International exchange - do it!

I recently took part in one of those online meetings that reminds me how awesome the internet and associated technology is.  On the call were myself; President of Volunteer Squared, Tony Goodrow; Kathy Cahill, President elect of AL!VE; Rob Bonesteel, current Presdient of AL!VE; and Karen Buenger, President of Australasian Association for Managers of Volunteers (AAMoV).

When I started in volunteer management back in the mid-1990's we had no email, internet or Skype and  international exchange with peers was only possible with the aid of a very healthy travel budget now I can connect with colleagues in the USA, Canada and Australia in real time, working on a common document we can all see at the same time.  Of course poor Karen was up in the very early hours of Saturday morning for the call - technology is great but it can's solve the time difference we all had!

The call was convened by Kathy to discuss international links in the volunteer management community.  It was a great conversation with some fantastic ideas and great connections made.  We all agreed there was real value in trying to connect via the web the professional bodies and associations for volunteer management.  We all felt there was real value in those organisations exchanging ideas and providing support to each other.  Equally there was agreement that no one organisation should try to establish themselves as an international body for volunteer managers, hoovering up all the other associations.  Instead, we discussed potentially influencing IAVE to better reflect the importance of volunteer management in effective volunteer engagement.

I was very happy to share the great work of our own Association of Volunteer Managers (AVM) with international colleagues and I hope AVM will accept the invitation offered to them to take part in future calls which will take place quarterly.

I also shared the work done by Sue Jones (of Warrington Voluntary Action) and her team of Volunteer Management Champions.  They've done fabulous things during EYV2011 and into 2012 to raise the profile of volunteer management, to support networking between volunteer managers (principally via Ivo and their Thoughtful Thursday's on Twitter) and to show that the consultants and gurus in our field don't have the monopoly on good ideas, enthusiasm and leadership for the sector.  Again, I hope Sue will join the next of Kathy's meetings in July.

I think we need to remember that despite the cuts and economic woes we face in the UK, we have much to offer the world of volunteer management, as well as much to learn.  Exchange with each other is important and so is exchange with our peers in other countries.  I know from personal experience that seeing the issues we face reflected in the mirror of a different setting and culture can be an incredibly valuable learning experience.

I will keep you posted on how the conversations with this group of international peers progress.  In the meantime, what can you do to start some conversations with volunteer managers in other countries?

Here are some quick suggestions:

• Join one of the sister bodies to UKVPMs.  There is OzVPM for Australia & New Zealand and CyberVPM in the USA.  Also look for the various volunteer management groups set up to aid professional networking and exchange on LinkedIn.
  
• Take part in a future Thoughtful Thursday and keep an eye out for posts that run into Friday.  These are normally from overseas colleagues working a different time zone to us.  Perhaps some of them would be useful connections.
  
• Check out the resources available on the Energize website that signpost to volunteer management groups and networks internationally.
  
• Subscribe to some of the great newsletters and journals produced internationally.  Perhaps start with the Volunteering New Zealand newsletter as they are doing some awesome work around volunteer management, and perhaps subscribe to e-volunteerism.com, an international journal on volunteersim.
  
• Don't forget our near neighbours in Europe.  Check out the European Volunteer Centre (CEV) and the Volunteurope networks, both of which hold events that needn't cost the earth to attend thanks to low-cost airlines.

Let us know how you get on.

Looking back on 2011

OK, so where did 2011 go?

Seriously, it seems like only a few days ago we were entering into 2011.  Lots of people I've spoken to this year have commented on how fast the year has gone by.  Before we know it we're on the cusp of 2012.

This post is an opportunity for me to reflect on the year coming to a close and say some thank you's before, in the new year, I consider what may lay ahead in the year to come.

For me, 2011 started on a low note.  Never one to be particularly enthused with new years (for me it always feels more like 'here we go again' than 'yay, its January again!') 2011 was, I knew, the year I was going to lose my job.  I ended 2010 having failed at interview stage to secure a new job.  January was just three short months away from redundancy from Volunteering England (VE).

Not far into 2011 I decided I was going to take the plunge and set up in business for myself when I left VE.  As soon as I made the decision things began to fall into place.  It seemed I'd made the right call as people responded to my news enthusiastically and the first invitations to pitch for work came from prospective clients.

Considerable activity ensued to get the business set up in time for my last day at work.  I bought domain names, set up email accounts, built a website, set up this blog, established a Twitter account, found insurance, a bank, bought equipment etc..

I remain indebted to:

• Mike Marshall at eastsleepthink who helped me immeasurably by designing my logo.  If ever you need design work doing, Mike's your man.
• David Swann and Nathan Hopkins at Greenstones, my amazing accountants.
• Kate Moss (yes, really!) at Barclays for getting the bank account set up.
• My brother-in-law David Byworth who helped me learn how to build a website.
• My great friend Susan Ellis of Energize who has been a constant source of support and challenge.

March was an emotional month, closing down projects that had occupied me for the previous 3-5 years, saying goodbye to friends and colleagues, and having to make others redundant whilst getting set to leave myself.

On the upside I had the chance to kiss goodbye to five years of commuting over 100 miles from Lincolnshire to London and back for four days a week and to the season ticket that cost £6,000+ each year!

And so my journey as Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd started.

I can honestly say I have never looked back.

I've had great fun this year, both in establishing a new business and in meeting & working with some amazing people.  Some of the highlights and thanks owed are, in no particular order:

• Working with the amazing Sue Jones of Volunteer Centre (VC) Warrington.  I've known Sue for many years and have had too few opportunities to work together before 2011.  We put that right this year and will hopefully collaborate even more next year.
• Developing and delivering the Turn Your Organisation Into a Volunteer Magnet tour with Martin J Cowling of People First Total Solutions.  We'll hopefully be bringing the tour back next year and are discussing some exciting developments for early 2013.  Thank you Martin for your friendship and support.
• Working with two other old friends, Lynn Blackadder and Moyra Weston.  We have exciting plans for 2012 - watch this space.
• Being asked to re-work Essential Volunteer Management into a new Complete Handbook on Volunteer Management for the Directory of Social Change (DSC).  Particular thanks to Rick Lynch and Steve McCurley, the book's authors, for the opportunity and to John Martin at DSC for his support and patience.
• Working for and with some amazing clients.  In just nine months we've had over 20 clients, more than I ever dreamt we would have had by the end of 2011.  Thank you all.
• Getting to be a part of the Volunteer Squared team as their UK representative.  Thanks in particular to Tony, Anne and Andrew.
• A big thank you to Gemma Quainton at Third Sector online for asking me to be their blogger on volunteering issues.
• Thank you to everyone who has read this blog.  As I write we've had 8,279 views of 29 posts (this is my 30th).  That's just over 900 views a month.  The most popular post was my analysis of Pathways Through Participation.
• Travelling around Europe during the European Year of Volunteering 2011.  I've been to Dublin (thanks to Volunteer Ireland), Budapest (twice), Brussels (three times) and Warsaw (once).  I've met and worked with some great people and become even more convinced of the value of volunteering organisations in the UK linking up with our fellow European colleagues across the EU.  You can read my thoughts about the European Year of Volunteering in my latest blog for Third Sector.
• Thanks to our newsletter subscribers, the 400+ people who follow the company/me on Twitter and everyone who follows me or I have interacted with on Facebook, LinkedIn, , Flickr and YouTube.

At the risk of this becoming rather like the Oscars, I am sure there are people I haven't thanked.  That's because so many people have been hugely supportive of me and the business in just a short period of time.  

To all of you, a very sincere and heartfelt thank you.

And so 2011 comes to a close.  It has been a rollercoaster ride that I have thoroughly enjoyed.

In my next post I want to share some of my thoughts about volunteering in 2012.

Have a great Christmas and New Year.

Rob

Volunteers, stationery supplies and an apology

First of all, the apology.

It has been five weeks since I last posted to this blog.  Whilst I have had my monthly Third Sector blog published during this time and I have written a post for The Cowling Report which will appear on 5th December I haven't gotten round to posting anything new here.

The main reason for this has been a really busy November travelling around the UK training and speaking at conferences.  This busy period has been very welcome given Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd is a new business in a tough economic climate but it has kept me from having time to write anything here.  So my apologies.

What then has prompted me to write something now.  Well, I am currently attending the closing conference of the European Year of Volunteering 2011 in Warsaw, Poland, and in one of the sessions this morning a speaker talked about her organisation using volunteers.  I immediately turned to a colleague and we both grimaced.

Why?

I feel very strongly that we should never talk about using volunteers but involving them.

Yes, volunteers are a resource that contributes to the fulfilment of organisations' missions just like paper clips, photocopiers, staples, staplers.  But volunteers are people, they take an active role in fulfilling our missions.  They are engaged and involved, not used.

In my experience, all talk of using people is in a negative context.

We use paper clips, not people.

Now some of you may be thinking this is mere semantics and that there are bigger issues to be concerned about.  In fact, this is what another colleague said to me this morning.

I think the language we use (!) around volunteers and volunteering speaks volumes about the way they are viewed, regarded and respected in our organisations.

If we talk of using volunteers, putting them on a par with the office photocopier, then we should not be surprised if volunteers are seen as providing a far from meaningful contribution to our work.  If, however, we talk about involving them then there is implied within that a much more constructive, positive and meaningful attitude to the contribution volunteers provide.

So I hope you will join me in challenging anyone who talks of using volunteers and help them to understand why such language is unhelpful.  Please share stories of doing so in the comments below and give others confidence to do so as well.

And of course if you disagree, please leave a comment telling me why.

Quality volunteering and the European Year of Volunteering 2011

At the end of 2010, whilst working for Volunteering England (VE), I applied to be a part of a working group looking at the issue of quality volunteering for the European Year of Volunteering 2011 (EYV2011).  The EYV2011 Alliance organising the six working groups then invited me to co-chair the group with a representative of the French Red Cross.  An invitation I eagerly accepted and a role I am continuing on behalf of VE now I have left their employment.


Perhaps because people know of my role as co-chair of the quality volunteering working group, as we come up on the halfway point of EYV2011 people are increasingly asking me what is happening.  


On the home front things have been very quiet.  There isn't much information available from VE (although they do have some helpful pages on their website) or its sister bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  My take on this in England is that the paucity of news and activity is a consequence of the Office for Civil Society (OCS are the 'coordinating body' in the UK) being incredibly slow to get themselves organised and get out funding for activity during 2011.  You can argue that OCS have had other priorities in their first few months under a new government and so it was inevitable that EYV2011 took a bit of a backseat.  Personally, I think EYV2011 could be a huge opportunity for volunteering, as we saw in the UK year of volunteering in 2005 and the UN year of volunteering in 2001.  I think OCS have missed a bit of a trick up until now and I hope their efforts to promote the year improve in the next few months, especially now funding has been distributed and delivery partners are starting their activity.


But I am not writing this post to bleat about missed opportunities.  Instead, in the absence of any other information on activity in EYV2011, I wanted to share some of the work I have been doing with the amazing team of people from across the EU who form the Alliance's working group on quality volunteering.


When we met for the first time in Budapest in January this year, it was very apparent that we were coming at the issue of quality volunteering from a very diverse range of perspectives (see this article by Susan Ellis and Steve McCurley for a quick insight into the challenges of defining quality volunteering).  In fact, we quickly discovered that we didn't always share a common understanding of volunteering, such are the national, cultural and historical contexts in which the act of giving time which we call volunteering has been shaped across member states.


So we took the step of communicating with an array of networks from which working group members were drawn in order to source a wider range of views upon which to base our work.  The input received was brought to and considered at the second meeting of the working group in March.  At that meeting we agreed that there were four key drivers of quality volunteering that we needed to focus on:

• The quality of the work volunteers do
• The quality of the opportunities volunteers undertake
• The quality of the management of volunteers
• The enablers of quality volunteering e.g. funding, policy etc.

These were helpfully set out as the wheel of quality:

Following the March meeting the working group members split into four sub-groups, each tasked with reporting back on the four aspects of quality volunteering in time for the next meeting of the full working group which takes place on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st May 2011.  The sub-groups were asked to:

• Define the aspect of quality volunteering they were addressing
• Outline the current status i.e. what already happens in that aspect of quality volunteering
• Make recommendations to the EU, Member States (i.g. national, regional and local governments), Social Partners (such as business and trade unions) and Civil Society. 

The working group meeting at the end of this week will be a key stage in the process.  The required outcome of the meeting is a three page report to the EYV2011 Alliance that will form the initial basis of an EU policy agenda on volunteering.  In this short report we will have to present a concise, coherent and powerful position on our understanding of quality volunteering, the current position across Europe, our desired vision for the future and our proposals for how to make it happen.


Following the May meeting the Alliance and its Steering Group will collate and refine the output of all six working groups and, over the summer, prepare a draft of the intended policy agenda.  This will be considered by all working groups at the end of September ahead of the final conference of the year in Poland where the proposals will be presented as the finished policy agenda to the European Commission.


So that's the process, what about the content?


Well, I don't want to share too much with you at this stage as I don't wish to prejudice the outcome of what I hope will be a focused and fruitful discussion in Brussels at the end of this week.  However, I am happy to share with you my own thoughts in preparation for the meeting which I hope will prompt comments and discussion via this blog.


I have drafted my own definition of quality volunteering and my personal assessment of the current situation and vision for the future.  These are:


Definition

Quality volunteering results when organisations provide opportunities that accommodate the needs & motivations of the volunteer whilst allowing them to make meaningful impacts on the organisation itself and its beneficiaries. 

Quality volunteering is further enhanced when it is effectively supported & resourced by the volunteer involving organisation and enabling frameworks & policies exist through the likes of funders, governments (at all levels) and wider civil society.


Current situation

One of the sub-groups summed it up best when they said that it is “difficult to establish a Europe-wide list of current practice in the voluntary sector”.

Understanding, practice, policy, awareness and resources around the issue of quality volunteering is currently so diverse across member states that it is incredibly hard to engage in common dialogue.  This makes it equally hard to agree common actions that will drive up the quality of volunteering across the EU.

Vision for the future

There is a common understanding of the key principles and components of quality volunteering with all key actors (EU, member states, civil society and social partners) working to apply these in a contextually relevant way.  With funding, policy and practice aligned to these key principles and components quality volunteering will become the norm across the EU.

I would also add that I see the following recommendations as being important (some are mine, some come from others in the group) and will be discussing these and others with the working group later in the week:

• EU funding needs not to be based on the number of volunteers but on the quality of the opportunities available to them i.e. fund quality volunteer opportunities and people will be more likely to volunteer which will result in more volunteers. (NB – this could apply to all funders).
  
• Trade unions should work with civil society to agree principles that allow volunteering to flourish and contribute effectively to society but which do not undermine the rights of paid workers.
  
• All civil society organisations throughout Europe should monitor the impact of their work and pass the results to funders/governments as the accepted method of showing benefits of the work of a particular charity.
  
• Civil society organisations must invest resources in the effective leadership and management of volunteers and volunteer programmes so as to deliver quality volunteering experiences.

As I say, I do not share these thoughts in order to influence the outcome of the collaborative work of the working group.  Rather I offer them here to help give an insight into this important aspect of the European Year of Volunteering, to inform about what is going on during the year and to encourage you to share your own thoughts and ideas below.


Over to you.

• How would you define quality volunteering?
  
• What would your vision for quality volunteering in the EU be?
  
• What recommendations would you make, to the EU, to member states, to social partners and to civil society?