The implications of the Olive Cooke case are so much bigger than fundraising

On 20 May 2015 a story broke in the British newspaper The Daily Mail that has been making big waves for UK based charities. It was the tale of Olive Cooke, a volunteer who sold poppies for the Royal British Legion for 76 years but who killed herself, apparently in part due to feeling hounded by charities asking her for money.

“Mrs Cooke, from the Fishponds area of Bristol, dedicated 76 years of her life to raising money for the Royal British Legion and is believed to have sold around 30,000 poppies. She also supported numerous charities and at one point received 267 charity letters in one month asking for cash, leading to suggestions the hounding for money pushed her to take her own life.”

Mrs Cooke’s family have been reported as saying that “the amount of contact from charities was starting to escalate and get slightly out of control, and the phone calls were beginning to get intrusive, but there is no blame or suggestion that this was a reason for her death” but this has not stopped the media and politicians from arguing hard that fundraising self-regulation is not working. Queue lots of hand-wringing, discussion, debate and promised action within bodies such the Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB), Institute of Fundraising (IoF) and occasional contribution from NCVO, ACEVO and the like.

Fundraising does indeed have some lessons to learn from this case. Self-regulation isn’t perfect, improvements do need to be made but, frankly, nobody within the system has ever claimed it to be perfect. Having spent six years as a member of the IoF Standards Committee I have seen the development of fundraising self-regulation from the inside. I can personally testify that issues which at first appear simple and obvious are rarely so and that those calling for quick and easy solutions simply reveal their ignorance of the fundraising world.

But this blog is not a defence of fundraising and attempts by fundraisers to self-regulate. No, my fear is that by following the tragic death of Mrs Cooke with a myopic focus on fundraising, the voluntary sector (third sector, civil society or whatever you want to call it) will miss some key lessons that should be learnt.

Lessons that speak to the fundamental nature of professional [1] charities in the 21st century.

Lessons that arguably have a more profound impact on public trust than whether the mechanics of fundraising self-regulation are completely effective (if that were even an achievable or realistic goal).

You see in all the reporting and subsequent discussion & debate about the implications of Mrs Cooke’s death, nobody in the sector seems to be placing any value on the 76 years of committed volunteering service she gave to the Royal British Legion. These many years of service get barely a passing reference in the developing narrative about what lessons can be learnt.

I believe this speaks volumes about the current state of British professional charities. Charities where the donated hour of a volunteer is given subordinate status to the donated pound of a donor.

Look at the language there.

Donor is someone who gives money. Giving is the act of giving money. Time doesn’t factor. Giving time doesn’t count. Who cares if Mrs Cooke had 76 years service as a volunteer, so long as she upped her donations by a few pounds a week [2].

Charities have all kinds of resources at their disposal to achieve their missions. The moment any mission driven, non-profit organisation sees money as the main or sole driver of them bringing about social change is the moment it becomes no different to a for-profit corporation.

Businesses have to have money to grow, to develop, to produce, to serve etc.. Charities do not. Sure, money is nice and it allows us to do things we might not otherwise do, but it is not all there is.

21st century professional charities have to accept that people are getting less and less tolerant of being asked to give more and more money when they have less and less to spare. They have to develop and strengthen alternative ways of resourcing their work, letting go of outdated orthodoxies that money is all they need.

Volunteering is one such alternative resources and I would of course argue needs to taken far more seriously. In fact that is a regular theme of my blogging as frequent visitors to this blog and my writing for Third Sector online will know. But it needs to go further than that. An attitude shift across the sector is needed, not just amongst fundraisers.

For example, if senior managers push fundraisers to generate more and more income because those managers have no concept of how anything can be achieved unless it is paid for by cold hard cash, then it is unsurprising if the public feel might hounded for donations.

If staff are wasteful with money (as sadly they can be) then that contributes to the need to generate more and more income.

If staff refuse to consider working with any / more volunteers, insisting that only paid people can do anything meaningful in a charity, then they also contribute to pressure to raise more funds.

Fundraisers alone cannot be held responsible nor can they be the only ones expected to learn from this. If they are then I fear the sector will learn little from the sad death of Olive Cooke.

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1. I stress professional here because when we talk about ‘the sector’ we tend to be talking about the small but high profile minority of charities who have fundraised incomes and paid staff. The vast majority of good causes have little or no income and operate solely through volunteer effort.  ↩

2. I should point out that the Royal British Legion whom Mrs Cooke volunteered for has not be accused of being one of the charities who pursued her for donations. No link between her volunteering for them and them pursuing her for money is drawn or implied.  ↩

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?

Whisper it quietly, Jimmy Saville was a volunteer

We are all too aware of the recent celebrity child abuse scandals in the UK, in particular the appalling case of Jimmy Saville. Saville abused hundreds of people over many years with many a blind eye being turned to his behaviour by the media, police, regulators and other official bodies.

The world of volunteer management has escaped lightly. Few have sought to draw the connection between Saville’s behaviour and his status as a volunteer. It has had passing mention in the media coverage but scrutiny of volunteering has been scant.

Just one instance has come across my radar, an article in The Guardian at the end of February 2015, which highlights the Lampard Review of the NHS in regard to Saville and in particular the concerns about volunteer management in the NHS.

The article notes that Lampard highlights four key issues.

First, that the risk to patients of being abused could increase as more volunteers are brought in to work in an increasingly cash-strapped health service.

“They [volunteers] undertake a much wider variety of roles and often have much closer contact with patients than in the past.”

Second, that volunteer management isn’t taken seriously enough at a senior level within the NHS.

“Many NHS volunteer programmes are not managed and overseen at a senior level and do not have the management resources they need.”

Third, the need for effective screening of volunteers, with Lampard reportedly calling on the NHS to amend regulations to make sure staff and volunteers were subjected to criminal records checks every three years.

Finally, The Guardian says that: 

“Lampard also raised concerns about the lack of any cohesive structure within NHS hospitals for managing visits by celebrities, important fundraisers and donors despite the publicity around Savile’s decades of abuse.”

These are not four discrete issues, they are inter-related, so let me try and unpick them a bit.

To start with, an increase in volunteers within any organisation does not automatically increase risk. What does often increase the risk is poorly thought out reasons and strategy for volunteer involvement (often a consequence of a lack of strategic management engagement in the volunteer programme) and ineffective screening, often borne out of poorly resourced volunteer management structures.

Good volunteer programmes don’t just take anyone off the street and put them in unsupervised contact with vulnerable people. We should not assume that just because volunteers are unpaid they are incompetent or inherently a risky proposition. But good programmes need resourcing if they are to do their job properly and they need to be properly integrated into the whole organisation. This requires CEOs, boards and the like to properly understand and engage with volunteering as a strategic priority, not just say how essential volunteers are as they issue warmly worded statements in Volunteers’ Week.

This is perhaps the most fundamental issue Lampard highlights and one that needs action not just within the NHS but in many Volunteer Involving Organisations across all sectors, including the Voluntary and Community Sector. 

The point made by Lampard about celebrities and major donors not being properly supervised and their involvement not properly structured in the NHS is a great example. 

Throughout my career in the voluntary sector I have come across fundraisers, CEOs and senior managers who dismiss out of hand any suggestion that good volunteer management practices should be applied to the involvement of high profile supporters, despite their status as volunteers. Why? Because often they see volunteer management as concerned with the nice to haves, the little old ladies making the tea, and not with the important work of more serious concerns like celebrity endorsement of the cause. 

The Jimmy Saville situation highlights the stupidity of this and the irresponsible thinking behind it. To continue such a train of thought borders on the negligent. Yet still that line is seen as acceptable in fundraising departments and sector senior teams. It is surely time for this to be challenged!

As a quick aside, for some insightful and intelligent thinking on the issues of celebrities as volunteers I commend you to Eileen Hammond’s excellent book for the Directory of Social Change, “Patrons, Presidents and Personalities”.

So far I have highlighted issues that I think the Lampard review gets right. Senior management needs to take seriously the strategic involvement of volunteers, resource it properly and organisations need to stop seeing celebrity volunteers as having a protected, special status that allows them to operate outside of existing good practice.

I want to conclude with one aspect I think Lampard gets wrong, calling for the Department of Health to change regulations so staff and volunteers undergo DBS checks every three years. I’m not going to go into huge detail here because I’ve blogged on this previously. My concern is that the sole focus on DBS checks will not result in better safety for NHS patients who have volunteers assigned to them. Jimmy Saville would have always passed a DBS check because ehe was never caught. Robust screening goes way beyond a criminal record check and so should this recommendation from Lampard.

Returning to where I started, the scandal of Jimmy Saville and others being allowed to abuse people for so long behind the screen of their celebrity status is rightly abhorrent to us all. That it was allowed to continue for so long is deplorable. Yet thank goodness volunteer management has not been thrust to the fore of these stories. I fear the field would have been exposed for its failings, mainly a consequence not of volunteer managers themselves but of the layers of management in Volunteer Involving Organisations across all sectors who fail to see volunteering as a strategic priority. 

Let’s hope it doesn't take another scandal like Saville for that situation to change and volunteer involvement to be taken seriously by those who should know better.

To Pay Or Not To Pay? That is the question

We're very pleased to welcome back guest blogger Mel White. Mel wrote a two country perspective on volunteering and welfare to work schemes for us late in 2014 and now brings that same dual nation perspective to the issue of reimbursing volunteer expenses.

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A little background – I am originally from the UK having managed a Volunteer Centre service there for 15 years. I immigrated to Australia in April 2013 and within two weeks of arriving found employment within a Volunteer Resource Centre.

I have enjoyed seeing the differences in practice between the two countries but would like to share my thoughts on the practice of paying volunteer expenses.

In the UK payment of volunteer travel expenses to and from a voluntary place of work was viewed as one of the cornerstones of good practice. Certainly within the Volunteer Centre I worked at, out of over 200 volunteering opportunities fewer than ten would not cover this out of pocket expense. When an organisation first submitted their application to receive volunteer referrals from us, and indicated on the application form that they did not pay travel expenses, we would approach them to try and instil the importance of this. If their response was that their budgets did not stretch that far (usually small volunteer led organisations) then we would put them in touch with our funding advisor to look at putting together a funding bid to cover the cost. We would then advise them that whenever they put in future funding bids that they include this cost. If funding was not an option we would look at ways they might assist volunteers with travel e.g. car sharing with other volunteers or a couple of services had a bus to pick up clients to take them to social activities and they also picked up the volunteers. In some cases (particularly two large charities with huge turnovers) we held protracted meetings with senior management to explore their reasons for not paying these expenses, especially as both organisations were fairly inaccessible by public transport. Where all else failed we made all non-paying organisations aware that we would tell prospective volunteers that they would not get their travel expenses reimbursed and that this was practice we didn’t agree with. It was then the volunteer’s personal decision whether to follow that application through.

Given this background imagine my complete surprise to arrive in Australia and find this was not the model here. In fact it is quite the opposite; there is a minority of organisations that do cover volunteers travel expenses to and from their place of work. Thankfully the volunteer project I am managing is one of the few, so day to day my morals and everything I believe in are not compromised.

In my 18 months here I have had the conversation regarding travel expenses with so many professionals and felt I needed to record my thoughts in a blog post.

To me the payment of travel expenses to and from a volunteering role is  fundamental to an inclusive volunteering program. When looking at the diversity of our volunteer base we talk about engaging people from all walks of life and where possible, not holding any bias with regard to age, gender, mental health, physical ability, race, sexual orientation etc.. However my concern is that by not reimbursing the cost of travel to and from a place of voluntary work we are in fact financially discriminating against a huge group of individuals who are on low incomes. Running a car is not without expense and don’t get me started on public transport costs!

For those who are living on state benefits or a pension, the reluctance by many organisations to cover this cost is a huge barrier to them becoming involved. It could quite simply be the choice between food for the week for the family or volunteering and it’s obvious what the majority would choose.

There is also the rurality argument. I hear so much about engaging people from rural communities and country towns. Many argue that small towns have greater community cohesiveness and there are lots of opportunities to volunteer on your own doorstep. But what if people want a different volunteering experience at, for example, a zoo or a large hospital? Those opportunities are not available where they live, but travel outside of their town may be a financial impossibility without a contribution to travel expenses.

There is also the issue of car parking. Some larger organisations like zoos and hospitals or organisations located in busy cities may not have dedicated spaces for volunteer parking and this can be another hefty cost burden to the volunteer.

Introducing the payment of expenses seems to be a terrifying prospect when they have not been paid before. There is the fear that flood gates will open and volunteer projects will not have the disposable income to cover the costs. Yes budgets need to be considered before this is done and it may, for a while, be a long term goal but an important one to work towards.

What many fail to realise is that not all volunteers want to claim travel expenses.

My advice to volunteer involving organisations in the UK used to be to encourage all volunteers to claim their travel expenses. However on the claim form they could choose to donate their expenses back to the organisation if they did not want them. The really clever organisations then gift aided this donation!

By getting all volunteers to submit a claim you can clearly demonstrate the cost of running a volunteer program whether that be to higher management, funders, government or other stakeholders. Within the project I manage here only 30% of volunteers claim their expenses. The important thing is they have the choice and the control. Every quarter, regardless, they all get sent an expenses claim sheet. People’s circumstances change quickly; people become bereaved, they or their partners lose jobs, they have families - there is a myriad of reasons why someone who once did not want to claim expenses may now need to.

One of the answers I get that really grinds my gears when I ask about payment of expenses, is the following; ‘if people are suffering hardship they can ask us and we will make special arrangements to cover their travel expenses.’

Really??? From the point of view of someone who has experienced financial difficulties, my sense of dignity would not have allowed me to make such an approach. I would have quite simply walked away from my voluntary role. Where circumstances have changed e.g. a marriage breakdown, that could be an incredibly personal and emotional situation for someone to discuss. A person’s financial status to my mind is a private matter. We don’t ask volunteers to declare their financial situation on an application form so why should we expect them to then disclose it further down the line?

In the same vein, how many projects make it clear that there will be an out of pocket cost to volunteer with their organisation? Often this is not just travel but volunteers find they have to pay for a police check, buy specific clothing or use their own telephone. Too often this is not made clear from the out set. By covering certain volunteers expenses we as volunteer managers are making a lot of assumptions about all our volunteers and we risk singling out certain volunteers for special treatment which may create team conflict if others find out about it. I know the intention is well meaning but for me personally it is really bad practice.

In the UK, one large organisation we dealt with had a volunteer manager who could not see the inequality of his practice. The opportunity they offered was completely unique but their location was semi-rural and certainly within walking distance of only two small villages. The cost of a bus fare from the nearest town was costly and the organisation was a large tourist attraction. Despite many protracted conversations with this organisation the manager always stated that none of their hundreds of volunteers had ever asked about expenses. Enquiring as to the diversity of their volunteer workforce it seemed a typical volunteer would be white, financially independent, middle aged with their own transport. It was such a shame that effectively volunteering with this organisation did have hidden barriers that no one was prepared to change.

Possibly one of the biggest volunteer projects the UK has ever seen that did not pay expenses was the 2012 London Olympics. It’s fair to say I was disappointed by the whole way volunteering opportunities were managed. Yes, people could volunteer but they had to fund their own transport and accommodation in London for the length of time the Games were on. Maybe not so bad if you lived in the capital. They rolled a program out in the lead up to the Games aimed at disengaged young people who needed literacy and numeracy tuition. The ‘reward’ upon completion of the course was a guaranteed volunteer role at the Games. Thousands and thousands of pounds was thrown into this program and many young people were able to gain a much sought after volunteer role. Was any money set aside to actually assist them in funding the cost of living in London for two weeks not to mention the plane/train/automobile cost to get there? You’ve guessed it – no!

I also took a heartbreaking call from a mature student who had worked so hard to realise her dream of getting valuable experience in stage production. She had put herself through university and had secured a volunteer role to help with set design and production of the opening ceremony at the Games. She was then devastated to discover she had to fully fund her accommodation and transport to take up the coveted place. She quite simply could not afford to. I believe the London 2012 committee missed a real opportunity to lead the way in recognising all volunteers and raising the profile of volunteering by setting a fantastic example of a full cost recovery volunteering program.
The landscape of volunteering is changing and increasingly government programs see the value of voluntary work experience in progressing people towards the (paid) labour market. In Australia a new program ‘Work for the Dole’ is about to roll out. An optional activity people can engage in, is voluntary work. I hope advisors ensure the budgets they have for individuals, go towards their travel expenses to and from their voluntary placement.

Volunteers are not free labour and should never be viewed as such, it costs real money to recruit, train, support and manage them. Full cost recovery is a term bandied about in the UK. Full cost recovery is recovering the total costs of your project or activity, including the relevant proportion of all overhead costs. Understanding the full costs of projects, or services, may not result in full cost recovery every time. However, calculating the full costs enables you to understand the exact level of funding you require. It also provides a clear picture of how a particular project draws on the shared resources of your organisation. When putting together a volunteer program the full costs are rarely fully funded / recovered but to my mind, top of the priority list should be volunteer travel expenses.
I hate using the financial argument to justify the importance of volunteers but I will indulge in this for a moment. If their work was paid for by the hour using whatever salary amount you wish (minimum wage, average wage) it is never ever going to be anywhere near the cost of a bus fare or vehicle mileage.

Most definitions of volunteering state it is a contribution of time and volunteers should not be expected to inadvertently volunteer their own money as well, without choice to do so.
By saying ‘but they are volunteers’ does not justify the argument to not cover their out of pocket expenses. In doing so we run the risk of making voluntary work a pursuit of the financially elite, an activity you can engage in if you can afford it and we restrict ourselves from the wealth of untapped potential and skills and the opportunity to grow our volunteer workforce.

Unintended consequences

It was Katherine’s last day at work before retirement. She’d been a Volunteer Manager for nearly sixty years now. Since they pushed the retirement age up to 85 a few years back she’d resigned herself to sticking with the profession for a little longer.

Katherine had seen so much change in the profession since she fell into the role back in 2014 as a fresh faced 25 year old, full of ‘I-can-change-the-world’ optimism and vigour.

“Where did that energy go?”, she wondered to herself.

Her last day at work saw Katherine giving a talk to the local networking group for members of the Association of Volunteer Management Professionals (AVMP). It was an opportunity for her to reflect on all the changes she’d seen and to give people (many new to the field) a sense of the history of the profession. After all, she’d forgotten more about volunteer management than many of them had even known.

Back when Katherine had started, a profession for Volunteer Managers was still in its infancy. The Association of Volunteer Managers (AVM), as they were called back, then had just started consulting members on the development of a code of practice. Wheels that had been slow to turn quickly gathered pace as the discussions intensified and finally, by the end of 2015, the code was in place.

And that was the first problem. The code had been agreed by paid workers who specialised in leading and managing volunteers and volunteer programmes. There had been a fair bit of diversity in that group, some headed up volunteering at a strategic in large organisations whilst others were in the trenches, managing volunteers day-to-day in a range of contexts. That in itself had been an achievement as there had been all sorts of associations and networks for people working in different contexts at that time.

The problem though was that the majority of people who managed volunteers hadn’t been involved. All those volunteers who did volunteer management roles. All those paid staff in organisations across the public, private and voluntary sectors but weren’t specialists in volunteerism - the business managers, administrators, nurses, doctors, teachers, fundraisers etc. - they all had no say in the code.

Looking back it was clear that this had been one of the causes of the two tier set up Katherine and others struggled with now. The AVMP which stood up for volunteering specialists and the Association of Managers of Volunteers (AMV) who spoke for everyone else. Sure the two bodies agreed on some things but more often than not they were at loggerheads, the AMV accusing the AVMP of being elitist and exclusionary, the AVMP accusing the AMV of undermining professional standards by not having codes of practice, qualifications etc..

Of course, the codes of practice and qualifications did give the work of AVMP members much needed rigour. Organisations knew that if you employed an AVMP member to run your volunteer programmes you were getting someone who knew their stuff and would do a good job. Lessons had been learnt early on from other fields that just because someone earned a good wage didn’t make them competent. As AVM developed into AVMP between 2020 & 2025 they made sure that their members were highly effective rather than just highly paid.

But all those structures had caused problems too. It had vastly narrowed the entry routes into volunteer management, resulting in a far less diverse field than it had been before. That caused the first criticisms of AVMP being elitist, a legacy that sadly continued all these years later.

With hindsight it had perhaps all been to process focused too, with Volunteer Managers having to jump through endless hoops to prove their worth. That was until a better balance was achieved, with academic and vocational aspects carrying equal weight in the accreditation process. But this still caused problems for those whose years of prior experience suddenly counted for nothing unless they had a piece of paper in their hands. Many of those had simply given up, quit or moved on, often using their experience to take up senior roles in Volunteer Involving Organisations, their disenchantment with what volunteer management had become causing them to sometimes be too hard on their own Volunteer Managers. It had also resulted in a big loss of knowledge and experience that would have been invaluable in the education of new Volunteer Managers.

Of course, those issues worked themselves through over time but it had been a difficult and painful few years for the emerging profession and for the individuals affected.

And then there had been the credibility issue.

All the original codes of practice were clear on what the volunteering was that members of AVMP led and managed. It involved no reward and required no incentive. Nothing of any material value was ever exchanged. Ever. Volunteers only gave time if they freely chose to. In short, volunteering was a neatly defined and fixed reality.

Looking back over sixty years Katherine could see how volunteering had changed and evolved because volunteers themselves had changed. People today lived different lives than people sixty years ago. Looking back it was obvious in a way it hadn’t been at the time that defining ‘valid’ volunteering in terms of what had come before was the wrong call.

In the last sixty years incentives and rewards had become more commonplace and accepted. Volunteering didn’t suffer, it changed.

In the last sixty years (in fact even before then) people got something material out of their volunteering. It had remained the case that volunteers weren’t paid a wage for what they did (that had been a line in the sand that nobody was willing to cross) but schemes such as those that used to be called Timebanking or where volunteers got credits they could exchange in stores had all developed. Volunteering didn’t suffer, it changed.

In the last sixty years people had realised that the absence of a free choice to volunteer wasn’t just there when someone was forcing you to give time in exchange for graduating school or claiming a benefit. Absence of free choice was there - always had been there - when peer pressure was at play, or societal expectations were in place (such as university students having to volunteer if they stood a chance of getting a job on graduation). Volunteering didn’t suffer.

What suffered was the emerging profession of volunteer managers. They drew the boundaries of what was acceptable for their members to manage so tightly that it reduced their credibility to speak out on anything other than ‘pure’ volunteering. They saw volunteering as something that wouldn’t change. When it did they realised they needed to as well. It had been a close run thing for a time with the profession almost dying before it had begun, strangled by its own restrictions. But thankfully things changed.

And so things got off to a rocky start. But the biggest challenge came in the late 20’s.

With hindsight, they should have seen it coming. The same thing had affected fundraising in the 00’s and 10’s. And Volunteering England (as they were back then) had done that work on Volunteer Rights. Yes, the warning signs were there but hadn’t been spotted.

Katherine shuddered as she remembered one of the toughest times of her career.

As the professional of volunteer management had become more established and high profile so the expectations volunteers had of their managers and the organisations they gave time to had grown. More people were giving time, volunteering was more high profile and socially acceptable and those who volunteered demanded the same levels of professionalism from Volunteer Managers that they demanded from doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professions. And when they didn’t get it, they complained.

As the AVMP became more established the complaints increased and increased.

Soon others started to take notice. The media, always on the look out for a negative story, started to run pieces on volunteers who felt let down or poorly by Volunteer Managers and Volunteer Involving Organisations, whether members of the new profession or not (that distinction didn’t matter to the person on the Clapham Omnibus). First it was just consumer watchdog stuff but then the mainstream media picked it up. Newspapers ran negative stories about Volunteer Managers just like they had when the public got frustrated with fundraisers a decade beforehand.

Then the politicians got involved. AVMP staff and board members were called to parliament to explain to MPs why so many volunteers felt poorly treated. AVMP was told to get its house in order. Self-regulation was demanded with the threat of statutory regulation if that didn’t work. Politicians weren’t about to let so many of their constituents feel so frustrated and see nothing done by those they’d put in power.

Whereas fundraising had taken a decade or so to get self-regulation working properly, politicians expected Volunteer Managers to get it sorted in much less time. After all, Volunteer Managers and fundraisers were all in the same sector so they must talk to each other right? Wrong as it turned out. So for a while it had been a close run thing with AVMP frantically trying to play catch up with fundraising colleagues and put in place a scheme of self-regulation before the statutory regulation deadline. They made it, just. It wasn’t perfect and tweaks had to be made of course.

They’d been dark days. The public had turned against Volunteer Managers. Politicians had turned against Volunteer Managers. Many Volunteer Managers turned against AVMP, claiming that all the work to professionalise the field had demonised it instead. That had been another seed that had led to the Association of Managers of Volunteers which still caused tensions to this day.

“Ladies and gentleman, it’s time for our keynote speaker…”

The organiser of the network meeting had started her introduction and it brought Katherine round from her reminiscences. As the introduction finished she got to her feet and walked the few steps to the the podium, ready to share her takes on the lessons of the past.

Katherine’s last thought before she spoke was that she wished she’d know in 2015 what she knew now.

The smokescreen of charity CEO pay

What charities pay their Chief Executives continues to be a topic grabbing headlines in sector and mainstream media alike here in the UK.

I have to admit, I remain slightly perplexed about the issue. 

Perhaps it’s because my career has been spent mainly dealing with the vast majority of the charity ‘workforce’, the volunteers who get paid nothing; without whom most charities, large and small, would be nothing; and without whom almost nobody who draws a salary in a charity - CEOs included - would have a job. 

Perhaps its because those who do the complex and challenging role of leading and managing volunteers get paid so poorly compared to their peers in, say, fundraising. In fact many are volunteers themselves and their work is essential to the delivery of important services to people across the country.

Either way the charity CEO pay debate rumbles on. And on. And on.

I was struck recently by a piece in Civil Society which reported the shadow charities minister, Lisa Nandy MP, “has warned that charity leadership needs to tackle the problem of unfair pay ratios in charities”.

Once I got over the shock of an MP preaching about pay to a group of charities I read on to discover that this warning was issued in the context of a debate about the future of charities. 

Is this really the most important strategic issue facing the charity world at the moment? I’m not saying it may not be important at all but I can think of many other issues much more worth of attention.

Nandy also apparently criticised charities for taking on an increasing number of unpaid interns, sometimes “with connections to established staff”. Another issue MPs are uniquely qualified to lecture charities on because, as we know, involving unpaid interns, sometimes people with connections to the MP themselves, NEVER happens does it? 

Regardless, if this is happening in the charity sector (and nobody is producing evidence to prove it), then it warrants a better debate that unpaid = bad, paid = good, as I have blogged before.

The debate then seems to have moved into discussion of the ratio between what a charity CEO is paid and what frontline workers are paid. Again, no recognition that the vast majority of frontline workers in charities get no pay at all and so such ratios are totally meaningless! 

But let’s just go with it and assume that frontline workers in charities are all paid.

Cath Bavage, CEO of Volunteer Centre Tower Hamlets, is quoted by Civil Society as saying:

“NCVO sounds pleased with itself that its own ratio of senior executive to lowest-paid staff member is 8:1. Is its chief executive really worth eight times more than an administrator? Does he work hard? Yes, probably. Does he work eight times harder, or does he have eight times more impact? I very much doubt it.”

"Why isn’t NCVO arguing for flatter pay structures and a more even distribution of wages in the voluntary sector? Surely a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1 would be a far better thing in charities with limited funds? It would help reassure donors that their money is being spent prudently and would better reward frontline staff who often work in emotionally demanding jobs. "

To which I would respond:

No, the CEO of NCVO probably doesn’t work eight times harder or have eight times more impact. No CEO does. But pay is not a measure of how hard someone works or how much impact they have. On that basis the volunteer lifeboat crew member would be paid a small fortune for each life they save and we’d have every Samaritan in the country in the top tax bracket. 

[Interestingly, research seems to suggest its not what we pay people but how we pay people that makes a difference.]

Surely what would reassure donors that their money is being spent prudently is whether the organisation makes best use of all the resources at its disposal and, in that broader context, whether salaries are being paid for the right kind of roles and then (finally) at the right kind of levels.

Assume for a minute that we have two organisations doing similar work with similar budgets. As a donor, I would be wanting to ask questions if organisation A was paying someone £20,000 to do a role that Organisation B fulfilled just as well through volunteers. That suggests that rather than exploring all the options for fulfilling its mission, organisation A just paid someone whereas organisation B created a volunteer programme to achieve that goal and used £18,000 (because volunteering may be freely given but it is not cost free) for something else, perhaps paying for someone to do a role that organisation A can’t do because it doesn’t have enough money.

Maybe the reason I feel perplexed about the charity CEO debate is that it appears to be a smokescreen for any kind of real debate about far more important issues. Issues like whether charities are really doing the best with what they have available for the most vulnerable in society, or whether all this talk of charities actually ignores the majority of charities in favour of the minority who receive the biggest slice of charitable income. Surely they are far more important topics to consider when thinking about the future of the sector than government, the sector’s infrastructure bodies and CEOs remaining inwardly focused on what they earn and whether they should earn it?

For some intelligent and informed exploration of the charity CEO pay debate, check out these two pieces from nfpSynergy:

A Chief Concern; shedding some light on charity CEO salaries

An executive decision; three things the charity CEO salary maelstrom taught us and what to do about it

Five problems I have with Dan Palotta’s TED talk

The non-profit world seems to have been buzzing lately at the TED talk by Dan Palotta, “The way we think about charity is dead wrong”. It’s easy to see why. Dan puts forward some compelling arguments that the cultural attitudes which view ‘admin costs’ (or overheads as he terms them) as a bad thing rather than as an essential part of a charity’s work. I particularly like Dan’s observations about confusing morality with frugality and his quote, “When you prohibit failure you prevent innovation”.

Of course, Dan’s arguments are nothing new. I can recall hearing fundraising expert Prof. Stephen Lee speak on this very topic years ago. He argued that when people object to, for example, 10% admin costs, fundraisers should respond by saying something like, “Thank you for your donation of £100. We spent £90 helping our clients and are using the other £10 to help raise another £100”.

For all that’s good about Dan’s talk - and it really is worth checking out if you haven’t seen it yet - I have five problems with it.

First, he seems to assume for-profit is bad and non-profit is good. His examples illustrate a mindset that private business is out to make things worse for people whilst non-profits are out to make things better. Of course, he isn’t entirely wrong - there are some truly appalling companies. But the truth is that there are for-profit businesses that genuinely want to make the world a better place (and make some money in the process) just as there are some non-profits who, sadly, exist to benefit the few at the exclusion of the many. In a world of grey, Dan’s assumption of black and white absolutes is flawed.

Second (and related), Dan seems to work from a basis that there are clear delineations between for profit and non-profit. Perhaps that comes from a differing cultural start point - he is American and looks at the issues in a USA context, hence the lack of reference to a public sector - but surely the boundaries are increasingly blurred. Take Dan’s own start point of social entrepreneurship as a case in point, a concept that sees private and voluntary sectors blurring together in different ways from old concepts of them being distinct and separate.

Third, Dan seems to assume that non-profits are driven to change the world, addressing the root causes of the problems their beneficiaries face rather than just treating the symptoms. But is that really the case? For some organisations the answer is a resounding yes. For many though, I’m not so sure. 

If you genuinely want to solve the problems of the world - or at least a group of individuals - then your fundamental belief has to be that your purpose it ultimately put yourself out of business. Why? Because your non-profit will no longer be needed when the problem is solved. 

When NSPCC sought to do this via their Full Stop campaign (seeking to end child cruelty) they were criticised by some for being naive in assuming that such a goal could ever be achieved. 

We also seem to have a worryingly prevalent mindset in some corners of the sector that charities exist to give people paid employment. Losing a job is a painful process - I know, I’ve been there - but if it is so the vulnerable can be better served then objections indicate that we actually believe that sector jobs are more important than the people we are employed to support?

Fourth, Dan seems to imply that large organisations are good. His argument is that whilst non-profits are hampered from growing so they are being limited in what they can achieve.  In other words, the bigger a charity is the more it can do to change lives. This may be true sometimes, but where is the evidence? Some large non-profits are incredibly wasteful, inefficient, unresponsive behemoths out of touch with the beneficiaries. And some aren’t. Big does not automatically mean better.

Finally, Dan speaks as if the only resources that can be deployed to solve social problems are those that can be bought. In keeping with the general trend in the narrative about the UK voluntary sector, he keeps talking about money raised as if it is the only way to resource the work of non-profits. This simply isn’t true. Such a belief misses out on the incredible riches of volunteering. 

The vast majority of the UK voluntary sector is led, driven and run by volunteers, not paid staff. Only a comparably small number of charities employ people but, because of their size, the have a disproportionately loud voice so they are the ones we hear about. Failing to acknowledge the contribution of volunteers to good causes is to ignore perhaps the most precious and valuable asset any non-profit has. This is the key missing ingredient in Dan’s otherwise helpful talk.

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.

Why so silent?

Here in the UK there has been a lot of debate recently about people giving to charity.  It all stems from the surprise changes to tax relief policy that George Osborne announced in last month's budget.  Since then the debate has raged backwards and forwards between the charity sector and government.  Over the weekend of 14th and 15th April major UK newspapers carried front page stories on the issue and the government have subsequently indicated that a public consultation on the proposals will take place this summer.

Soon after the budget announcement I made an alternative suggestion to the chancellor's proposals.  This blog post is not about that alternative idea.  If you want to read more about this please see my earlier blog post on the topic.  Suffice to say I will be submitting my idea to the promised public consultation.

Instead, the subject of this blog is the total silence from the established volunteering sector about the fact that giving isn't just about giving money.  If you've read any of the newspaper coverage, or seen the TV coverage, or engaged with online coverage you'd be forgiven for equating giving to charity with handing over cash.  Not one word has been said that people can give their time to charity as well.

"He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money." - Benjamin Franklin

Regardless of whether you agree with the Give It Back George campaign (to get the government to change its mind on its tax relief proposals), surely this is a golden opportunity to talk about alternative forms of giving?  With money tighter than ever for increasing numbers of people, isn't this a great chance to talk about how organisations can benefits just as much (more even?) from somebody's time than they can their money?

I've tried, I've spoken up.  I've written blog posts, commented on article in the press, engaged in debates on social media, sent my ideas to Nick Hurd and The Office for Civil Society.

So have others.  Last week's Thoughtful Thursday discussion centred on the topic and a great debate was had.

But where are the voices of the big guns?  Why aren't we hearing or seeing bodies like CSV, Volunteering England and other UK Volunteering Forum members challenging the misconception that all giving is donating money?  Where are the Volunteer Centres on this?  What about the Association of Volunteer Managers?  What about v?

In an Olympic year where we are promised a once in a lifetime opportunity to showcase the importance of volunteering to British society, I find it bizarre that almost the entire volunteering establishment seems completely silent in the face of one of the biggest news stories of the day implying that all giving is financial.

I don't get paid to speak up, I do it because I am passionate about volunteering.  Many people are paid to speak up on these issues yet their silence is notable.

Maybe we have to do it without them?

I urge everyone reading this blog to take just one action to challenge the belief that giving equals donating money.  Stand up and shout for the giving of time.

Write a letter to your local paper.

Write a letter to a national paper.

Comment on an article online.

Challenge the misconception if someone tweets it or posts it to other social media.

Do something.

If we don't it appears nobody else will.

We need more Chief Executives who understand volunteer management

At a recent event in London, NCVO Chief Executive Sir Stuart Etherington remarked that head hunters working for voluntary and community sector organisations have shifted from looking for “skills such as presence, policy-making ability and influencing skills” to now just wanting to find “someone who knows how to make money”.

Some will no doubt be lauding this as an important step forward, with the sector recognising the importance of having fundraisers move into Chief Executive roles.  But I want to ask whether now is the right time for us to be looking for fundraising expertise at the top.

Don’t get me wrong, fundraising is important and more senior managers and trustees need to have a better grasp of fundraising in the sector.  However, in our age of austerity, when money is hard to come by and more people have less of it - and even less to give away - do we need more people at the top focused on drawing in such a scarce resource?  Can organisations really fundraise their way out of trouble?

Regular readers will be unsurprised to learn that, despite the importance of fundraising, I firmly believe that what we need more of at the top of our organisations is people raising skills.  We need Chief Executives, trustees, senior managers and others who can go beyond, as one person recent called them, ‘old world solutions to new world problems’ and think differently about how our organisations can grow and develop.

I’ve argued before that sector leaders seem worrying ignorant of – or at the very least blind to – the potential of volunteering.  This was reflected in the blog posts I wrote for Third Sector online about the recent State of The Sector research and, perhaps more worryingly, the implications of last year’s Leadership 20:20 report which looked at the future of voluntary and community sector leadership.  Even more recently Sir Stephen Bubb, Chief Executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) questioned the whole premise of the government’s planned Giving Summit because of the 2012 Budget’s potential impact on major gift fundraising.

Volunteers today are increasingly different from those many have relied on over the years – the so called civic core of 8% of all volunteers who give nearly half the donated hours.  Today’s volunteers don’t thrill to such long term, time intensive commitments, at least not when they first start volunteering.  Instead they want more flexible ways to give time, engaging on their terms (not just ours), and bringing a wealth of talent, skills & experience to our organisations that in some cases far exceeds that to be found amongst the current paid workforce of the sector.  This is likely to become more and more commonplace as the baby boomers retire in greater numbers and seek opportunities to put their professional experience to work for the good of society.

What we need are senior leaders in the sector who understand these changes and can help steer organisations to adapt to them.  Leaders who can see how to harness the talents of Gen Y and baby boomer volunteers, re-distributing work according to who is best placed to achieve results not how much they get paid, and effectively stewarding all the resources at their disposal, not just those with a £ sign attached.

Maybe what the head hunters should looking for is more Chief Executives with experience of volunteer management.

But is that where we as volunteer managers aspire to be?

When I started in the field back in 1994 I had no idea that what I was doing was volunteer management.  I never saw this as a career and certainly never dreamed I’d do what I’ve done in the last 18 years.

So it is with many others.  Volunteer management has historically been a transitory field, with people coming into it as a route on to other roles in the sector or as an option that makes the transition back into the paid workforce after time away an easier one.

To my eyes it is only fairly recently that we have started to see more people coming into volunteer management as a career choice, something they want to spend much of their professional lives dedicated to.  Perhaps that’s why we hear more talk of qualifications and professional development now than we ever did before.

Of course it’s good news that we have so many bright and talented (and young!) people getting into the field, moving us forward and challenging those of us who’ve been around a while (you know who you are!) to keep up with the ever increasing pace of change. 

But what do we see as the pinnacle of that career path?

Is it heading a volunteer programme at a large national or international organisation?

Is it becoming a consultant in volunteer leadership and management, helping organisations get better at engaging volunteers?

Perhaps the pinnacle of a volunteer management career should be to move on from leading volunteer programmes and lead organisations instead, using our knowledge and experience to help shape volunteer involvement from the top job? 

Of course all these options (and more) are completely valid aspirations but do we need more volunteer managers looking at the last one – becoming a CEO? 

When so many Chief Executives seem to fail to ‘get’ volunteering, should we be aiming for more of us to take such jobs and influence from the top down not just the bottom up? 

Do our discussions around professional development focus on making people better volunteer managers but not potential Chief Executives? 

Should we – counter-intuitive as it may seem – be encouraging the best amongst us to stop being leaders of volunteer programmes and start being leaders of organisations?

What do you think?