the DWP scheme as ‘having a gun held to the head’. One can only assume that the source quoted desired anonymity for fear of having their participation revoked by funders for daring to criticise them in public. And understandably so, for even in this day and age – more than a decade since the Compact, the Government’s holy grail of third sector relations was launched – it appears we are still working in an environment where charities and voluntary organisations feel unable to challenge statutory funders for fear of having their proverbial throats cut.
Following my last blog entry ('vDaft') I received a lot of emails from organisations across the country thanking me for speaking out on this issue. The strength of feeling and apparent pent up frustration from both large and small organisations, who seem unable to speak publicly about their experiences of this funder both shocked and saddened me.
But they're not alone. Talking to a regional infrastructure body recently I was told how members were increasingly being forced to maintain levels of service despite ongoing cuts, from local authority funders who were clearly abusing their position and effectively gagging charities who felt unable to speak out for fear of losing all of their funding. Faced with the choice of no funding or having something that at least keeps your doors open, it’s no surprise that many organisations will opt for the latter and just quietly get on with it.
I also spoke to a national charity who informed me of a disagreement they’d had with a government body were they'd questioned the way a funded programme was being delivered. The intention was to try and shift the focus of the project to ensure it had the best potential success, but their pleas fell on deaf earss and the subsequent row saw their funding being cut when it came up for review – of course the funder in question refused to admit that their decision had anything to do with said disagreement. The charity quite rightly referred the matter to the Compact Commission – and as I understand their case has since sat with them without any further action.
I was one of the many people that applauded the Compact when it was first announced. Aside from the somewhat ambiguous name – ‘Small and densely packed’ is a definition that springs to mind, although I suspect they were leaning towards ‘To form or make close by union’ – I considered the concept sound even though the first document appeared a tad vague. But most of the intentions were well meant, not least providing an outlet for the third sector to seek recourse should they face unfair treatment by a statutory funder. Surely this above all should be the cornerstone to such an initiative? After all where else can we go for help when funders decide to go bad? Not to the variety of infrastructure and membership bodies that exist as most of them are in the same boat, often totally reliant on government funds and therefore not in a position to challenge government with confidence on behalf of their constituents.
What is apparent is that many local authorities are actively using the Compact as a model by which to engage with and involve the third sector in the planning and development of services. This is of course a good thing and there is evidence that links observance to the Compact's code with a more active third sector. But without having the ability to formally chastise funders that decide to abuse their positions it is really no more than a voluntary code of conduct to which statutory authorities can ultimately opt out of should they wish. We need more than this. Maybe we should introduce an eBay style ‘star rating’ mechanism on the forthcoming grants portal that the Office of Third Sector is building. At least fundees could be warned by others about particular funders and grant managers and have some idea of what they might be getting themselves into!
With the recent announcement that the Compact will not receive any statutory powers to enforce its code, it seems unlikely that the third sector can rely upon it in the longer term to take action on their behalf in real times of need. Although I’m all for keeping bureaucracy to a minimum I think this decision is short sighted. We’ve all seen how voluntary codes can be ignored – the banks are a case in point – and I believe we must have a Compact that has the teeth to bite back on our behalf when we need it to.
Jamie Thomas is CEO of Red Foundation and writes in a personal capacity
Wednesday 29 April 2009
vDaft
So let me get this straight. The government has decided to spend £146m of taxpayers money to launch a new community service programme for 16-19 year olds. This is on top of the £100m plus that has already been spent on the same age group to do practically the same thing, with another £100m already committed to extend this same activity over the next three years, for a demographic that has been proven time and time again to be more likely to volunteer or get involved in the community than any other. Am I the only person that thinks this is nuts?
‘But this is community service not volunteering!’ I hear you cry. Well yes technically that’s true, but the actual work of identifying and creating meaningful opportunities that can demonstrate community impact whilst at the same time hold enough interest for teenagers to stick with them for 50 hours, is pretty similar in my opinion, and the chances are it will be the same organisations, that currently offer volunteering opportunities, that will be most likely to deliver the scheme. And I don’t suppose for a moment that the majority of young ‘community servers’ will be able to distinguish the difference.
So why is the Prime Minister proposing to invest new funding to encourage more community minded teenagers when this country has had in place the largest youth volunteering programme in history for three years? Perhaps it’s because it has not had the impact that he was expecting to see by now.
One of core and, in my opinion, most important challenges set by the Russell Commission was to overturn the perceived negative image that volunteering had for many young people, thereby making them want to volunteer and negating any need to obligate them to. Helping charities to repackage and sell existing opportunities, along with making it easier for young people to find them and addressing perceived market gaps, was considered key to enabling this to happen. Combine this with some juicy enticements through accreditation and some clever and provocative marketing to get young people to pay attention, and there you have it, Bob’s your proverbial uncle, job done.
At least you’d think so. Many of us believed back in 2005 that by now some of the key messages about volunteering and the opportunities and benefits that it offered, would be well and truly out there on the lips of a significant percentage of young people. When the Treasury announced what some thought of an obscenely high budget to set up the new national youth volunteering programme – the biggest investment ever to date for a volunteering project – I personally thought it would be a dead cert; even just spending a couple of million quid on a well thought through national advertising campaign would have a bigger impact than we’d had so far. But has it? I’m not convinced.
I recently facilitated a series of focus groups with young people from around the country to look at the impact of brands on their consumer choices. Part of the process involved running a series of commercial and charity brands past young people from several parts of the country, asking them to identify them and what they meant. v was one of those brands shown. I was, frankly amazed and extremely disappointed at how few had heard of it, let along got involved. Of course this was not a structured brand awareness exercise to ascertain v’s impact on the psyche of young people and the sample of 60 or so 16-25 year old participants may well have not been part of their key market, but I would have expected considerably more than the meagre show of hands.
Personally I’m not convinced that trying to change the word volunteering into ‘favours’ has helped - aside from the fact that we’ve been down this path before (remember TimeGivers?) it just confuses the issue. Orange Rock Corps gets it. Whether you love or loathe their approach, they have managed to attain the sort of brand profile for volunteering that the rest of us used to drool over, in less than a year for considerably less money and without reinventing the ‘v word’ or costing the taxpayer a single penny.
I think it’s crazy that we are going to see yet another expensive national youth programme foisted upon us – at this rate we could be paying every young person in the country to ‘do some good’. Surely we should be looking to build on our massive investment to date to ensure that the national youth volunteering programme delivers the goods that we all expect and want it to. Heck, in another 3 years and for another £100m of public money I would expect almost every young person in the country to know about volunteering and what it can do for them, and more likely than not be actually doing something because they want to and not because they’ve been made to.
Posted by Jamie Thomas, CEO of Red Foundation and former head of the Russell Commission Secretariat; this article reflects his personal opinion and not that of Red Foundation
‘But this is community service not volunteering!’ I hear you cry. Well yes technically that’s true, but the actual work of identifying and creating meaningful opportunities that can demonstrate community impact whilst at the same time hold enough interest for teenagers to stick with them for 50 hours, is pretty similar in my opinion, and the chances are it will be the same organisations, that currently offer volunteering opportunities, that will be most likely to deliver the scheme. And I don’t suppose for a moment that the majority of young ‘community servers’ will be able to distinguish the difference.
So why is the Prime Minister proposing to invest new funding to encourage more community minded teenagers when this country has had in place the largest youth volunteering programme in history for three years? Perhaps it’s because it has not had the impact that he was expecting to see by now.
One of core and, in my opinion, most important challenges set by the Russell Commission was to overturn the perceived negative image that volunteering had for many young people, thereby making them want to volunteer and negating any need to obligate them to. Helping charities to repackage and sell existing opportunities, along with making it easier for young people to find them and addressing perceived market gaps, was considered key to enabling this to happen. Combine this with some juicy enticements through accreditation and some clever and provocative marketing to get young people to pay attention, and there you have it, Bob’s your proverbial uncle, job done.
At least you’d think so. Many of us believed back in 2005 that by now some of the key messages about volunteering and the opportunities and benefits that it offered, would be well and truly out there on the lips of a significant percentage of young people. When the Treasury announced what some thought of an obscenely high budget to set up the new national youth volunteering programme – the biggest investment ever to date for a volunteering project – I personally thought it would be a dead cert; even just spending a couple of million quid on a well thought through national advertising campaign would have a bigger impact than we’d had so far. But has it? I’m not convinced.
I recently facilitated a series of focus groups with young people from around the country to look at the impact of brands on their consumer choices. Part of the process involved running a series of commercial and charity brands past young people from several parts of the country, asking them to identify them and what they meant. v was one of those brands shown. I was, frankly amazed and extremely disappointed at how few had heard of it, let along got involved. Of course this was not a structured brand awareness exercise to ascertain v’s impact on the psyche of young people and the sample of 60 or so 16-25 year old participants may well have not been part of their key market, but I would have expected considerably more than the meagre show of hands.
Personally I’m not convinced that trying to change the word volunteering into ‘favours’ has helped - aside from the fact that we’ve been down this path before (remember TimeGivers?) it just confuses the issue. Orange Rock Corps gets it. Whether you love or loathe their approach, they have managed to attain the sort of brand profile for volunteering that the rest of us used to drool over, in less than a year for considerably less money and without reinventing the ‘v word’ or costing the taxpayer a single penny.
I think it’s crazy that we are going to see yet another expensive national youth programme foisted upon us – at this rate we could be paying every young person in the country to ‘do some good’. Surely we should be looking to build on our massive investment to date to ensure that the national youth volunteering programme delivers the goods that we all expect and want it to. Heck, in another 3 years and for another £100m of public money I would expect almost every young person in the country to know about volunteering and what it can do for them, and more likely than not be actually doing something because they want to and not because they’ve been made to.
Posted by Jamie Thomas, CEO of Red Foundation and former head of the Russell Commission Secretariat; this article reflects his personal opinion and not that of Red Foundation
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