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. 

The missed opportunity of London 2012?

Over on my Third Sector online blog this month I’ve written an article about the lost opportunities of the post London 2012 volunteering legacy. This draws on recent research from Join In which showed that:

• 29% of people would like to volunteer but haven’t done so
• 51% have been unable to find out about local volunteering opportunities
• 2% had done more volunteering as a result of the Games
• 71% agreed that more volunteering by the general public in their local area was important to ensure the Games Makers’ legacy lives on

Beyond the issues I talk about in my Third Sector online blog there is also the interesting matter regarding the public’s apparent (in)ability to find out about volunteering.

First up, almost a third of people surveyed would like to volunteer but haven’t. Sorry but my skepticism kicks in here. When faced with a researcher asking questions like this surely some people don’t want to come across as uncaring so they say, “Sure, we’d love to volunteer, we just haven’t done it yet”. It’s like the classic question, “Why don’t you volunteer?” to which people say, “Well I don’t have time”. That’s not a reason not to volunteer, its an excuse, a simple way to deflect a question that makes them uncomfortable.

Let’s face it, if 71% of people think its important that people volunteer in their local community why aren’t they doing it? Either because they don’t know how to, or they think its someone else’s responsibility, or perhaps the idea of personally volunteering is so unattractive that they would never see it as something for them. 

Second, half of the population have been unable to find out about local volunteering opportunities. This isn’t surprising given the cuts experienced by local volunteering infrastructure in the last few years. Despite significant evidence of their importance, Volunteer Centres have seen substantial cuts in income and many have had to close their doors, like in Milton Keynes, where the VC announced its closure last week after 37 years.

Instead, government has invested financially and politically in new initiatives such as Join In. I did a quick search on their website for volunteering opportunities near where I live and discovered just eight opportunities, all taking place between the end of July and the middle of September and all oriented around netball. 

If that’s the public’s experience of trying to find opportunities, the only surprise is that its only 51% who struggle to find something locally.

By comparison, Do-It (who source the majority of their opportunities from VCs but seem to feature less and less in publicity around volunteering as initiatives like Join In steal the spotlight) has 152 diverse opportunities within five miles of where I live.

All of that is just considering local infrastructure’s role in online brokerage. We know VCs have a high success rate at working with those who might struggle most to engage in mainstream volunteering - people with disabilities, BME communities etc. - and all VCs are accredited on their wok in supporting organisations to develop volunteer opportunities, raise standards of good practice, campaign on behalf of volunteering locally and market & promote volunteering to the public.

Perhaps the best way to have capitalised on the volunteering legacy of London 2012 would have been to invest in and support the existing infrastructure rather than vanity projects of the kind that government were so quick to criticise when in opposition. If only someone had been telling LOCOG and government that - oh wait, that’s exactly what Volunteering England (and others) did since before the bid to host the 2012 games was won by the UK in Singapore.

One final word. The Join In research, like most studies done on volunteering, only talked to adults. So once again the millions of people under the age of eighteen get missed out of the picture despite the fact that we know many such young people volunteer.

What are your thoughts on the post-London 2012 legacy?

What lessons do you think we can all learn?

What would you have done differently and why?

“We’re doomed, doomed I tell you!"

Private Frazer of legendary British TV show Dad’s Army is famed for this catchphrase and its been in my mind a fair bit of late as I’ve reflected on recent events in the English world of volunteering.

Many years ago when the Association of Volunteer Administrators closed down in the USA I can recall colleagues despairing at the loss of knowledge and expertise from the sector. Especially worrying was a loss of any sense of history, of what had been done before, of what had worked and not worked. As a result so called ‘new’ initiatives have sprung up across the pond that aren’t new at all, just old ideas repackaged in fancy jargon and without any heeding of lessons learnt before.

That all happened at a time when the work being done on volunteering in England was being heralded by some as world leading. In particular Volunteering England (VE) was singled out for its bravery and foresight in coming into being (it was previously four separate agencies prior to 2004) and for its work to modernise local volunteering infrastructure.

Sadly I now think we are in the same boat our American friends found themselves in a few years ago. In fact, I think we may be worse off because those who can remember the recent volunteering history in England are alarmingly quiet in speaking up in the face of some of what is going on.

Let me give you some examples.

At an event I recently attended panelists challenged an audience of volunteer managers - including some of the most experienced and respected people in our field - with some pretty bold statements, suggesting that the volunteering movement hadn’t done much to influence the delivery and legacy of the London 2012 volunteer programme & wasn’t well organised in lobbying government. This was supported by a lady from The Office of Civil Society (OCS) who said it wasn’t government’s role to go out and consult with the sector, we had to engage with them.

At face value these may seem like fair challenges. Yet VE led work with a number of partners to help produce the LOCOG volunteering strategy for the 2012 Games, work that started before the UK was even awarded the games back in 2005. When LOCOG opted to focus solely on games-time delivery and not legacy, VE led the work to bring together a range of stakeholders to focus on the volunteering legacy.

Similarly, VE spent the eight years of its existence lobbying and working with government on a range of policy proposals, initiative and developments all on behalf of the sector. Much of that work was behind the scenes rather than in-your-face campaigning and it resulted in many successes, including the retention of volunteering as a key strand of the now defunct ChangeUp programme (when many organisations had lobbied hard for volunteering to get dropped from that key modernisation programme) and securing funding for the Volunteer Management Programme which Capacitybuilders ran for two years prior to the last general election.

For its trouble VE had its funding slashed with no regard to its contributions or its efforts to reduce duplication and increase the effectiveness of the volunteering infrastructure by coming into being through the 2004 merger. The coalition government treated VE the same way as many other infrastructure bodies who actively resisted change - other than when it benefitted them financially - and who now hail the very change they fought so long to prevent, even though it is now driven by necessity rather than purpose. 

But the panel of experts didn’t know this. Nice people though they were they seemed ignorant of anything that had happened in the past around volunteering, any lessons learnt or insights gained. No, they were mainly the kind of people who use bewildering jargon and lots of words but say little of substance. In short, they are exactly the kind of people OCS seem to want to hear from, not those with any real knowledge or experience. Maybe that’s why OCS took away the sector’s voice on volunteering when they effectively axed VE back in 2011. 

[Sorry lady from the OCS but we can’t go and engage with you if you cut of our main means to do so].

At the same event, a senior manager from a well known volunteering organisation suggested that a group of agencies and individuals should come together to define what exactly we mean by volunteering in order to be clear where the sector stands in regard to various initiatives (mainly government driven) that seek to stretch the definitions of volunteering.

Again, a sound suggestion on one level. Except this work was done extensively by the Commission on the Future of Volunteering who reported in 2008 and specifically addressed this very issue in the opening pages of their report. 

I admit that during this event I was totally shocked and I take full responsibility for not saying anything myself. I was angry. I was frustrated. I fear that had I said anything there and then it would have come out as at worst vitriol, at best the frustrated ravings of an ex-VE employee and most definitely not as a constructive contribution. 

However, far more concerning was that a senior member of VE staff in the room said nothing. No challenge. No defence of the organisation’s track record. Just silence.

And this isn’t an isolated example.

After the work of the Commission on the Future of Volunteering, its chair, Baroness Neuberger, went on to conduct and publish a review of volunteering health and social care for the last government. Just last month the Kings Fund - under Department of Health funding - published a report that seems to duplicate this work.  What did VE say? Nothing.

Then there is the recent announcement by the Mayor of London’s office that Team London are launching a website next month to match volunteers with opportunities. Unsurprising given innovation in volunteering these days seems to be code for “let’s build another website”. What did VE say about this flagrant duplication of existing infrastructure? Nothing.

So what can we learn from all this? What can we do to avoid the situation getting worse?

In regard to ourselves as leaders and managers of volunteers, I think we need to ensure that individually we know the history of our field and of the volunteering movement. We need to take time to learn this history as well as the nuts and bolts of our day jobs. We need to take responsibility to educate ourselves and each other. We need to hold others - government, VE / NCVO etc. - to account when they ignore or dismiss this history to the detriment of volunteering. We need to learn from the history and apply it to change the way we do our jobs, creating real innovation and change, not the emperors new clothes.

I also think we need to use this knowledge wisely. I think a big danger is that we can come across as thinking we know all the answers because we know some context and history. We can come across as closed minded to new ideas. Yet the reality is that few organisations have done anything to change the way they approach volunteering despite all this knowledge and experience. That leads outsiders - including government - to dismiss what went before as irrelevant and to focus on ‘new’ initiatives that aren’t that new after all.

Finally, I think we need to see some action from VE / NCVO. I accept they are still going through the final stages of post-merger change and that this is a painful process. But right now, probably more than ever, we need a national body to be standing up for volunteering. Freed from what some may perceive as the shackles of government funding we need VE / NCVO to be standing up for real change, real innovation. We need the likes of Justin Davis Smith (perhaps the most knowledgable person on volunteering in this country) to be saying “hang on a minute, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here” not staying silent as VE’s legacy is challenged and re-written by those who weren’t there or who have their own agendas for belittling VE’s contribution.

Of course I will do what I can with what influence I have, as will others. But at the end of the day we need a strong body like VE / NCVO who have the resources and political clout to speak up. The truth is the knowledge and history of volunteering in England are still there, just muted for some reason. They need to find their voice - we all do - or Private Frazer may be right and, whilst volunteering will inevitably continue, the volunteering movement that many have worked so hard to build in this country for so many years may well be doomed.

Are legal rights the best way to improve the treatment of volunteers?

A month ago friend and colleague John Ramsey shared his thoughts on the pre-Christmas 2012 decision by the Supreme Court that volunteers were not entitled to the same legal rights under employment law as paid staff. You can read John’s excellent article on the IVO social network.

Volunteer rights is an emotive issue and one I last visited on this blog a year ago after writing a piece on the issue for Third Sector online in June 2011. Sadly it is an issue that won’t go away. I say sadly not because I wish this would all get brushed under the carpet but because clearly things are not getting better across the volunteering movement. 

Disappointingly the work around the 3R Promise that resulted from the hard work of the Volunteer Rights Inquiry seems to have been lost in the last couple of years. Sure plenty of organisations have signed up to the promise but the momentum of the Inquiry has been lost - not least because of the cuts at Volunteering England and their resulting merger with NCVO - and the issue seems to now be left to just a few vocal campaigners to keep on the sector’s radar.

The 3R Promise was an opportunity for volunteer involving organisations (VIOs) to get their houses in order. Note that I say VIOs not volunteer managers (VMs). The Inquiry was clear that it often was not VMs who were to blame for poor treatment of volunteers but paid staff (often in management positions) and sometimes trustees (volunteers themselves) who were at fault. This wasn’t an issue to simply be fixed by better volunteer management or increased take up of Investing In Volunteers (which at the end of the day just says an organisation has good processes, not that it treats volunteers well).

There were plenty of voices around the VRI table calling for an independent complaints body or ombudsman to take responsibility for the issue. That could have been a statutory body or a self-regulatory one like the FRSB in the fundraising world. In the end the Inquiry opted not to go down such a route, preferring an approach that gave VIOs (at least those whose practice wasn’t up to scratch) a chance to improve. Not only did this seem like the wise way to proceed but it was also clear that in an environment of voluntary and public sector belt tightening the Inquiry would have faced a high uphill struggle to secure the funding necessary to establish any new body for volunteer rights.

Perhaps the time to re-evaluate that decision is now upon us? But does that mean we go straight to legislation, establishing protection explicitly for volunteers within primary legislation? In John’s article he seems to suggest that this would be a sensible way forward. I’m not so sure.

First of all, legislation doesn't solve the problem. Legislation means that when problems occur there is a route to resolution that is available to volunteers. We’ve had anti-discrimination for employees in the UK for many years but that hasn’t stopped employers discriminating. Why then do we believe that legislation will solve this issue?

Second, legislation would require parliamentary time to introduce. There seems to be little interest within Westminster or any of the other UK parliaments to address this issue. In fact, the current direction is towards the Westminster government repealing aspects of employment legislation as it applies to paid staff and seeking to weaken the position of EU discrimination legislation (which often provides better protection for employees than UK law). Against such a prevailing wind, why would MPs decide to introduce changes to the law that would add protections to tens of millions of people?

Thirdly, I continue to maintain that legislation would be counter-productive. We’ve already seen many organisations cut resources for volunteer engagement as money has become more scare post global financial crisis. We also know that many organisations - at least in the middle to large organisation end of the sector - don’t see volunteers as a resource worth investing in, preferring instead to try and raise more and more money from an increasingly cash strapped and donor fatigued British public. If we suddenly make engaging volunteers much more bureaucratic than it is at the moment I fear we’ll see more organisations choosing not to engage volunteers at all as the costs and risks increase at a time of scare resources. And all that’s before I consider the impact on volunteer managers who would become even more process obsessed than they already are when what we need is for them to become for focused on individuals, on people, on volunteers.

So what then is the way forward?

Well there is no simple answer. The resource isn’t there for a new statutory body to stand up for volunteers when they are treated badly. The resource is also lacking for a self-regulatory body and considerable support would be needed from across the sector if this were to happen. Fundraising self-regulation only came about because statutory regulation was threatened and even now it is only those organisations that choose to submit to self-regulation that are subject to it.

The Charity Commission might seem a natural place to turn except they have seen considerable cuts to their budget in the last few years and anyway a significant number of volunteers don’t ‘work’ in organisations that come under the Commission’s regulatory remit.

How about Volunteering England? Now a part of NCVO there is an opportunity for the issue of volunteer rights to be brought to the table of a wider audience than just volunteer managers and volunteer centres. Yet NCVO stands up for bodies (again, only in the voluntary sector / civil society) so would it really have an appetite to side with volunteers, effectively ending up policing and potentially ‘punishing’ its own members for poor practice?

In reality the closest we have to any form of regulation explicitly around volunteering is the Institute of Fundraising who have a code of practice on  volunteer fundraising that is binding upon its individual and organisational members. Any complain against this code brings us back to the FRSB who would investigate any alleged breaches.

We also don’t need another Volunteer Rights Inquiry. The original Inquiry’s work still stands as valid, the issue is what we do about it given that the 3R Promise hasn’t worked. 

What we need is someone to step up and start a debate about how we can proceed. Someone who can ensure the discussions don’t become a talking shop but a forum for change and action, a platform from which we can try to eradicate poor treatment of volunteers rather than simply provide a legislative sticking plaster when things go wrong.

Ideally this ‘somebody’ would be a partnership between the key sector umbrella bodies. In England these seem to be more concerned with paid staff and fundraising than volunteers so perhaps we have to look elsewhere in the UK, to bodies like Volunteer Development Scotland or Volunteer Now (in Northern Ireland) or to organisations like The Association of Volunteer Managers (should they ever arise from what appears to be hibernation).

Whatever gets done and whoever does it something must happen. Allowing poor treatment of volunteers, however isolated, is something we must never be comfortable with. 

What do you think is the way forward?

Please share your thoughts on what should happen next and who should take the lead on this issue.

Interview with Javed Khan, CEO of Victim Support

Earlier this year Third Sector magazine ran an interview with Javed Khan, Chief Executive of Victim Support.  The article caught my attention as Javed talked about the importance of volunteers to the organisation's work and in particular noted that this was so important to him that he made a point of making his first task every day to be to write to some of Victim Support's volunteers.

Such open and constructive engagement in an organisation's volunteer programme by the CEO is sadly quite rare - at least in terms of it being publically acknowledged - so I arranged to speak to Javed to dig a bit further into his views on volunteering.  In this blog post I want to share the highlights of my conversation with Javed in the hope that those of you reading this might find something of value that you can share with your own CEOs and senior managers so that they become more supportive of your organisation's volunteer engagement work.


In the interview you did for Third Sector you were reported as having underestimated the challenge of managing volunteers. Tell me a bit more about that.

First, having moved from the public sector  into the voluntary sector I was unprepared for the number of volunteers an organisation like Victim Support involves.  We have five times the number of volunteers as paid staff here and that is quite a shift from my experience of the public sector.

The other big change was in the way you work with volunteers to get things done.  In the public sector, working with largely paid staff, you effectively pull a lever and the staff do what is asked of them.  That simply isn't the case for volunteers.  There is much more work to be done to win their hearts and minds so that they are prepared to do what needs doing.  That means getting out there and meeting  the 7,000 volunteers face to face, not simply sitting behind a desk and issuing requests for action.


What are your thoughts about the public sectors' attitude to volunteers, especially in these recession hit times of budget pressures and cuts?

In the current climate there hasn't really been much of a shift in public sector attitudes to volunteering.  I think the only reason that many public sector bodies are showing more interest in volunteering is because they see it as a way to save money.  That mindset may well exist in the voluntary sector but generally speaking the sector is more committed to the ethos and principles of voluntarism so involving volunteers is part of the way organisations do things, not just a way to cut costs.


You said that you make the first email you send each day is to a volunteer.  What do you use that opportunity to say to them?

I make sure they know three things.

First, that they matter.

Second, that I am listening.  Volunteers can have some great insights into the challenges and opportunities we face and I want to hear those ideas not limit input to my top management team.

Third, that I write these emails personally.  I don't get my PA to do it.  As CEO it is important for me to invest my time in engaging with our volunteers.  Having someone else do that on my behalf simply isn't appropriate.

So far I've had a very positive response from volunteers.  We can't do everything they suggest and they appreciate that because they know I am interested, I am listening and, where we can do the things they suggest, we do them.


Volunteering continues to face a bit of an image problem. With your interest in diversity, what do you think could/should be done to help diversify the volunteer base of many organisations?

Volunteering happens everywhere but it varies in type.  Those groups who are often labelled as being under-represented in volunteering are already giving time, just not in ways that the mainstream recognises.  It may also be that those people don't identify what they do as volunteering, perhaps for cultural or religious reasons.

What we need to do is to help people recognise that what they do is volunteering, perhaps through awards schemes that celebrate their contribution.  That would be a great way to thank the volunteers and to raise awareness of the breadth and diversity of volunteering and those who give their time to society.

I also think organisations could partner with others to help raise their profiles in more diverse communities.  That would enable not only great new partnerships between organisations but help to open up access to services and support that may not otherwise be available to some.


Quite often top executives don't think strategically about volunteering in the same way they may do for, say, fundraising.  What are your thoughts about this?

We've done some strategic work on volunteering at Victim Support which has resulted in a four year strategy for volunteering, the first time the organisation has had such a strategy for volunteering.  So, for example, we are looking to diversify the roles volunteers have within the organisation, with volunteers taking on some administrative tasks that might previously have been done by paid staff who are now focusing on other things.  This is partly in response to having more young people showing an interest in volunteering, perhaps as a result of studying for law or criminology, subjects clearly linked to what we do as an organisation.

We've had some push back from paid staff on this, typically suggesting that volunteers are unreliable.  That's a myth.  Some volunteers may be like that but so are some paid staff.  People are no more likely to be unreliable simply because they don't get paid, in fact the opposite may even be true - those working for no money may be more committed and reliable because of their passion for the cause.


What are the top three things you have learnt about the strategic importance of volunteers that you would want to share with other CEOs?

1. Quantify and share the added value of volunteers and not just their financial value to the organisation.
2. The CEO and senior management team do not have a monopoly on good ideas.  Often the simple solutions come from the frontline and that means volunteers as well as paid staff.
3. Values, values, values.  They are what drives this sector and what drives volunteers.  We have to work hard to clarify them, communicate them and align them with the motivations and interests of our supporters.

What advice would you give volunteer managers in volunteer involving organisations?

Well, first of all I have to say that investment in volunteer management is absolutely key.  Volunteer managers are the main face-to-face contact volunteers have with the organisation and so are key in communicating our brand, building commitment and motivating people to continue to support us.

So organisations should be investing in their volunteer management functions.

In terms of what I say to volunteer managers themselves, first of all, volunteer managers need to understand and apply the importance of winning volunteers' hearts and minds.

Next, they need to have huge respect for volunteers.  This means taking the time to speak to and meet with them, invest in their training and working hard to get appropriate systems in place to support them.

Finally, volunteer managers need to work hard to help volunteers enjoy what they do because if they enjoy their volunteering they will want to keep doing it and maybe even do more of it.

NCVO and VE in formal talks about merger

So, the news I have been expecting for so long has finally been announced: Volunteering England and NCVO are in formal talks about a merger which could happen as early as 2013.

Ever since the coalition decided to phase out funding for its strategic partners, the writing was pretty much on the wall for those organisations who were heavily reliant on state funding, such as VE.  The cuts in spring 2011 were necessary but it was inevitable that further cuts would come and, from my view as a former director of the organisation, the time would come when merger would become inevitable.

NCVO is the natural choice and not just because VE currently shares their building.  They are perhaps the best capitalised of all the national sector infrastructure bodies and so their sustainability, even through tough times like these, is pretty much secure.  Similarly they cover a range of areas in their work - infrastructure, leadership, funding, training and development etc. - and so the fit with volunteering, which crosses all fields and sectors, is a good one.

What is sad to see in the coverage of the story by the media is, yet again, the complete absence of an reference to VE's formation back in 2004.  Way before anyone else thought it was a wise thing to do, well ahead of merger becoming a topic of open conversation in the sector, before ChangeUp even, VE was born from the merger of the other organisations.  Not because funding was tight or diminishing, but because those organisations felt it was the best thing to do to move volunteering forwards in England.  In fact the Charity Commission still use VE's creation as a case study of good practice on their website.

Of course in 2007 VE undertook another merger, this time with Student Volunteering England, a piece of work I had the privilege of leading.

So merger is not new territory for VE or indeed for NCVO.

What might the implications be?

Well one potential downside is the loss of a unique voice for volunteering.  Volunteering is not confined to the voluntary sector, it happens in the public and private sectors too. That's why the term volunteerism is sometimes used as an alternative to voluntarism - the former denotes any area where volunteering happens, the latter speaks to anything concerned with the voluntary sector.  There is a great article by Susan Ellis that explains the difference better than I can.

VE becoming a part of NCVO does risk, if not carefully managed and monitored, the voice of volunteering being lost within wider sector debates.

Another way of looking at this though is that the potential merger might well put volunteering at the heart of some key voluntary sector debates.

I am on record as being frustrated that the sector's response to the current and future challenges it faces, especially in terms of funding, has been to try strategies from the past to solve problems of the future.  So we see organisations desperately trying to raise more money from a society that has less to give.  We see frantic campaigns to protect income for the few rather than efforts to help organisations adapt to the new reality.

Volunteering needs to be a part of the solution for the sector.  Volunteering is changing as the people who volunteer change and the society in which they live - and so the context in which they give their time - changes.  In my view, organisations ignore this at their peril.  Perhaps VE becoming a part of NCVO will enable volunteering to take a central, indeed its rightful, place at the heart of the sector's thinking about how it survives and thrives in future.  This would be especially useful if  volunteering retains a clear policy voice that becomes properly integrated within NCVO's policy and campaigning work.

Where might the proposed merger leave volunteer management?

To be honest, this has been one of the less developed areas of VE's work.  Since it was created, the section of VE's membership with the loudest voice has been the Volunteer Centres and so volunteer management didn't get much of a look in.  Of course some good work got done, not least the work Capacitybuilders funded in 2010/11 as part of the last governments dedicated volunteer management funding.

In reality though it is AVM and, more recently, the superb work of Voluntary Action Warrington that has been pushing forward the volunteer management agenda in England.

So I'm sure there are opportunities for NCVO to get more involved in the volunteer management arena but it has to be in a way that complements the good work already happening, not seeking to duplicate or replace it.  Knowing NCVO as I do I don't think that would happen, but the point needs making in case others are looking at that territory with hungry eyes.

Where does the proposed merger leave Volunteer Centres, especially as most are now a part of local Councils for Voluntary Service (or similar) and so are run by members of NAVCA?

Well, I did note that one of the VE trustees who has been involved in the discussions with NCVO is Tessa Willow of VC Liverpool.  I have a lot of time and respect for Tessa and in my view she is one of the best possible people to be representing the VC network in these discussions.  So VCs should, as much as possible, be reassured by that.

However, there are inevitable questions about the future of VCs within VE.  Is now the time for NAVCA to make a play for VCs, bringing them formally into the fold, linking them with NAVCA's developing quality standards and advocating for VCs as a distinct voice of the sector?

As with the rest of this news, I guess only time will give us the answers.

Finally, and most importantly, I want to go on public record as saying that my thoughts are first and foremost with colleagues at friends at VE as they face another period of uncertainty and change.  Good luck guys.

So, over to you.

What are your thoughts on the proposed merger?

Good news?

Bad news?

Why?

Let's hear what you think

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.

Using the budget to encourage volunteering

The UK government debated its annual finance bill on 21st March (commonly referred to as Budget Day).  Amongst the initiatives and changes outlined by The Chancellor, George Osborne, was a cap on income tax reliefs.

In practice this would mean government would limit the amount of tax relief an individual can claim in any year to a quarter of their income or £50,000, whichever is higher, from April 2013.  The intention of the policy change is to stop the well-off dodging tax via making charitable donations.

The response of the voluntary sector has been swift and firm with six sector umbrella bodies immediately writing to The Chancellor expressing concern about the impact this change would have on the propensity of the wealthy to make major gifts to good causes.  According to Third Sector Online, the letter states that:

"There is a clear danger that this measure could have the unintended consequence of disincentivising the donation of large gifts to charity. Charities rely heavily on major philanthropy of this kind, and any reduction in giving could be devastating for many vulnerable people who rely on our services. The measure is also clearly at odds with the government’s commendable efforts to promote philanthropy, sending the wrong signal to major donors who have thus far been encouraged to give more."

Indeed some sector leaders are arguing that the Giving Summit planned for May 2012 is "in danger" as a result of this change in policy.

Put aside for a moment the question of whether the voluntary sector should be lobbying against a policy that limits tax breaks for the wealthy in order to help the public purse and thus support those who are less well off.

Put aside the uncomfortable feeling that the self-interest of those organisations who gain from the big gifts of the wealthy seems to be dictating a policy that is being pursued in the name of the whole sector, a sector where relatively few organisations gain from such gifts but many are working hard at the coal face to help fight the effects of inequality.

Put aside the fact that yet again the sector's leaders seem totally fixated on cold hard cash as the only resource with which the sector can do anything, to the extent that panic ensues when they risk losing some of it.

Instead, consider whether there could be an opportunity here.  Over on Volunteering England's Dialogue App I've made a suggestion for how the sector could be a bit creative with this financial policy change from the government.

My idea is that some of the income tax relief for the well-off are restored in return for time given. So instead of the relief being capped at a quarter of their annual income or £50,000, whichever is higher, if someone gave £10,000 of their time to a good cause this cap could be raised accordingly.

I'm the first to admit that I'm no tax expert and so there may well be issues with this suggestion that I am unaware of.  Equally, there would need to be agreement about the value accorded to someone's time, a system for recording and verifying the hours they volunteer and some way of ensuring their time is donated by them to genuine good causes.

But those problems don't seem insurmountable and consider the benefits.

Such a scheme could:

• Help maintain major gifts be restoring higher level of relief for those most likely to give big gifts
• Draw in additional human resource to work on social problems as these people give their time as volunteers
• Help to change the mindset of the sector that cash isn't the only way to get things done
• Help promote new models of 'skilled' pro-bono style volunteering as the people likely to be affected by the proposed changes to income tax relief are wealthy business people who may well have considerable professional expertise to share through their volunteering.

Surely it is worth some consideration?

UPDATE
Ami Bloomer at Give What You're Good At has flagged two of her blog posts that link quite nicely with my proposal.  The first outlines the arguments for and against tax relief for pro bono (volunteering) work and the other argues that skilled volunteering is a great way of engaging major donors and encouraging them to give.

Value, cost and volunteer management

I was recently reminded of a blog post my good friend Martin J Cowling wrote last year about his experiences of running training when the host organisation has offered the session for free.  In a nutshell, Martin argues that training offered for free results in more people not turning up, more people leaving early and more people not really engaging in the training.

A couple of days later I  read an article on "How e-learning can help charities provide staff training on a budget".  I've got nothing at all against e-learning but the sense conveyed by the headline is that this is a good option when belts are being tightened.  In other words, e-learning is cheaper than 'conventional' training (whatever that is!).


In both cases the issue of value seems not to factor.  e-learning may be cheaper, but is it good value?  A free course with Martin would be a really good deal (he is a superb trainer) but if you don't engage in the session because it's free then it isn't going to deliver any value to you.

All too often we hear colleagues and/or management say that they can't justify that training course, database, item of equipment etc. because of the cost?  So a cheaper option is found or nothing happens at all.  But is any consideration given to the value each option would return?  A training course may cost (let's say) £200 more than a cheaper option but it is so much better that the improved performance of the trained person recoups that cost in no time.

At this point some of you may be thinking "that's all well and good, but we have a lot less money than in the past and simply can't afford a more expensive option".  I understand that mindset completely.  However,  when times are financially tough the argument for basing decisions on value more than cost are even more important.

With, less money than before there is surely even more of an imperative that it gets spent on things that will return real value to the organisation?  For example, spreading a much reduced training budget thinly on a wider range of cheap options isn't necessarily going to bring a great return, just lots of people going on average training.  Instead, send a smaller number of staff whose roles are key to the sustainability and growth of the organisation on some more expensive, high quality training.  That approach may well deliver better value.

Of course, not everything that is expensive is good value or quality.  I attended a wine tasting once where the most expensive wine on offer was the worst tasting.  A bottle of that was neither cheap nor good value.  By contrast, a bottle half the price was superb value, delivering much nicer wine.

The point I am trying to make is that we need to stop just asking how much something costs but really consider what value it will deliver too.  We can then factor both aspects into the decision, not just the cost.

This isn't just a consideration when we are buying training, consultancy, office equipment or whatever.  It is also a key issue when we think about the importance of volunteer management in our fiscally challenged organisations.

Sadly it is all to true that, when the income drops, one of the first things to go is the volunteer manager.  That is a decision frequently made on the basis of cutting costs without any appreciation of the value of that function.  But do we quantify and communicate that value effectively so our leaders look beyond the bottom line and consider what else they will be losing if the cut the volunteer management function?

In 2009 and 2011 The Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration released reports exploring the status of volunteerism and volunteer programmes in a changing financial environment.  The studies showed that organisations who cut the funding for their volunteer programmes struggled much more than those who maintained or even increased their support for volunteering.

I think we need research like this here in the UK.  Research that validates the importance of organisations investing in volunteering and volunteer management in tough economic times because of the value they will derive, rather than cutting support because of the money it costs.

In its absence we need volunteer managers who can provide programmatic evidence and articulate this effectively to their leaders.  Evidence that doesn't just put across the (often flawed) financial value of volunteering but that demonstrates wider value as well as the potential value to be gained from maintaining (or even increasing) investment in volunteering when donated funds are harder to come by but donated hours may not be so scarce.

What do you think?

Does such research exist other than in Minnesota?  Please share links if you can so others can access it.

Have you been actively demonstrating the value of your volunteer programme to your organisation's leadership?  How did you do it?  What lessons can you share with others?  Did it work?

Please share examples below so others can learn from your success (or failure - go on, be brave!).

Happy new year

So 2012 is finally upon us.

Happy new year!

After a refreshing break with family over Christmas I am, as promised before the holidays, turning my eyes to the next twelve months to see what they might have in store for volunteering.

Crystal ball gazing is always a dangerous activity.  I have no more idea about what is going to happen in 2012 than you do.  I could make my predictions and they all turn out to be totally wrong.  So, once you've read my thoughts below please do feel free to make your own predictions by adding a comment.

I want to pick up on three things:


1/ Volunteering and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games
The first programme on BBC 1 after the coverage of the London new year fireworks was a trail for the Olympics.  The start of eight months of hype.  Which will inevitably be followed by four months of celebration, either for Team GB's performance and/or for the overall (hopeful and peaceful) success of the Games.  Four months of everyone, not least the politicians, claiming the credit for the Olympics and Paralympics.

In reality it will be 70,000 Games Maker volunteers plus many thousands of volunteers across the UK - in host city programmes, the cultural Olympiad and alike - who will make the Games a success.  Without them, all the hard work of LOCOG, UK Sport and others will be for nought.

My first prediction is a negative one - all this effort by tens of thousands of volunteers will go largely unrecognised during the Games and quickly forgotten afterwards.

In the seven years since the Games were announced as coming to London we have been promised a volunteering legacy like no other Games.  Having been sort of on the inside to some of those discussion whilst at Volunteering England I can testify to the frustration of many at the politicking, backtracking and all round marginalisation of volunteering that has ebbed and flowed in the last few years.

Sadly, come the end of the year, I fear the average person on the street will know no more about volunteering as a result of the Games and will be no more inclined to give their time than they might otherwise have been.  The 2012 Games will have been a success because of Lord Coe, Team GB, David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

Not a volunteer in sight.

On this prediction, I hope I am wrong.


2/ Volunteering and the cuts
Many commentators think 2012 could be a harder year financially for the voluntary and community sector/civil society/third sector (delete according to what we are to call it this year!).  Despite recent suggestions that voluntary income is holding up in hard times, public spending is going to be hit hard again.  Many organisations are going to face further cuts.

My predictions for volunteering here are a mixed bag.

On the negative side, I fear many organisations will do as they did in previous years and keep trying to do what they've always done, especially when it comes to thinking about how they achieve their missions.  So we'll see organisations trying harder and spending more money to try and replace the cash which is cut, in apparent denial that there simply isn't the same amount of money around as there was before.  Such lack of imagination in how to get things done will sadly see some organisation got to the wall.

For me this myopic approach to sustaining and growing an organisation in our challenging times will remain a key theme of my writing and speaking.  It is also an area I am planning to try and address through work with other consultants to provide a package of support to organisational leaders to help them learn how they can maximise the impact of donated time rather than just pursuing more and more money.  Watch this space.

On the positive side, I think the continuing tough times will lead many leaders, organisations and others to open their eyes to the potential of volunteer support.  They will start to realise that: today's volunteers are increasingly very different from the stereotype of volunteers; today's volunteers want to make a difference, not just a contribution; today's volunteers increasingly bring a wealth of skills, talent and experience to organisations.

They'll begin to appreciate that baby boomers are changing the face of older volunteers and Gen Y are changing the face of what young people can contribute.

I predict 2012 will see many more organisations provide today's volunteers with ways of engaging that meet their needs as well as those of the organisation and beneficiary.  Not through gimmicks like microvolunteering but through real and meaningful change in the way they value and engage people who give their time to good causes.

In doing so they will change the face of volunteering and leave those who fail to adapt lagging far behind.


3/ Volunteer management gets a move on
For such change in volunteering to happen, volunteer management needs to change and, dare I say it, grow up.

2011 saw some fantastic work in support of those who lead and manage volunteers.  The Association of Volunteer Managers held their first conference and Volunteer Centre Warrington, through their EYV2011 funded work for Volunteering England to champion and support volunteer management, helped many volunteer managers to find their voice and start speaking, writing, blogging and tweeting, sharing their views, opinions, ideas and challenges with others.  The momentum built throughout the second half of the year with a final VC Warrington webinar in December which explored, amongst other things, the idea of building a volunteer management movement (search #vmmovement on Twitter).

So my final prediction for 2012 is a positive one.

I think 2012 will be a key year - maybe even the year - for volunteer managers to confidently take centre stage, to be proud of who we are and what we do without resorting to insecurities associated with always comparing ourselves to other professions.

I think we'll end the year with much more awareness of the importance volunteer managers as vital resources to help organisations make the most of the most precious donation they can receive, the donation of someone's time.


So that's what I think but what do you think?

What do you see happening in 2012?

Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

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.