Volunteers - let's be 'aving you

At the start of November I noticed a small flurry of blog posts and media mentions focusing on volunteering in policing.
The first that got my attention was on the BBC New website, “Volunteer Army may swell police ranks”. This reported on the recent Home Office consultation “Reforming the Powers of Police Staff and Volunteers” which, in a volunteering context, seeks to:

“…enhance the role of volunteers. We are consulting on ending the anomaly whereby volunteers can either have all of the powers of the constable, as a Special; or have none of the powers, as a police support volunteer. We will instead allow volunteers to mirror the roles played by police staff, for example as Community Support Officers.”

The BBC article tells the story of Alan Hunt, a volunteer with Dorset police who monitors CCTV between 730pm and 4am every Friday and Saturday night. Mr Hunt, who has been in the role for five years, radios officers to attend any disturbances caught on the cameras.
It also mentions a volunteer with the National Crime Agency (the UK’s equivalent of the FBI), who uses his skills as a security adviser with and insurance firm to help give a different perspective on projects to the regular NCA officers.

Another article I noticed from my home county of Lincolnshire explored the role of students in a new volunteering scheme with the county’s police force. In this scheme, the police and the University of Lincoln have partnered to to give students the opportunity to volunteer as Volunteer Police Community Support Officers or Police Campus Drop-In Centre volunteer.
Police and Crime Commissioner Alan Hardwick is quoted as saying that this initiative is not about getting unpaid volunteers to do the work of paid officers:

“There are no officers who would come and sit in the drop-in centre so the idea that the volunteers are doing their work is totally wrong. The volunteers will be able to engage with students far better – the students are their peers and part of that community."

Chief Constable of Lincolnshire Police, Neil Rhodes, adds:

“What’s different about today’s initiative is that it’s aimed at young people who will be able to act as an interface with us as volunteers policing the streets of Lincoln and at the drop-in centre.The scheme is about having a bridge between the force and the university. Sometimes it can be quite daunting to approach a police officer whereas if you can speak to one of your fellow students who can help you access our services, that should be easier.”

Sadly (but unsurprisingly) the unions seem less enthusiastic. In the BBC article Ben Priestley, Unison’s national officer for police and justice services, raises concerns about competence and accountability.

“There’s a general question about whether the general public believe that policing should be carried out by, in many cases, well-meaning amateurs. Policing is a serious business, dealing with serious crime, and our members who work as police staff are fully trained, they’re fully vetted and they’re very, very committed to the job they do. If you’re a volunteer, you’re not under the direction and control of a chief constable, as police staff and police officers are, and that’s a very real problem, and I don’t think the general public would be happy about that.”

Mr Priestly makes mistakes common to those within the union movement when it comes to volunteers [1]:

1. He confuses amateur with incompetent i.e professional means competent. I’ve blogged on this before so do take a look at that post for my thoughts.
2. He implies volunteers within the police will just be random people, plucked from the street and placed into roles with no training or support. Read the two articles I have already referenced to see that this isn’t the case, police volunteers are properly trained, vetted and supported. Volunteers, when properly recruited, managed and supported, are no less competent at what they do than paid staff.
3. He suggests volunteers, because they are unpaid, may be less committed than paid police officers. Interesting. Doing a job for no pay implies less commitment? If anything, the issue with volunteers is them being too committed!
4. He indicates that volunteers would not be ‘under the direction and control’ of a chief constable in the same way as police staff and officers. Why? Volunteers in policing roles are already under such direction and control and held to standards of conduct and behaviour. Mr Priestly is assuming that you can’t control volunteers or hold them responsible and accountable, an assumption that is simply wrong.
5. He does what all union people who speak out about volunteering do, which is to fail to recognise the the very movement and organisation he represents runs on volunteer labour. As they state on their webiste, Unison employs 1,200 staff and have 1.3 million members, relying on volunteer activists. Without them Unison would not be able to function. Or are all union volunteers untrained, unsupported individuals who can’t be managed or controlled?

My own view is that the role of volunteers in policing, indeed in any public service, is incredibly valuable and should be enhanced. Volunteers don’t simply complement and supplement the work of employees, they bring something else. For example, that could be a distinctively different credibility with the community by virtue of them being unpaid, such as the student volunteers in Lincoln that the Chief Constable highlighted in the remark quoted earlier.

Crucially, the role of volunteers should not be expanded because they are a free or cheap form of labour. That is lazy and wrongheaded thinking that harms both volunteering and the people those very public services seek to help. Where such ill-considered decision making is concerned it should be challenged and we Volunteer Managers should do more to speak up, challenge and help those making the decisions to do so in a better way.

I want to conclude with the words of Justin Davis Smith at NCVO who wraps up his excellent blog post, “We need a better vision for volunteering in policing” like this:

The modern police force was born out of volunteer involvement in the 19th Century. We have a glorious opportunity to re-shape our public services for the 21st Century by harnessing the power of volunteers alongside our paid professionals. It is not a zero sum game, but a complementary, symbiotic relationship, where volunteers and paid staff do what they each do best, operating in consort to deliver a more effective and efficient service better in tune with the community in which they operate.

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1. For more of my blogging about job substitution / displacement / replacement issues, please take a look at the relevant tagged posts.  ↩
   

What I think about the latest Tory proposal on volunteering

Last Friday (10 April 2015) David Cameron announced that if the Conservatives win the UK General Election on 7th May 2015 they would introduce a new legal right for employees in the public sector and large private firms to have three days a year of paid leave in order to volunteer.

Recognising the benefits of employee volunteering, many groups were quick to endorse the proposals.

CIPD (the professional body for Human Resources) welcomed the idea as did the Confederation of British Industry.

Amusingly, the trade union movement - who are usually so quick to criticise volunteers as the enemy of paid workers - quickly backtracked on their initial cautious welcome when it became apparent volunteering for a union would not be considered under the scheme.

Many in the Voluntary and Community Sector have also warmly welcomed Cameron’s proposal.

NCVO’s Chief Executive Sir Stuart Etherington blogged on why it would be good for business whilst Kristen Stephenson helpfully outlined why employee volunteering can be a good thing more broadly.

The Charities Aid Foundation also gave their endorsement as did the sector Chief Executives body ACEVO, whose Director of Policy, Asheem Singh, was quoted in Civil Society saying:

“This is exciting news – it recognises the crucial role of charities in building a better society. The workplace is a new frontier for social action, and this new legal right will help support a new generation of socially responsible citizens.”

However, at an event on Monday some senior fundraisers (not volunteer managers, fundraisers!) called into question the viability of the Conservative proposal whilst both CSV and Timebank have made the point that it needs properly thinking though and resourcing if it is to work.

The Association of Volunteer Managers have said nothing.

So what do I think?

Let’s start with the positive. To an extent I agree that anything which promotes and encourages volunteering is to be welcomed. However, I have two big caveats to this.

First, the solution is not always more volunteers. As I said when I blogged on the Labour Party’s proposals for volunteering back in 2014:

“We are concerned Labour are falling into the common trap of assuming that more volunteers is a measure of success. Any professional leader and manager of volunteers would be quite clear that if an organisation’s mission can be fulfilled effectively with ten volunteers then to recruit 100 to do the same task is wasteful and inefficient.”

Second, initiatives to increase the supply of volunteers completely fail to recognise that the demand needs to be there for these people. Meaningful opportunities need creating to accommodate all these additional time givers and ensure they have a great experiences as volunteers. A shortcut to disaster would be to engage loads of new people, manage them badly, give them a terrible experience and send them on their way. Do you imaging many (any?) of them would be keen to volunteer again? Moreover, as the Boston Globe highlighted recently, employee volunteering can be more of a burden than a help to many good causes.

So, if that’s the positive (!), what about the negative?

First, the Conservative proposals are yet another example of a political party policy initiative on volunteering that looks good but fails to acknowledge that investment is needed to make it happen. Volunteering is freely given but not cost free. As I just noted, if all these additional volunteers are going to come forward opportunities need creating, organisational cultures need to be changed to be more open towards volunteers and resource (time, money, will to act etc.) needs finding to organise it all and maximise the potential impact.

One of the most worrying aspects of the Tory announcement is the failure of most of the main sector bodies to even acknowledge that for the idea to work something needs to change. Whether that something is the attitude of leaders in the sector to properly understand and support volunteering, or it is funding for more volunteer management resource, or both, nobody except Timebank or CSV appears to have even raised this issue. Worse, the professional association for volunteer managers has been totally silent.

Second, and related, is the issue of infrastructure. It has long been accepted that good employee volunteering happens when a competent broker gets involved. This broker negotiates the needs of the good cause with the aims of the employer and matches the two up to best mutual benefit. 

Sadly, the last government’s austerity agenda slashed funding for national and local volunteering infrastructure to the point where the capacity to deliver something like Cameron’s new proposals barely exists compared to five years ago. Not only have the organisations closed or significantly downsized but much of the knowledge and expertise built up over many years has left the roles that were made redundant. 

Perhaps there is no better illustration of the short-sightedness of dismantling the sector's support infrastructure whilst expecting volunteering to flourish.

Third, and finally, what is acceptable volunteering? Set aside the old debate about whether paid time off for volunteering is actually volunteering (and I think it is - is paid time off for holiday not holiday?) but the position on union volunteering makes it clear that the Conservatives view some volunteering as more valid than other ways of giving time. This is not a new issue but one that rarely gets thought through. 

Consider these two previous examples:

1. The Local Government Association (LGA) proposing that people get a discount on their Council Tax if they volunteer, an idea that seems to have stalled when it became apparent how much record keeping and administration is required to assess and approve what it valid volunteering and how much time people give to those causes.
2. The last Labour government’s wizard wheeze to speed up citizenship applications for those immigrants who volunteer, an idea which collapsed for the exact same reason as the LGA’s idea.

So what will constitute valid volunteering under Cameron’s grand new volunteering plan? Who will assess and approve this? Who will record how much of those three days gets used? What will happen to people’s legal right to time off to volunteer for other causes? These questions are all unanswered and until they are addressed I cannot endorse the idea at all.

Of course these proposals may only see the light of day if we get a Conservative government on May 8th. Given the closeness of this election that seems an unlikely outcome. I can see the idea being dropped as quickly as possible in any coalition negotiations. 

So maybe we shouldn’t worry too much about the Tories and their new idea, but we definitely should worry at the response - or lack thereof - of the majority of sector bodies. This is the first chance in a post-Volunteering England age to see how our national infrastructure representatives speak up for the realities of volunteer management. I think it's pretty clear that with a couple of notable exceptions (CSV and Timebank) they failed the test. 

Let’s hope they do better with whatever government we do get.

They couldn’t do much worse could they?

Warning! The volunteers are coming

Earlier this week friend and colleague Lynn Blackadder shared with me the latest issue of National Museums Directors' Council newsletter. Within the newsletter there was a heading reading,"Volunteers may run libraries, parks and museums warns local government chief". Underneath it was the following text:

Writing for the Daily Telegraph the Chairman of the Local Government Association Sir Merrick Cockell warns that it will be impossible for local councils to keep paying for all the services they currently offer as cuts increase.  He writes “with half of local government’s savings still having to be found before April 2016, and more cuts promised thereafter, it will no longer be possible to keep slicing away at budgets without services suffering or, in some cases, disappearing completely.” 

“We now need to be asking whether people are prepared to take a direct role in providing other services like the running of local museums, sports classes, the upkeep of parks and green spaces and the management of allotment sites.” The Telegraph reports that the LGA estimates that local councils will have to find a further £10bn savings from their budgets, on top of the £10bn cuts already made. Telegraph (Sir Merrick’s article), Telegraph (commentary)

In the last few years, whilst the purse strings have been rapidly tightened following the global financial crash, the debate about volunteers making a greater contribution to the delivery public services has been focused almost exclusively on the risks of these volunteers going paid staff out of work. In public fora, leaders and managers of volunteers have remained largely silent on the issue except for occasional support for the position that volunteers shouldn't do the work that paid staff once did - as if the argument were that simple. In fact Lynn and I tried to address this complexity in a piece for The Guardian back in 2011.

Rarely has anyone spoken about the upside to volunteer involvement in public services. The more positive aspects of the (in many ways rightly) much maligned Big Society agenda that focused on local people having more of a say in how services are delivered & taking more ownership of those local services have seemingly been forgotten.

This leads me to think that if we'd had an intelligent, open and informed discussion about volunteer involvement in public services a few years ago we perhaps wouldn't have to resort to the interesting language you may not have noticed in the headline to the article quoted above  - "Volunteers may run libraries, parks and museums warns local government chief".

Why is this something to warn us about? Are volunteers such scary people that we should be in fear of them when visiting the local museum in future?  Or is it a warning that 'the volunteers are coming, be in fear for your jobs'? Or perhaps its a warning to the public, the old 'volunteer or lose it (the library, park, leisure centre etc.)' recruitment tactic.

Either way I can't help but feel we've got a situation of our own making here. With either total silence or well intentioned arguments against job substitution from the volunteer management community, we have perhaps missed a huge chance to speak up and educate. We have perhaps missed a golden opportunity to say how volunteers - either on their own or working alongside paid staff - need not be a threat but an opportunity to transform public services for the better.

The good news is that opportunity need not be entirely a missed one. We can still speak up and be heard. In our own organisations, in online forums, in comments to news articles, on social media, at conference and events, we can take a more positive line on how volunteers can add real value to public services.

Interestingly, the Association of Volunteer Managers (AVM) is developing a code of conduct for its members (and if you work with volunteers here in the UK you should be a member of AVM) which, if adopted, would require them to "advocate on behalf of volunteers at all times". In other words, we would be compelled to take a positive stance for volunteers in the delivery of public services as a matter of professional conduct.

So my question to you is whether you are ready to do this? Are you prepared to counter the warnings about volunteer involvement and champion the value they can add and good they can bring? Indeed, have you done this before and got tips to share? If not, what kind of information and support do you think you'd need to be confident in fighting the corner of the volunteer?

Please share your responses below.



If you'd like to read some of my blogs on job substitution (or, as I prefer, job displacement & replacement) please see  my previous posts on this issue and my column for Third Sector online too.  I've also stuck my head above the parapet and commented on stories about more volunteers working in libraries. 

Lies damned lies and statistics

So the new Community Life Survey (successor to the Citizenship Survey) is out and the headline is an apparent vindication of Big Society as the proportion of people doing any volunteering (formal and informal) between August and October 2012 has increased to 71% from the last Citizenship Survey figure of 65%.

Except that isn't the whole story and things aren't as rosy as the government may have you believe, at least to these eyes. 

From my reading of the data, formal volunteering at least once a month and once a year have risen back to 2005 levels after a dip over the last few years. 

However, we have to be cautious. Remember, the results are for August to October 2012 so it could be a post-Olympic blip. I don't imagine the field work was done in Stratford amongst people wearing pink and purple! As Helen Timbrell of the National Trust suggested to me yesterday, people may have been more ready to see what they already do as volunteering due to the higher public awareness of volunteers during the Games.

Furthermore, as the trend data above shows there have been fluctuations up and down over the last thirteen years, the last peak coming around the Year of The Volunteer in 2005 which was a concerted campaign to get more people giving time. 

So, whilst the headline is encouraging, we'll have to wait for future Community Life results to see if the increase in volunteering is sustained.

In terms of the headline figure that 71% of people did formal or informal volunteering at least once a year, that may be up on 2009/10 and 2010/11's figures of 66% & 65% but these figures were skewed downward by a sharp and unexpected drop in levels of informal volunteering (see below). Additionally, an overall rate of 71% is the same as 2008-09, down on 2007/08 (73%) and lower than at any other time since the citizenship survey started. Hardly a vindication for the Big Society. If anything, it shows that we're back to where we were four / five years ago.

The good news is informal volunteering which saw a big dip in 2009/10 & 2010/11 (and which nobody could explain at the time ) is back up to the level of before 09/10, albeit at a slight decrease and 6% lower than in 2001. Again, we're back to where we were four / five years ago.

So, in summary, whilst the headlines may be all about the success of the coalition government's policies to get us volunteering more, the reality is perhaps more cautious. As with all data, trends need to be seen over time and at least with the Community Life survey we have trackable data on volunteering once more. I hope the upswing will continue but for now I think we have to be careful about assuming government policy is working as well as Whitehall suggest when the real story is we are back to where we were in 2008/09 (i.e. pre-recession).

What do you think?

Are we alienating a generation of volunteers?

That's a question I'm starting to ask myself about young people.

Here is a generation that has had £millions spent on encouraging them to get volunteering.

Here is a generation who have been told that volunteering will help them get a job when they leave school, college or university.

Here is a generation who are leaving school, college and university (those that can afford to go to uni anyway) and are now facing levels of unemployment unparalleled in recent memory.

Here is a generation who are told that the solution to their joblessness is to volunteer, to become interns, in short to work damned hard for no pay in the scant hope someone will give them a job.

Here is a generation who are now being charged to take part in their so-called rite of passage to adulthood, National Citizens Service.

Here is a generation who we risk becoming very cynical and negative about volunteering.

Here is a generation who in 20, 30, 40, 50 years time we will expect to be the core volunteers organisations rely on.

Here is a generation who, if we are not careful, will tell us to go to hell when we ask them to volunteer.

What can we do now - right now, today - to make sure this generation of young people don't abandon volunteering in future, branding it as a cynical ploy to get them to work for free whilst others profit, and pass those same values to the generation that will follow them?

Answers on a postcard via the comments section below please.

Six Key Trends (and what they might mean for volunteerism)

I recently came across a good resource for small businesses called Start Up Donut. Their blogs and articles are helpful and I can reccomend following them on Twitter for their best links and bits of bit sized wisdom.

Last month, one of their articles caught my eye, "Six key trends to bear in mind when planning your business".  I thought the issues highlighted were potentially transferable to leaders and managers of volunteers so this blog aims to draw out what those parallels might be.

The tyranny of speed

We live life at a faster pace than before. We used to be content with 28 days delivery and now get stressed if delivery isn't available next day.  The expectations of volunteers and those seeking to volunteer are equally high. We need to respond quickly, making people wait wil communicate that we don't care and they'll end up going elsewhere. Even if all we do is acknowledge (and thank!) volunteers for getting in touch and advise them of when were likely to give a fuller response.

Like it or not, speed is of the essence.

The impossibility of controlling the market

We're starting to see websites that allow volunteers to rate their volunteering experiences (e.g. Timebank and Charity Republic). We're likely to see more of this in reponse to encouargement of such initiatives in the recent Giving White Paper.

The broader policy agenda of Big Society and associated deregulation efforts are encouraging more people to take action to meet social needs. Alongside this we have the growth of social entreprenurship and shifts to more volunteers wanting a say over their volunteering and having considerable skills to bring to the party.

We have less and less control over how people engage in volunteering and what they tell others about it. We need to be more agile, more flexible, more adaptable. We need to offer better experiences for volunteers and focus as much on their needs as what we want from them.

Be authentic in whatever you're planning

Following on from the previous trend, if we market volunteering as one thing and then deliver something very different people will glady share their bad experience with others. Using social media such messages can quickly travel far and wide leaving our reputation damaged.

We need to be able to walk our talk and deliver on what we offer volunteers. This authenticity and integrity is critical if we want to run a succesful volunteer programme.

Add more choice

When I was a child we had three TV channels. Now we have nearly 600 available in the UK.  We live our lives in an endless barrage of choice, from the coffee we drink to the destinations of the holidays we take.

We need to reflect this comfort with and desire for choice in the volunteering opportunities we offer. People don't want to see that they can do a couple of things with you, especially if they want a variety of experiences. So evaluate what your organisation's needs and desires are and explore the potential for a wide variety of ways for people to give you their time and skills.

Can you outsource any skills or processes?

As I mentioned earlier we have a richness of skills possesed by volunteers and potential volunteers like never before. From baby boomers with long high powered careers to some amazingly bright young people.

Many organisations have less money than in the past, especially with the cuts hitting public and voluntary sectors hard at the moment. Yet demand for services is increasing.

Faced with such challenges we have the opportunity to re-evaluate what volunteers can bring to the table. We mustn't limit our vision to that which we can afford to pay people to do. We have to look at the needs we must meet and decide how best we can meet them, incuding the powerful potential of volunteers.

The definition of scarcity has changed

The things we have a more freely available than ever before. The demands on our lives are greater than ever. Today, time is scarce. We all have the same amount each day but it is under pressure like never before. Even in this challenging financial season, our time is our most valuable resource.

So when people freely pledge their time to us we must not waste it. We need to make sure our volunteers have a rich experience and make a real difference to our causes.

So, those are my thoughts. Please share yours by making a comment below.

If you'd like to discuss what these trends might mean for your organistion then please get in touch to see how Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd might be able to help you.

Thoughts on the Giving White Paper

Within the last couple of weeks the coalition government in England has published its Giving White Paper.  This follows on from the Giving Green Paper and associated essays which was launched just after Christmas 2010, and has been developed in light of the 400 responses government received to that earlier document.


What follows are some reflections on the key themes and issues arising from the Giving White Paper with a particular focus on the volunteering elements.  It is a bit of a lengthy post so here goes:


General observations

• Following on from the earlier Green Paper, it is good to see some recognition that the quality of the giving experience is a key factor in getting people to give. The flip side to this of course is that if giving isn't rewarding to the potential giver then they will be put off giving and government acknowledge this.
  
  In volunteering terms this means motivating and meaningful roles for volunteers, not just make work or the stuff nobody else wants to do.  Hopefully this will switch organisations on to the importance of designing good quality roles for volunteers and make funders (including government) more likely to resource volunteer management to deliver great experiences and not simply pursue a 'bums on seats' approach to endless recruitment that they seem to so often require.
  
  
• It is also good to see a document highlight the potential of Baby Boomers.  I think this generation has had little attention from the UK volunteering movement in recent years, perhaps a consequence of the disaster that was Experience Corps in the mid-noughties.  Yet Baby Boomers are going to be a huge potential pool of volunteers in future, but only if organisations adapt their volunteering offer to meet their needs.  Baby Boomers are very different from their parents whose volunteer efforts have shored up many an organisation that has been slow to develop their volunteering offer to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.  The USA, Canada and Australia are well ahead of us on this and we have some catching up to do.
  
  
• The commitment of £40m of funding for volunteering and social action over two years is good.  It won't make up for the funding that is being lost through the current cuts but used wisely it could help to steer people in the right direction for the future.  However, I do wonder if government will really be able to assess impact of these funds in the two year window they have given themselves before deciding how further funds will be invested.
  
  
• Unsurprisingly the issue of barriers to giving crop up again.  Yet all the barriers mentioned are external such as CRB checks and benefits rules (or perhaps more accurately the way they are interpreted by benefit advisers).  There is little or no focus on the barriers organisations themselves establish that get in the way of people giving, like inappropriate use of CRB checks, bureaucratic systems and processes, lack of investment in good volunteer leadership and management etc..  Maybe that's because government are focusing on things they think they can change.  Yet this could be an area that government could help drive change in, as they are doing with other aspects of the White Paper.
  
  
• I was intrigued by the short section on "Giving CVs".  These essentially seem to be a means for volunteers to have people rate their efforts, almost like eBay feedback.  The suggestion is that such systems could help with volunteer screening, reducing the need for things like references.  There isn't a lot of information on this in the document so I reserve judgement for now but I do see some big problems with this and suspect it will be met with great scepticism by many volunteer managers, especially in our risk averse culture.
  
  
• I like the Community First model highlighted through the example from Seattle.  The essence of this is establishing systems of support that don't just focus on funding but leverage a range of resources to enable organisations to fulfil their goals.  I am especially attracted to this because of the potential for volunteering in such models and because I am on record as suggesting leaders in the voluntary and community sector are too money oriented and need to change to meet the challenges of the new financially restricted reality we live in.
  
  
• It is encouraging to read of the proposed Giving Summit and I look forward to more details.

Volunteer leadership & management

• It is very encouraging to see government acknowledge the value and importance of volunteer management as a key element to successfully increasing the number of volunteers and impact of volunteering.  This continues a trend that really started in policy terms as a consequence of the Commission of the Future of Volunteering who reported in early 2008.
  
  Hopefully this emphasis will lead to further funding for volunteer leadership and management from government and encouragement for other funders to invest in this critical area of organisation capacity.
  
  
• On a couple of occasions the White Paper talks about investing in the training and development of voluntary volunteer managers.  This is good, more volunteers should be involved in the management of volunteer programmes.  But where is the emphasis on paid volunteer managers?  Are they to get nothing?
  
  
• There are also a couple of occasions where the document talks about retired civil servants being trained up as volunteer managers.  Interesting.  Why?  What leads government to think civil servants are going to make good volunteer managers?  I'm sure some will but the idea as presented lacks any substance and thus credibility.
  
• In respect of these last two points it is worth reading a recent blog from Jayne Cravens and the June Hot Topic from Energize.  Both contain observations on the problem in the USA of increased use of AmeriCorps volunteers a voluntary volunteer managers and the need to do this alongside 'professional' volunteer management rather than instead of it.
  
  
• There is a section in the White Paper encouraging the development and promotion of more 'self managed' volunteer opportunities.  This seems to suggest that a solution to some of the problems facing volunteers is giving people the power to select what they do and when they do it.  Government advocates concepts like Silvers of Time to aid this.
  
  On one level I totally agree.  Volunteers need to have more say in what they do and when it is done.  Leaders of volunteer need to adapt to this and embrace it, striking a balance between the needs of the volunteer, the organisation and the client.  Yet I also have problems with that government proposes.
  
  First of all such self-managed volunteering is not new.  Young people's projects have been doing it for ages, in fact they have been even more self-managed as often the young people have developed the projects themselves, not just chosen when to volunteer for them.  This was a major theme of the Russell Commission and subsequently of the work of v.
  
  What is perhaps new is facilitating volunteers to have more control over when they give via technology.  Even that isn't that new because people like New York Cares have been doing it for years and existing volunteer management software like Volunteer Squared provides a means for self-managed volunteering.
  My second concern is that ideas like Slivers only help people take control of their volunteering if there are opportunities available in organisations that have embraced the idea of self-managed volunteering.  A new website or tech tool like Slivers provides an interface but it isn't a short cut to good volunteer management and opportunity development.

Infrastructure

• I like the language used of "Providing better support for those offering and managing opportunities to give".  This is far more engaging than abstract concepts such as infrastructure, especially when most people think of bridges, roads, railways etc. when they hear that word.
  
  My only hesitation with the phrase is that it is very organisationally focused.  Volunteering infrastructure has historically supported Volunteer Involving Organisations and volunteers.  This phrase, despite its strengths, omits the volunteer element which is essential for that is a key strength of bodies like Volunteer Centres whose person centred approach gets more people from disadvantaged groups volunteering than almost any other form of volunteer recruitment.
  
  
• Which leads me to my next point and it is a concern.  Aside from the funding available for infrastructure now being £30m not the £42m stated in the Green Paper, it is also now aimed at all infrastructure not just volunteering infrastructure.  This means Councils for Voluntary Service (CVS) can access it not just bodies like Volunteer Centres (VC).  There is also a stated desire to see better integration locally, which to me suggests the agenda is to driver mergers between local infrastructure bodies.
  I spent six years working with local infrastructure bodies and have come across many good and bad CVS and VCs.  I am not therefore opposed to greater collaboration and or merger in principle.  However, evidence from Volunteering England's Annual Return of Volunteer Centres consistently shows that independent VCs are better funded, deliver a wider range of services and more consistently deliver on their six core functions than VCs who are part of a CVS.
  
  Furthermore, VCs exist to serve volunteering not just the voluntary sector.  That means they should (and many do) work with public and private sector bodies too.  CVS don't generally do this, focusing their development work on a predominantly or exclusively voluntary sector audience.  
  
  And experience shows that CVS can be all to quick to cut VC funding when times get tough.
  
  So I hope the changes between the Green and White Papers don't result in ill thought through mergers because 'government say so' or because funding is tight so it becomes the only course of action.  Many in both CVS and VC network will oppose this, as will other local infrastructure providers.  This agenda has suffered from some of the worst sector politicking I've ever seen in the past and I hope that stops.  Non-partisan leadership by the likes of NAVCA and Volunteering England is needed to ensure we end up with a fit-for-purpose local infrastructure, not just one that is cost-effective. 
  
• I am pleased to see government funding YouthNet to further develop and opening up the data on the Do-It national volunteering database.   Whilst I do have reservations about the wisdom of putting all our volunteering eggs in one online database basket, Do-It does have a good track record and a great team behind it.  
  
  Some Volunteer Centres will baulk at the idea though and this needs careful management.  VCs provide the majority of opportunities on Do-It but mistakenly think that these opportunities are theirs.  They aren't.  They belong to the organisations who need the volunteers and they don't care where they get their volunteers so long as they get them.
  Where the VCs have a point is that if they are doing all the hard work getting the opportunities onto Do-It, is becomes rather galling if someone else fills that vacancy for a volunteer, especially when many VCs are funded to place volunteers.  So it is even more worrying to see that government want Do-It to open their books to profit making bodies like Slivers of Time.  I have much more sympathy with VCs if their hard work is going to help people make money whilst they suffer more and more cuts and under-investment.
  
  Volunteering England, YouthNet and government have got their work cut out on this one.

Technology and volunteering

• As with the Green Paper, government seems to have bought the argument that a big barrier to volunteering is lack of spare time and so expresses interest in concepts like  microvolunteering.  I have recently blogged some of my concerns on this so won't repeat them here.
  
  To their credit, however, government do seem to get that a key way to get more people to give it to given them role models.  What has potential here is not celebrities or ministers volunteering but real people, people like you and me.  I strongly believe that if someone who claims they don't have the time to volunteer can see someone like them finding the time to give time and be helped to find a great opportunity to give themselves then that will be more powerful than a new website or gadget.
  
• One of the worrying things about the pursuit of technological solutions is that it assume people have the tech to access all these new ways to access volunteering.  Not everyone owns an iPhone or iPad, which seems to be the most common app platform for these things.  The social media professionals who develop these things may well have all the latest tech but not everybody does.  What about the rest of us?  And what about all those who can't afford £35-£40 a month to have the latest mobile communications gadget?
  
  Don't get me wrong, I love technology but the danger is that a constant focus on whizzy new tech solutions and the resulting shift of the focus in volunteering terms onto these new ideas could create more barriers than it removes.
  
• On a few occasions the White Paper talks of new technology and social media giving people new opportunities to give or creating attractive placements.  This is very worrying because by and large they don't.  Technology, websites and social media help people find out about and engage in opportunities to give their time but they rarely create the opportunities.  To buy into the argument that they do suggests that anyone can build a website or app and people will have a rewarding giving experience.
  As Oxfam said in response to the Green Paper which said "...there is a danger that seeking technological solutions [to booting volunteering] may lead to a focus on mechanisms rather than the quality of the volunteering opportunity.  The first priority should be to ensure that meaningful opportunities are a priority."  
  
  I worry that Oxfam's excellent point hasn't been truly grasped by government yet and hope it will be, lest they invest £millions in new ideas that look sexy but deliver little.

So there you go, for what they are worth those are my initial thoughts and observations on the Giving White paper.  Government rightly acknowledges that this is the start of a process and discussion about how we realise a real change in giving in the UK.  So I hope my thoughts add to this in some small way and I look forward to hearing your ideas and responses via the comments section below.

See you at the Giving Summit. 

Pay doesn't lead to competence

On today's anniversary of the launch of the Titanic it seems slightly fitting to be writing a blog post that could be summarised by the old quote, "Professionals built the Titanic but volunteers built the Ark".  I first heard this quote many years ago to illustrate the point that paying someone to do something doesn't mean they do a better job.  Sadly, this message still needs to get through to many people, especially when it comes to their understanding of the potential of volunteers.


Just last week, Community Care magazine ran an article entitled "Is social care ripe for volunteering?".  Following on from yet another re-launch of the Big Society by the Prime Minister last week, the article looks at the potential for volunteering within the context of the social care field.  


Things don't start well when the sub-heading to the piece states "The coalition government is pushing for more volunteering in social care, but will this encroach on the domain of the paid workforce?".  I'm not going to go into job displacement/replacement issues here (perhaps that's a topic for another blog) but it is sad, if not surprising, to see the article focus on a negative before it has even begun.  Why not phrase it in terms of how volunteering could add value to social work?


Anyway, I digress.  What I want to focus on here are the comments attributed to Helga Pile, National Officer for social work at the public service union Unison.


Ms Pile starts by saying that "There is no doubting the commitment and value that volunteers can offer, but public services must be delivered by trained, qualified staff who are part of a stable workforce. Volunteers cannot be used as a cut price alternative."


My first problem here is the assumption that volunteers are not trained or qualified.  Nobody would advocate to let untrained volunteers loose in the turbulent waters of social care or indeed any other role, yet sadly this is the default assumption.  But many volunteers are highly skilled and sometimes uniquely qualified to do challenging roles.  In the context of the Community Care article this could be because they are retired social workers, putting a lifetime of skills and experience to use as volunteers.  Or they could have undergone rigorous training to be qualified for their role and, as volunteers, perhaps gain the trust of clients because of their unpaid status, something I've seen first hand with volunteers supporting young people in care.


Before anyone comments that nobody would want to put their skills to use in such a challenging context, especially if they have spent their working lives doing similar roles, then take as an example the recent case of the retired engineers volunteering to work at the still very dangerous Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.


My second problem with Ms Pile's comments is that by using 'cut price alternative' language she seems to be implying that part of the problem with volunteers getting involved in social care is that they are unpaid.  Set aside the issues of competence Ms Pile, like many others, seems to be equating unpaid with unqualified.


This thought process seems to be revealed further as the article progresses.


"Trained, qualified workers are able to make very complex judgments around risk - 'spotting the danger signs that volunteers could easily miss,' she [Ms Pile] says. They also benefit from the experience and knowledge of colleagues and, crucially, they are totally accountable to local people."


Let's explore that a bit further.  Set aside the false assumption we've looked at that volunteers are by definition unqualified, the argument seems to be that trained, qualified and (by implication) paid social workers spot danger signs volunteers would miss, make complex judgements volunteers are incapable of and are accountable to local people.  


Really?  


Was that the case with Baby P?  Victoria Climbie?  Khyra Ishaq?  Amy Howson?  Alfie Goddard?  [See this article for details on some of these appalling cases]. 


These are emotive examples and I am not for one second using them to tar the social work profession with one brush.  Nor am I suggesting that volunteers would have done a better job in these tragic and complex cases.  


What I am saying is that we should not blindly assume that because someone is paid to do a job they are more competent, skilled and equipped than someone who might do a similar role as a volunteer.


Like it or not we live in a world where we no longer have the funds to pay for all the things we used to pay for.  Sadly that includes the salaries of employees, as I can personally testify.  


We need to develop new ways of thinking about how we meet the challenges we face.  In human resource terms, this includes how we deploy paid staff and volunteers to maximum effect and client/community benefit.  


To do this we need to cultivate more open minds about what volunteers can do and their potential to meet these challenges.  


Simply dismissing volunteers as unpaid and incompetent has always been insulting.  


Maintaining that mindset today could have serious consequences for our ability to meet the needs of the most vulnerable members of society in future.

Microvolunteering

If you are a reader of blogs, articles, tweets and a variety of other material on volunteerism then the concept of microvolunteering cannot have escaped your notice in recent months.

In a nutshell, the idea is that you can take part in volunteering through activities that require a very small commitment of your time.  They are commonly available online (although offline microvolunteering does take place and has done so for years), especially via mobile phone apps and other technological and/or social networking means. 

I won't go into more detail here about what microvolunteering is because plenty of others have covered the topic before.  For example, Help From Home have produced a very good free download introducing the concept and have also made freely available a guide to setting up a microvolunteering project.  Sam Sparrow, the excellent head of the volunteer unit at Catch 22, has also written on the subject to in her blog about modernising volunteering the micro way.

Anyone who has heard me speak on the microvolunteering concept will know what whilst I think the idea has potential, I am also sceptical about its two most commonly stated benefits:

• That microvolunteering allows people who don't volunteer because they don't have the time to give to engage in ways that fit their lives 

• That those who engage in microvolunteering will likely catch the volunteering and become more regular volunteers in future.

For me there are three reasons for my scepticism on microvolunteering.

Time poverty - real or perceived?

Firstly, we seem to be buying into the belief that people don't volunteer because they don't have the time.  In my experience, people don't volunteer because they think they don't have the time.  That's an important distinction.

If they really don't have the time then maybe microvolunteering is a solution.  

But if they really don't get involved because they think they'll be asked for more than they are prepared to give then there is a different and potentially more powerful approach we can take. 

One that changes how we plan for volunteer engagement so we don't just offer long term, open-ended time intensive opportunities.  

One that seeks to give them positive role models, to show how people just like them (not celebrities or politicians but real working people who have to balance jobs, family etc.) manage to give just some of their time to good causes.

NCVO recently published "Participation: Trends, Facts and Figures" and the following lines from a section on political engagement struck me as relevant to this issue of microvolunteering:

"The most common reasons for not participating in the 2010 general election were...a 'lack of time' or 'being too busy'.  So, whilst the internet gives us greater access to democracy than ever before, without building knowledge and fostering interest it's unlikely to make a dramatic difference."

In other words, as more and more online tools have been developed to help people engage with politics, there is still a problem of people saying they were too busy to vote.  

The cautionary parallel for microvolunteering is that if we don't tackle the root causes of people's lack of engagement with volunteering - for example, the reasons for their perceptions of time poverty in regard to volunteering - then we can develop all the whizzy tech tools we want but we won't ultimately solve the problem.

Micro becomes macro?

Secondly, nobody can yet point to any evidence that people who do microvolunteering go on to macrovolunteering, that is volunteering that would fit with most people's understanding of giving time on a more regular and/or time intensive basis.

Further on in the NCVO paper on participation there is a section on e-campaigning.  I quote:

"People primarily participate through digital channels because it is fast, easy and at their convenience.  While it can be used for deepening engagement, most organisations aren't yet putting effort into achieving this."

If this isn't happening in campaigning, an area of civil society activity that gets lots of attention and support, then I am pretty confident that it isn't happening in volunteering, the Cinderella of the sector.  That isn't to say that it won't happen, that someone won't prove that microvolunteering leads to macrovolunteering.  I hope they do.  But it does suggest that right now that evidence isn't there.

Impact - is there any?

The parallels with other forms of participation courtesy of the NCVO report continue, again via talk of e-campaigning where I was struck by this line:

"For most supporters, e-campaigning makes supporting what they believe easier and more convenient.  This ultimately gets more participation in the campaign.  What it doesn't do is guarantee and impact: this still relies on good research, strategy and implementation".

To read a lot of the writing on microvolunteering, you'd be forgiven for thinking it is some kind of magic bullet to engaging time poor people in your cause.

However, just as there is a dearth of evidence to demonstrate the alleged micro-to-macro link, so there is also a huge gap in our knowledge about whether microvolunteering actually makes any meaningful difference. 

Even if it does get more people into volunteering, microvolunteering doesn’t yet appear to guarantee that what they do has any positive impact at all.

I am not alone

And I am not alone in my scepticism about microvolunteering. 

Jayne Cravens, perhaps the world's leading authority on the use of technology in volunteerism, recently wrote two excellent blog posts about how microvolunteering is virtual volunteering and reflecting on another person's take on microvolunteering following the publication of Leonie Shanks' excellent sceptical blog, microvolunteering: fast food for the Big Society.

Final thoughts

I hope by now you have realised that I think the case for microvolunteering has been overstated and that it is seemingly becoming accepted as the next big thing without any evidence existing to show microvolunteering deserves such attention.  

I look forward to being proved wrong, I really do.

I hope someone can show that it does effectively tackle real or perceived time poverty, that it does help people catch the volunteering bug and up their commitment accordingly and that given the profile it has microvolunteering really does make a real difference to good causes.

Until then I shall sceptical about (but not anti) microvolunteering.


NB - Since my original post there has been a discussion about my thoughts on i-volunteer.  Also, Ben Rigby over at Sparked.com has published his own response.  As Ben says, "It’s really exciting to hear so many people thinking through the problem areas and possibilities of this dynamic new field" and I'm proud to be playing a part in that.