NCVO gives evidence on Olympic Legacy around volunteering

In response to a recent posting I made on LinkedIn sharing a news article from Third Sector about the volunteering legacy for the London 2012 Games, Mike Locke of NCVO kindly shared with me the transcript of evidence he recently gave to the House of Lords Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee.

You can access this twenty page transcript on the Committee's website where you can also access RSS feeds on the Committee's work and sign up for email updates. Interestingly Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, is due to give evidence to this committee on 22nd October 2013.

You can also watch Mike giving evidence to the committee via the video below.



What do you think of Mike's evidence?

What would you add to what he said?

Did the committee ask the right questions?

How would you have answered them differently?

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.

Lies damned lies and statistics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

Sports volunteering - fair game?

The other day the lovely people in the volunteering team at The London School of Economics (LSE) shared their latest blog post with me via Twitter. In it they argue against volunteering at the forthcoming Champions League final - it is well worth a read.

The argument against volunteers at the Champions League final seems to be that football is a wealthy sport and so it should pay people to do the roles being advertised. This implies that there is a degree of exploitation at work here, with volunteers engaged in order to keep costs down and profits up whilst players received £millions for what they do.

I can understand that position. We’d generally say that volunteers doing the same roles as paid staff in - say - Tesco would be exploitative. In fact, that’s been a common objection to some of the compulsory work elements of the government’s Work Programme. But are these roles at the cup final the same as those done by paid staff? It doesn’t seem so.

And why object to these when no football match in the country - Premier league included - can take place without the involvement of volunteers in safety critical roles in the form of  first aiders from St John Ambulance?

A further point that the team at LSE make is that in some circumstances volunteering at big events like this is OK because whilst the event may be organised by a profit making body the people taking part aren’t well paid professionals. Therefore it was OK for volunteers to work at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, even though they were sometimes doing the same jobs paid staff were also doing. Whilst this may be true for the majority of athletes, what about the likes of Ennis, Bolt and Phelps (millionaires all) and the need for LOCOG to make as much money as possible to ensure the games didn’t lose money?

To me, it doesn’t make a difference if its the individual athletes making lots of money, the sport making lots of money or nobody making lots of money. There are two reasons for this:

1. Volunteering in the for-profit sector is recognised as not universally a bad thing. For example, volunteers work in private hospitals and care homes doing key roles that staff would never do, enhancing patient care and providing a service everyone should expect whether they are cared for in public, private or voluntary sectors.
2. Sport in this country lives on the support of volunteers. Coaches, officials, players, families, people who wash kit, transport kids, provide catering, run the club finances etc.. 

Big sporting events - be they Olympics, Commonwealth Games, football matches, Tour De France stages, the ICC Champions Trophy this summer or anything else - give an all too rare opportunity to showcase the importance of volunteering to sport, to society and to celebrate the efforts of our nation’s great volunteers.

Last summer’s Olympics saw the UK public getting an insight into how essential volunteers are to life in this country, how volunteers underpin the fabric of everything we take for granted. The visibility of volunteers and volunteering was massively enhanced. Shouldn’t we hope for that same effect at the Champion’s League final - and work towards supporting it to happen - rather than sitting on the sidelines crying foul?

What do you think?

Team GB to be 'forced' to volunteer ahead of Rio 2016

A couple of weeks ago the always awesome CEO of the Directory of Social Change, Debra Allcock-Tyler wrote a great piece for Third Sector magazine.  In the article, Debra suggested a reality check was needed between the day-to-day reality of the volunteering that happens across the UK and the "street party" nature of volunteering during the London 2012 Games.  Debra concluded by challenging the government not to "...set up yet another blooming agency to foster the post-Olympic volunteering legacy. You don't understand volunteering and you don't know what you're talking about".

A few days later one of my daily Google alerts flagged a story from the Daily Mail, reporting that Maria Miller MP, the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Support had come up with a wizard wheeze.  Ms Miller announced to the Conservative Party conference that Team GB athletes aiming for Rio 2016 who are in receipt of lottery funding would have to do five days of volunteering in schools or sports clubs.

The announcement focused on the usual rhetoric of encouraging and inspiring the next generation and building on the legacy of the 70,000 Games Makers who did such great work this summer.

But hang on a minute.  This means Team GB athletes are being forced to volunteer if they want to stand a chance of going to Rio 2016.  Is this what we want the Olympic volunteering legacy to be about?  Is making people volunteer, whether they want to or not, really the headline we all would love to see about volunteering post-London 2012?

And how about practical implementation of this proposal.  Let's say Jess Ennis or Mo Farah don't 'volunteer', or don't complete five days of such 'volunteering'.  Will they not be selected for 2012's Team GB?  And are the schools and sports clubs geared up to make really effective use of the 5,000 days all these athletes are apparently going to give?

It seems Debra Allcock-Tyler's remarks to government were bang on (as usual) - they don't understand volunteering and don't know what they are talking about.

A moment to shine

So that's it.  After seven years of hype and anticipation, the London 2012 Olympic Games are over.

They have been a Games that have provided a once in a lifetime opportunity for the UK to stand front and centre on a global stage.  Even I, cynic that I was in the run up to the Games, have found myself caught up in the wonderful atmosphere of positivity and enthusiasm, something we Brits are not normally known for.  I hope this continues beyond today and beyond the still-to-come 2012 Paralympic Games too.

Essential to the running of the games is an aspect of the modern Olympics that first featured back in London 1948 - an Olympic volunteer programme.  It is these volunteers - or Games Makers as they have been called - who have played an immeasurable role in making the Olympics the "friendly games".    

It is quite right that the largest cheers at last night's closing ceremony were reserved for the volunteers.  70,000 Games Makers will have contributed thousands of hours to making the games a success, from working in anti-doping units to marshalling crowds.  They have been on the front line, engaging with visitors from around the world whilst VIPs shelter in plush corporate hospitality.  One estimate I've heard is that without the volunteers it would have cost LOCOG £1.5billion to employ staff (at minimum wage) to do the work of the Games Makers.

In their distinctive uniforms, the Games Makers stood out from the crowds in a busy city. My hope is that this visibility will now permeate through the whole of our society.

Put simply, life in this country would not be the same without volunteers.  No Samaritans.  Not lifeboat crews or mountain rescue - people would literally die!  No magistrates.  No school governors.  No sports clubs.  No amateur dramatics and arts groups.  Immeasurably weaker community life.  No Red Cross, St John Ambulance and the like.  No Scouts and Guides.  The list goes on.

Yet we do not celebrate volunteering publicly in the way other countries do. 

Until now.

We do not hold up our volunteers as everyday heroes of our society.  We kind of keep quiet about it.  

Until now.

The Games has given us an opportunity as a nation to put volunteering front and centre in the national consciousness, to recognise that without volunteers our society would not be the same, in fact it would be a poorer place.

The Games have been a moment to shine for the athletes.  

The Games have also been a moment to shine for our country.  

The Games have been a moment to shine for volunteering, a moment that will provide a legacy in transforming our nation's understanding of and attitude towards volunteering.  

Doing that will require big changes in our sector's attitudes to volunteering. 

We need to invest in creating great volunteering experiences that enthuse and engage people as the Games Makers have been enthused and engaged.

We absolutely need to stop talking about using volunteers.  We use things, not people.

We need to rethink our attitudes to what volunteers do with us.  Games Makers held a huge array of jobs, from the menial to those with massive responsibility.  We can't just give our volunteers the former and save the latter for those we pay.

We need to start really valuing volunteering, not just using warm words about it when really what we want is someone to give us a cheque.

Are you up for the challenge?

What gets Volunteer Managers up and going when their get up and go has left the building?

For this post we're pleased to welcome guest blogger Kate James who share's her personal reflections on why volunteer managers do what they do.

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I think I started identifying myself as a Volunteer Manager long before I even knew what one was! My first experience as a volunteer was in my late teens. I had the opportunity to help out at the school my mum was working in at the time which was for children with a range of disabilities. It was the most amazing thing that I have ever done. Giving my time to bring a little bit of sunshine in to their lives was incredibly rewarding. Come rain or shine, through my own health problems, I was in the classroom day after day for weeks until the end of term came around and the school closed for summer. During that time, I learnt so much about these inspiring kids but also a lot about myself. I spent a lot of time thinking about my motivations for volunteering and what exactly it was that was getting me out of bed in the morning. I was making a difference.

Careers advice at school wasn't great. The majority of young teens don't know the answer to the question “what do you want to be?” or “what do you want to do?” and when I was at school I don’t think volunteer managers even existed! It certainly wasn’t a recognised career path and people who worked with volunteers were seen as cardigan wearing do-gooders who didn’t really understand what professionalism was. Thank goodness things have changed!

Today, I find myself managing volunteers from all walks of life. Each volunteer I have the pleasure of working with has chosen to volunteer for their own reasons and my motivations for being involved with volunteers haven’t actually changed all that much. The reason I do what I do is because I care. I care about individuals and I like to think that in some small way I can make their world, our world, a better place. We all have a responsibility to leave a legacy regardless of who we are, where we are from or what we do. This can be profound, such as the incredible achievements of some of our Olympic heroes or something as simple as smiling at a stranger and making their day.

All too often, this legacy is measured in financial terms or in how high someone can climb the career ladder, what car they drive or how big their house is. Take all this away and what are you left with? A simple soul. That’s why I think volunteering is so powerful, such an inspiring, exciting, fulfilling activity that enables any, every, simple soul to leave their legacy and in my career I am in the privileged position of being able to support others to do this to the very best of their ability

Until fairly recently, although I suppose I have had a recognised job title, I have found it really hard to identify myself as a ‘professional’ with a career, even though I have grown more and more passionate about professionalism as the years have passed. I considered myself a failure academically as I didn’t go to university and in many ways a failure professionally because I had predominately ‘just’ worked with volunteers in the voluntary sector whilst my school friends had gone on to travel the world and have seemingly glittering careers and fantastic lives. But managing volunteers well and working with them to make their difference takes a whole heap of skills and personal qualities that take time, effort and practice. It takes dedication and willingness, strength and patience. I learn every day and if all of this doesn’t make me a professional then what does?!

Yes, I get extremely frustrated at the hoops we all have to jump through. The paperwork and procedures, the way volunteering is often misunderstood and misrepresented in the press, the way it falls in and out of fashion depending on who is residing at Number 10. But what keeps me coming back for more are the volunteers I get to meet as I travel my journey of volunteer management.

I have recently worked with a volunteer who has decided to completely rethink her life. She has a well paid job in the city with a well respected company but has had enough of the continual stress and unrelenting pressure to chase profit all day long. It gladdened my heart to know that she had had such a positive experience and her words made me beam: “Isn't it strange how something so simple as volunteering to do data entry can trigger a change in life's course?  But I guess that's what makes life so interesting”

As we know, each volunteer has a different reason for giving their time and it is part of our role as good volunteer managers to understand these motivations but I think sometimes we need to take a step back, look in the mirror and remind ourselves of our own journey. Our numbers are now growing and we have resources, networks and qualifications. We have a voice. But what gives us a reason for being is all the amazing people out there who want to make a difference. This is what makes me get up day after day and it is volunteers themselves who inspire me to be a better person and be better at what I do.

Kate James is a happy, Hertfordshire based Volunteer Manager who has been working with volunteers for over 10 years. Kate has worked in the fields of mental health and disability and is currently supporting volunteers across the UK for a national charity.  You can contact Kate by email or via her Twitter account.  

LOCOG get it wrong on social media and volunteers

In my Third Sector blog this month I have written wrote about changing people’s perceptions of volunteering.  I hope I encourage those who read my post to celebrate all kinds of volunteering and, in doing so, help show a side to volunteering that goes beyond the traditional stereotypes of volunteers being long-serving older people so common in the media.

Sadly, another common perception of volunteers is that they are not trustworthy and cannot be relied upon.  I have lost count of the times I’ve heard people say that volunteers cannot be given access to confidential information or entrusted with ‘important’ roles because they might not turn up to do them. 

Volunteers are no more inherently untrustworthy or unreliable than paid staff.  Such attitudes are often borne out of ignorance about volunteering and even fear that volunteers may do a better job than paid staff.

So in some ways I was not surprised to read that volunteers for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games were having strict rules imposed on them by LOCOG, effectively banning the use of social media. 

You can read coverage of this story on i-volunteer and the BBC website.

Initial responses from volunteer managers on UKVPMs seemed to support LOCOG, acknowledging that there were potential confidentiality and security issues at stake and that a social media policy would be found in most places so why not the Olympics.  The criticism seemed more focused at the way the policy was introduced not the fact that it existed at all.

In my view this misses the point.  LOCOG’s policy appears to be driven from a view that volunteers will be tweeting and posting sensitive information at every available opportunity.  In other words, that volunteers cannot be trusted and are inherently likely to screw things up. 

Why?  What evidence do they have for this?  Surely volunteers will be just as concerned about their safety and that of others as anyone else?  Why then assume they’ll be snapping pictures of security sensitive things and posting them online?

As one contributor to the debate on UKVPMs put it:

“Instant communication is the norm now and to try and restrict it is a sure fire way to anger people and end up with the situation you were trying to avoid in the first place. That is, I'm sure most people would have been tweeting about how much of a good time they were having, whereas such a policy suggests they would expect people to do otherwise. Doesn't say much for their opinion of the volunteers or their respect for their goodwill.”

I wonder, do LOCOG have such rules in place for Olympic staff and athletes or are they more trusted than volunteers?  And where is the voice of the LOCOG volunteer management team, standing up for the Games Makers rather than kowtowing to this policy of their communications colleagues?

There are lots of other reasons why LOCOG’s rules are a daft idea.  Blogger Paul Adams outlines some of these from a social media perspective.

In conclusion, whilst I wonder if my predictions for volunteering and the Games are already coming true, I want to note that the original story had a wonderfully ironic postscript. 

Just under 24 hours after the original story broke the BBC also reported that the British Olympic Association wants London 2012 to be the ‘Twitter Games’. 

Perhaps LOCOG’s communications team (all paid staff I would guess) should have been more reliable and professional about doing co-ordinating their messages with their Olympic partners instead of assuming the worst about the online behaviour of their volunteers?