Are we youth obsessed?

In May the UK government published new draft policy directions for the Big Lottery Fund and opened a consultation[1] on their proposals.

Michael Birtwistle at NCVO has provided a good analysis of the proposals and what they mean that is worth spending a few minutes reading.

As Michael outlines, one of the draft priorities is, “engaging young people in volunteering and supporting youth sector infrastructure”. This is what I said in response to his article:

“Sigh. Why is engaging young people in volunteering a priority? Everybody is doing this. NCS has £1.2billion to do this. vinspired had £millions for this under Labour. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem encouraging young people to volunteer. But they are a small proportion of our population. What about the huge numbers of baby boomers? What about Generation X? Where is the funding to engage them more in giving time as volunteers? Perhaps the assumption is that they’ll give just like their parents did? In which case a brief read of the final report from the Commission on the Voluntary Sector and Ageing is worth a read. For once it would be nice to see a major funder or a high profile combine breaking away from our national youth obsession and realising that there are millions of others who do and could give time that would welcome more support.”

I make this point frequently when I speak on volunteering. Ever since the demise in 2003 of the failed Experience Corps initiative, little attention has been given and almost no funding provided on any significant scale to engage our huge baby boomer population in volunteering. Schemes like Volunteer Matters’ Retrired and Senior Volunteer Programme continue to do excellent work but the majority of effort and funding is directed at people under 30.

The aforementioned Commission on the Voluntary Sector and Ageing issued it’s final report fifteen months ago and little seems to have happened since.

So, I want to ask, what do you think?

Have we become youth obsessed when it comes to volunteering in the UK?

What should we be doing to engage with a wider demographic of people in volunteering? What are you doing right now?

How should funding and support be directed best to help organisations engage baby boomers and Generation X in volunteering?

Over to you.

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1. The consultation closes on 12 August.  ↩

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.

Volunteer rights and the scope of the Charity Commission

For this posting we are really happy to welcome visiting blogger and our former colleague at Volunteering England, Mike Locke, who shares with us his views on the ongoing issue of volunteer rights following a recent report from the Charity Commission (England & Wales).

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The Charity Commission has recently made clear its position on allegations of unfair treatment of volunteers.  Its Operational Case Report regarding St John Ambulance saw the issue as a matter of the charity’s administration, such that the Charity Commission would only get involved if governance procedures had not been followed or if the case threatened to bring the charity into disrepute.

This may not grab the headlines, but it’s helpful because during the long-running attempts to resolve volunteer rights there has been a question why complaints made by volunteers to the Charity Commission have been regarded as outside its scope.

The actual case here concerning, in its full name, The Priory of England and The Islands of the Order of St John was that the charity adopted a regional structure on grounds of finance, quality and impact, and consistency. However, according to a “senior volunteer” in the Telegraph newspaper in 2011: “If the structure is changed … what incentive is there for local people to volunteer and raise money?” In resisting restructuring, a small number of volunteers were “disciplined”.  The case sounds like the classic dilemma which other national charities have faced of tensions between national and local control – and I’m in no position to comment, only sympathise.

The Charity Commission looked into the case given “ongoing complaints” and found: “It is regrettable when disciplinary proceedings have to be brought against volunteers and we recognise that the events brought considerable distress to those involved. We did not see anything to suggest that the charity acted in a way that would bring the charity into disrepute such that the commission should become involved in these matters.”

The point about disrepute echoes the concern of Lord Hodgson in his review of charity law where he warned that treatment of volunteers could reduce public trust in charities. He thought responsibility should lie with charities’ self-regulation but raised the question whether there should be an independent body for external referral.

Following the Volunteer Rights Inquiry, I chaired the Call to Action Progress Group (2011-2014) when I worked for Volunteering England and NCVO. Our final report reviewed, without finding a consensus, the question of whether there was a need for an external regulatory system or whether that would be disproportionate and the problem tackled through good management practice. We recommended organisations sign-up to the 3R Promise (get it Right, offer Reconciliation and take Responsibility) which had been formulated by the Inquiry.

My perception is that volunteering organisations are more conscious of the problem and widely have instituted good practice – including, to my knowledge, St John Ambulance.

But the issue of volunteer rights won’t go away. A small number of volunteers are unfairly treated, heart-breakingly so, and – at least prima facie – in ways that offend public policy, let alone charity governance.

So, I believe, the question remains whether there is a need for a procedure or institution independent of volunteering organisations? Is the Charity Commission’s position, as clarified, sufficient? And if not it, who might take the role, and how?

Mandated volunteering - a two country perspective

I have recently returned from a five week business trip to Australia, running training on leading and managing volunteers for clients across the country.

During my time in Adelaide I met Mel White, a Brit who had moved to Australia and was continuing a career there that had finished in the UK with her managing a Volunteer Centre. Mel and I shared a number of observations about the differences and similarities between the UK and Australia and I asked Mel to write a guest blog looking at how volunteering varies yet stays the same.

What Mel has come up with is a fascinating and challenging insight into the growth in both countries of mandated volunteering, especially in regard to unemployment and welfare benefits. So, read on, reflect and please sure your thoughts and ideas in response by posting a comment.

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In April 2013 my family and I embarked on the biggest adventure of our lives when we waved goodbye to the cold north east region of the UK to immigrate to a much sunnier Adelaide in South Australia. I was leaving behind a role I had been in since January 2000 as a Volunteer Centre Manager based in a larger infrastructure organisation. Twelve months before leaving I had utilised the wondrous internet to make contacts with the sector in Australia. I was going to type ‘voluntary sector’, but there starts the first of many learning curves for me, with it being more commonly known as the ‘not-for-profit’ sector in this particular part of the Southern hemisphere.

Within two weeks of arriving and having sorted out children’s schooling, medical cover and all the seemingly more urgent items I decided I would follow the advice I had given to many people in my years of delivering talks on the benefits of volunteering. In this case its usefulness in helping individuals to settle into a community and build up work experience on my CV (next language difference; known as a resume, down under). My husband dropped me off at the local Volunteer Centre for an appointment I had made and a rather bizarre encounter ensued. They had received my CV 6 months previously when I was flogging it round to anybody and everybody, they had been emailing me for 2 months about a job they had advertised, I hadn’t got the emails but to cut a long story short I went in for a volunteering brokerage service and within a fortnight I was employed with them in a paid position. Delighted doesn’t come close and I was so glad I was where I felt I belonged – back in a Volunteer Centre.

In my 16 months of employment at Southern Volunteering I have learnt so much about the sector and volunteering in Australia. There are lots of observations and interesting similarities and differences I could share but for now at least, I want to talk about one in particular. Imagine my horror coming from the UK to discover that people volunteer in order to maintain benefits from Centrelink (the Australian equivalent of JobCentre Plus). Not only that but the system is audited and volunteers have to commit to work/volunteer up to 15 hours per week. Now I know similar schemes have been trialled in the UK but this is different, it is not hidden or disguised in any way, it is discussed openly and frankly and volunteers happily come in to say they want an opportunity that fits the requirements of their 15 hour ‘obligation’. Furthermore until recently the scheme was mainly offered to the over 55 age group as the government somewhat acknowledges they will struggle to find paid employment. Not sure if that is a good thing or not and I’m pretty sure politicians wouldn’t be so open about it in the UK! However the approach fits with what I love most about Australia and the people who live here; without stereotyping too much, I generally find you know where you stand with Australians, they are direct and polite but without the awkwardness and concern for self image that I sometimes find is a British curse!

At our Centre a large percentage of the volunteers we see are coming in to find something to meet their volunteering hours ‘contract’. Receiving organisations have to be approved by Centrelink and there is follow up from Centrelink to check people are attending and volunteering for their allotted hours each week.

I was initially shocked and so many thoughts went tumbling through my mind; is this really volunteering? Do the participants have choice in whether they want to partake? How do organisations react and involve this unique group of individuals? etc etc.

I remember in my network of Volunteer Centres in the UK one of my colleagues brought in a letter a volunteer had produced when they attended for an appointment. Basically the letter said the individual had to attend the Volunteer Centre for an appointment or their Job Seekers Allowance would be temporarily withheld. There was utter outrage within our network. The JobCentre had not informed or consulted the Volunteer Centre about this, the volunteer was very distressed and quite simply we felt ‘mandating’ volunteering in this way went against the ethos and definition of volunteering. Also as independent voluntary organisations we did not want to be viewed as an arm of the JobCentre. The Volunteer Centre involved quite simply informed the individual that if they did not want to volunteer and were being pressured into it they did not have to see the appointment through. As a network we spoke to higher management within JobCentre Plus about how inappropriate this was.

Some three years later I find myself in Australia with strong feelings opposing voluntary work being aligned with benefit payments and I am faced with a system that embraces it! I had long discussions with my Australian colleagues who assured me they and the sector had felt the same way when the system was introduced some years ago but their feelings had changed. Over time I have observed the practice in place and now I sit firmly on the fence when it comes to my views on this market of volunteers.

Here’s why;


1. The volunteers

Fifteen hours of volunteering (8 hours for those on some disability benefits) is one in a range of options the individual can engage with to satisfy the requirements of their Centrelink agreement. So, despite having no choice to do nothing, they do have a choice in what they would like to follow through; training, job seeking (but this has to be done through an approved job service provider) or volunteering. For many people, being given the option to volunteer long term takes the pressure off finding employment in a tough economic environment and gives structure and purpose to their week. Indeed once they commence I am sure it offers all the perks we regularly use to ‘sell’ volunteering; builds their self confidence, offers a routine and gives them a whole new skill set that they may not acquire otherwise, amongst many more. Some of course go onto to find paid employment within the not-for-profit organisation or a related field.

On occasion individuals have come into our Centre looking for a number of hours and when the interviewer meets them it may become apparent that they have too many restricting health issues for an organisation to safely engage them as a volunteer. Recently our worker was able to report back to the Job Service Provider that a gentleman could not meaningfully volunteer with the number of health issues he had and this was endorsed by his doctor’s letters. It seemed the Job Service Agency actually listened to us (where they had not listened to the individual previously) and the gentleman was incredibly grateful for our intervention.


2. The volunteer involving organisations. 

Organisations complete a Centrelink form if they want to be registered as an “Approved Organisation”.

Having spoken to a number of organisations I found that many were hesitant of involving this group of volunteers when the program was first rolled out.

However those that have gone on to engage with the system have found the 15 hour volunteers tend to be very reliable and commit long term. This is probably because the volunteers know there will be follow-up and consequences will ensue. They also know that they can still continue to look for work but at their own pace rather than being pressured by a case worker.

Organisations also report that the older volunteer has better work ethics and is more conscious of fulfilling their Centrelink or JSA obligations than the younger jobseeker. Generally individuals complete a Centrelink form which the organisation signs to confirm they have agreed to take the individual on as a volunteer and what the commencement date is.

If the individuals are with a Job Services Australia provider, that provider should check occasionally with the organisation on how things are going or they give the individual an attendance form which the organisation is expected to sign each week for the individual for them to take back to the JSA. There is no obligation for the organisation to report back to Centrelink or the JSA if an individual is no longer attending.  Southern Volunteering encourages the organisation to treat the individuals exactly the same as they would for any of their volunteers.

Some programs have 75% of their volunteer base made up of ‘Centrelink’ volunteers so I would imagine if those individuals were not available their programs would struggle to continue and ultimately the beneficiaries of the service would lose.

The final benefit I see is that the profile of the volunteer involving organisations and their opportunities is raised and a new community of potential volunteers is reached. Despite many individuals reluctance to engage they go on to report that they enjoy their time with the organisation.

More significantly like many other ‘incentivised’ volunteer schemes, the individual actually continues to volunteer after their obligation is finished. They continue to do it because they love it. As anyone who works with volunteers knows, the key to getting people involved long term is getting them to join up in the first place. If the gateway to doing this is a little unconventional but the outcome is the same should we put our morals to one side? Over to you.....

Mel White
Community Visitor Scheme Coordinator
Southern Volunteering (SA) Inc.


Notes
From July 2014 the idea has been extended into the ‘Work for the Dole’ pilot program, being rolled out in areas of all states of Australia. All jobseekers aged 18-30 in selected areas will have to ‘work for the dole’ for 6 months and placements will be sourced in not-for-profit organisations, local councils and federal and state government agencies.  Work for the Dole places will not be offered in private sector businesses. It will be interesting to watch how the program works with a different age demographic.

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Southern Volunteering SA (Inc) provides information on volunteering opportunities and roles available in the southern suburbs of Adelaide including the Fleurieu Peninsula. We also offer training, information and support for not-for-profit organisations. Our Community Visitors Program provides volunteer visitors to resident in Aged Care Facilities, who are socially isolated. For more information please visit our website www.svsa.org.au

One Nation Labour: renewing our bond with the third sector

In this blog post I want to share my response to the current consultation being undertake by the Labour Party, "One Nation Labour: renewing our bond with the third sector".

I would very much welcome your thoughts on my contribution to their consultation and I'd love to hear what you may have submitted yourselves.

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Our response

A contextual observation
As with many things concerning the third sector, volunteering cannot be separated from the context within which it occurs, be that the sector context or the wider societal context. 

Our first comment then, in light of the rest of the consultation document issued by Labour, is that if there are some 15million volunteers (at least) and 800,000 paid staff in the third sector then on sheer volume alone we find it hard to understand how you can state that paid staff are “the sector’s biggest asset”. In fact, considering the vast majority of third sector organisations have no paid staff and run entirely on volunteers, we would caution Labour to rethink this position. 

Volunteers are the sectors biggest asset, without them large parts of the sector cease to function, including those organisations which employ, many paid staff. Without volunteers, many of these sector employees would have no jobs as the agencies they work for would not exist in the first place. Without volunteers, the very fabric of our society in the UK would be immensely poorer, as Justin Davis Smith so eloquently articulated in Volunteers’ Week 2014.

What could a Labour Government do to encourage and support more people to volunteer? 
We question the assumption that more volunteers are what our society needs. 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.

The question should therefore not be “What could a Labour Government do to encourage and support more people to volunteer?” but perhaps “What could a Labour Government do to encourage and support more organisations to provide meaningful, enjoyable and rewarding volunteer experiences that meet the needs of people today whilst delivering effective social change?”. This important change leads to a significant shift in emphasis which, if applied in practical ways (for example to replace the simple numbers game criteria when organisations apply for funding from the State, lottery, trusts & foundations etc.) would help to bring about a significant shift in the strategic importance of volunteering to third sector organisations.

As the American consultant and expert Susan Ellis put it recently in one of her monthly Hot Topic essays:

“Most of the time funding is sought by organizations for program ideas generated by paid staff, often to hire more paid staff. Only after money has been obtained does someone say, “let’s get volunteers to help.” Waiting until the end of the process to “add in” volunteers is a huge missed opportunity because it does not maximize the contribution of volunteers to the brains of an organization!  nstead, involve volunteers from the beginning of planning a new initiative, to generate more ideas and add their perspectives and knowledge.  Next, strategize what volunteers will be asked to do in implementing the initiative if funded, and explain that in the actual proposal – including budgeting funds to support their efforts.  This sequence of events considers volunteers as essential team members, not as an afterthought.”

Such a shift in thinking by leaders of third sector organisations is essential if those same organisations are to not only deliver great volunteering opportunities but also lead their organisations to success in the post-recession, austerity driven environment in which they operate. In short, a new mindset is needed for a new age and continuing to measure success in numbers of volunteers will not bring that change about.

Finally, focusing success criteria on the quality of the volunteering experience rather than the volume of people giving time could have the following three positive impacts:

1. More people enjoy their volunteering resulting in them wanting to do more of it and becoming more evangelical about the experience with friends, family, colleagues etc..
2. Helping support an effective volunteering legacy after large scale public events. Clearly people were inspired to volunteer by the Games Makers and others but their experience was unlikely to match up to that seen at such a once-in-a-lifetime event as we saw in 2012. A focus on the volunteer experience might have helped ameliorate this rather than just plugging more people into the same old tired and un-inspiring volunteer opportunities.
3. Focus volunteering not only onto helping third sector organisations fulfil their mission but on the way people live their lives in the 21st century and how this affects their willingness to give - and keep giving - time. Third sector organisation have to adapt to our changing world where people don’t thrill to giving large amounts of time in an open ended commitment anymore. This requires a clearer focus on how people want to give and how to deliver a good experience in these contexts. A focus on numbers of volunteers fails to acknowledge this.

How do we encourage volunteering in areas of deprivation? 
First, we have to stop assuming that people in areas of deprivation do not volunteer. Too often the narrative assumes certain groups of people are ‘under-represented’ in volunteering, including those from areas of deprivation, disabled people, BME communities etc.. What this narrative is actually saying is that such groups are under-represented in the kid of volunteering that the state, sector, establishment etc. wants to count. It does not take into account that many people from these groups do indeed volunteer but not in ways the mainstream considers as worthwhile. For example, campaigning, advocacy, self-help etc.. This leads to an insidious conclusion, whereby people from these groups who are already active volunteers have to do what the mainstream want if they are to be counted and supported whilst their existing efforts are disregarded. That is perhaps a worse form of exclusion and discrimination that putting barriers in the way of those groups in the first place.

Bearing all that in mind, we commend two initiatives to you: 

• The NCVO Volunteering For Stronger Communities project which concluded in December 2013. This worked in fifteen economically disadvantaged parts of the country and worked with some of those furthest from the labour market to help them engage in volunteering as a route to towards employability. The project had a 20% success rate at getting people into employment, in stark contrast to the success of the coalition’s Work Programme.
• The Access to Volunteering fund created by the last Labour government (the evaluation is available as a pdf here) which made real and tangible steps towards helping Volunteer Involving Organisations break down barriers for those disabled people who struggled to engage in the volunteering they wanted to do.

What role should schools play in encouraging and supporting young people to volunteer? 
Having been a school governor for a number if years I can personally attest to the value of schools supporting children and young people to engage in their communities in a variety of ways. However, I want to focus less on schools but on four other issues:

1. As with the issue of encouraging volunteering in areas of deprivation, don’t assume young people aren’t already volunteering. Too many people and institutions are all too ready to portray the UK’s young people as feckless, idle, selfish and work-shy. This may be true of a minority but it isn’t of the majority. Assuming young people don’t volunteer and creating programmes accordingly fails to acknowledge the volunteering young people already do. This is a mistake that must not be made.
2. The importance of families in encouraging young people to volunteer must not be underestimated. The example set by parents, siblings and the wider family has a profound influence on young people’s attitudes to volunteering. Family volunteering programmes, so popular and established in countries like the USA, are woefully under-developed in the UK. The National Trust have been pioneering this work through, amongst other things, their Big Family Day Out initiative. We would encourage a future Labour Governement to explore the potential for supporting more family volunteering across the UK.
3. We have to be mindful that the continued focus on young people giving time for no pay, whether through volunteering or internships or workfare schemes, risks alienating a generation towards volunteering. I wrote about this on my blog a couple of years ago and young people I have spoken to subsequently endorse and share my concerns. Whatever a future Labour Government does around volunteering by young people,. such concerns should be uppermost in their minds.
4. Linking back to the first point, a key thing a future Labour Government can do to support young people to volunteer is to actually capture this is national data on volunteering. The citizenship survey, the community life survey which replaced it and the successive national survey’s of volunteering (1981, 91, 97, 07) count only volunteering by adults. Volunteering by anyone under 18 is conspicuous in its absence. This holds true in other countries as well and presents the opportunity for a future Labour Government to start being one of the first in the world to actually count volunteering by young people alongside existing data. 

Three ways the Keep Volunteering Voluntary campaign may be doing more harm than good

In my last blog post I wrote about the Keep Volunteering Voluntary campaign (KVV) and the misunderstanding propagated by the UK media that the government's new Help To Work scheme is volunteering.

Let me say it again, Community Work Placements (CWP) under Help to Work ARE NOT VOLUNTEERING. They do not meet the definitions of volunteer (freely entered into being the key issue) and even the government recognises this.

Section 2.14 of the guidance for providers of community work placements states that:

If a claimant is already undertaking voluntary work and you can justifiably advise that the work is beneficial to the claimant by helping them to overcome barriers to employment, you may count that voluntary work towards the full time work placement hours. However, if you do not feel the voluntary work is of appropriate benefit to the claimant, you may require the claimant to do the full-time work in the placement you have sourced for them (but must give the claimant at least 1 weeks notice). Please Note: Where a claimant is already undertaking voluntary work you must also ensure you give the claimant 48 hours notice for any required participation/ attendance.

Section 2.16 states:

Please Note: JCP will refer claimants who have insufficient work history or a lack of motivation; therefore we would expect only a minimal proportion of claimants currently undertaking part-time or voluntary work to be referred to CWP.

In other words, volunteering is not the same as a CWP (if it were, no distinction would be drawn) and if someone is already volunteering it is unlikely they would be required to do a CWP. However, this is up to the discretion of the JCP adviser and that means inconsistent decisions will occur as years of past experience have taught many in the volunteering world.

Also, note that there are no other references to volunteering in the entire guidance document.

Despite this clear distinction - Help To Work and CWPs are NOT VOLUNTEERING - the KVV campaign rolls on, arguing that:

"As charities and voluntary organisations we know the value of volunteering. Volunteering means people independently choosing to give their time freely to help others and make the world a better place. Workfare schemes force unemployed people to carry out unpaid work or face benefit sanctions that can cause hardship and destitution.   We believe in keeping volunteering voluntary and will not participate in government workfare schemes.”

In my view they risk doing much more harm than good to the volunteering cause. Here are my three main concerns.


Number one
By failing to recognise that Help To Work's CWPs are not volunteering the signatories and supporters of KVV are showing their ignorance of and / or confusion about volunteering. The voluntary and community sector sector relies upon volunteers and is the main involver of volunteers so surely they should know better - the KVV statement even claims they do in its opening line!

The potential harm here is that KVV could further confuse others about volunteering and CWPs, with the public an media turning against genuine volunteering and not forced workfare.

A much more sensible approach would be for the KVV campaign to focus on educating the media on the difference between a CWP and a volunteer opportunity so the risk of public opinion being unduly swayed negatively towards volunteering is minimised.


Number two
The campaign is probably having having little influence on government. There are two main reasons for this assumption: first, government know CWPs are not volunteering so they can confidently ignore the campaign; second, as I suggested above, the effort is directed at the wrong people - the media should be the focus.

I also worry how the ignorance about volunteering that is on display from this campaign might harm the credibility of bodies who have signed up when it comes to any future campaigning about volunteering that might be needed. I can hear ministers and officials saying things like, "why should we listen to you on volunteering, you don't even understand what it is yourselves?"

Thank goodness NCVO are not signatories!


Number three
The KVV campaign is perpetuating the media driven myth that CWPs are volunteering and so creating the risk anti-workfare campaigners begging calling for a ban on all unpaid work.

Think that's far fetched? Look at this blog from the USA where someone makes the argument that all volunteering is exploitative and should be banned. How long before similar voices are heard on this side of the pond? We already have the risk of threats to volunteering from the ongoing rumblings about unpaid internships. The risk, however small we may think it is, is real and KVV is adding fuel to the fire.


In conclusion let me say that I think people are genuinely concerned about the blurring lines between volunteering and workfare. They have been for over a decade. There are genuine workfare schemes and issues to complain about and fight for beyond Help To Work and CWPs as KVV make clear on their website. I've fought some of this fights myself and will continue to do so in future.

The profile of the KVV campaign and these issues has grown because of media misreporting of Help To Work and CWPs as volunteering. This coincided with KVV calling for support and so we end up with lots of confusion and misunderstanding about what is and is not volunteering.

I genuinely do not think the people and bodies behind KVV are trying to harm volunteering. I am sure their intentions are good and I hope my views above about the potential damage being done are proven to be wrong.  But until we know that for sure I think the volunteering movement needs to consider the Keep Volunteering Voluntary campaign carefully and cautiously, because if I'm right they could be doing much more harm than good.

See also these related blog posts from me:

Is all work experience equal?
Are we alienating a generation of volunteers?
Is all volunteering voluntary?

Is all volunteering voluntary?

There has been much controversy in the last few weeks about the UK government’s Help To Work scheme. To quote the government press release:

“The new measures include intensive coaching, a requirement to meet with the Jobcentre Plus adviser every day, or taking part in a community work placement for up to 6 months so claimants build the skills needed to secure a full-time job”

In response to this new scheme a campaign has been initiated called Keep Volunteering Voluntary. Numerous organisations have signed up to the campaign including many Councils for Voluntary Service, Volunteer Centres and household name charities.

However, as Jamie Ward-Smith points out in his excellent blog  on the topic, Help To Work is NOT volunteering. The mainstream media has chosen to report it as such, demonstrating their ignorance of the difference between the voluntary sector and volunteering (which takes place in the public and private sector too). Maybe that’s why the Keep Volunteering Voluntary campaign only want supporters from the voluntary sector, not the private or public sectors?

As Jamie points out in his blog, the government are clear that Help To Work is not volunteering. They told Civil Society that: 

“Volunteers provide a very valuable contribution to society - however the placements we are providing will help long-term unemployed claimants get the skills and experience they need to get back into work. Community Work Placements are designed for people whose lack of experience of work is holding them back from getting a job, and many community-based organisations recognise the benefits it has on their organisation, the local community, and the jobseeker.”

I find it quite worrying that agencies like NAVCA, Oxfam, Volunteer Centres and others don’t seem able to grasp the difference between people working in the voluntary sector and volunteers. These are agencies we look to for expertise, organisations with long track records in the volunteering movement. Why can’t they get that distinction? 

But this blog isn’t about criticising the organisers and supporters of the Keep Volunteering Voluntary scheme. Misinformed they may be but their heart is probably in the right place. Rather I want to question whether all the volunteering we might more readily accept as voluntary actually is, and whether it actually matters.

Consider for a minute the undergraduate student. All must do some kind of volunteering at university if they are to stand a chance of getting a job because a degree is no longer a guarantee of employment - employers want something else too. So amongst their studies and the part time work they do to cover their costs they go out and volunteer. Nobody is forcing these students in the sense of the critics of Help To Work but they can’t not do it or they limit their chance of a job. Look at it that way and their ability to freely choose to volunteer becomes more limited.

Think about the high school students in the USA who have to do some volunteering in order to graduate high school. They may not have a choice to do the work but they can choose what they do and where they volunteer. They are exercising some choice. Is that enough?

You see the issue of freely choosing to volunteer (or not) isn’t as clear cut as some would have us believe. Add into that the reality that in many schemes where people are required to volunteer they go on to do much more volunteering subsequently than those who weren’t made to give time in the first place. RockCorps found this as did many of those USA high schools. Isn’t it worth bending the definition a little if it means more people giving more time as a result?

And then there is the risk that if we are so ‘purist’ in our thinking we limit the scope of our relevance as Volunteer Managers.

Jayne Cravens and Martin J Cowling wrote about this in an excellent article for e-Volunteerism back in 2007, concluding that:

“We believe that managers of volunteers have a place at the main table of an organization. To demonstrate this, we need to take overall responsibility for all those who contribute in an unpaid capacity to the organization. The place to start is to have managers expand their views about their own responsibilities and to reconsider who is a volunteer at their organization. Managers must avoid reinforcing stereotypes and spurious distinctions about volunteers, and agree to work with, support and strategically position people who fall “outside” the realm of the limited idea of the "true" or "real" volunteer. This process is not just about creating more work; it is a completely different way of working. It raises the role of the volunteer manager from that of "nice" to that of "essential." And it helps organizations understand that their contributions are far from extraneous to the organization's core activities.“ 

I’m not trying to give neat answers here but provoke thought and discussion. Despite those who tell us the world is made up of simple black and white realities, the truth is that shades of grey abound. It is our ethical responsibility as Volunteer Managers to determine where we draw the line professional and where our agencies draw that line. But to do that we need informed thinking and debate, not campaigns driven by wrong thinking, misinformation, ignorance and a narrow world view that doesn’t stack up to the messy reality of real life.

What do you think?

Warning! The volunteers are coming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please share your responses below.



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

What's in a word?

I've recently finished reading The Institute for Volunteer Research's (IVR) excellent new report on microvolunteering. Yes, that's right, something about microvolunteering that I am enthusiastic about.

As I have said in other blogs, microvolunteering is often portrayed as the knight in shining armour come to save the damsel in distress that is volunteering. It is claimed to be the magical solution that will engage people who are otherwise put off volunteering and start them down a long and happy road of lifelong service. It is evangelistically portrayed as the best thing ever to happen to volunteering without a single shred of meaningful evidence to back those assertions.

In their accessible and readable report, IVR take a more measured look at microvolunteering. They cut through the hype and hoopla to explore the realities of the concept, identifying opportunities and challenges for volunteer involving organisations and seeking out evidence to back up the claims the microvolunteering evangelists make. Its a great report and well worth a read.

We're also promised practical guidance on microvolunteering, drawn from a number of case study organisations IVR worked with in their research. Thsi is due late November and will add to the existing resources of organisations like Help From Home so that leaders and managers of volunteer can judge for themselves whether microvolunteering is for them and their volunteers.

One aspect that IVR touch on is the re-branding by organisations of some existing shorter term volunteering opportunities as microvolunteering. This is could be a consequence of organisations "sexing up" what they already offer by playing on new and trendy language.

One one level there is nothing wrong with giving something a new name to fit with in-vogue terminology. It is certainly nothing new, whether to volunteerism or any other walk of life. But I think we need to be really aware of the potential consequences.

Here are some examples.

A few years ago when the then government started developing more ideas about mandatory volunteering as part of citizenship or welfare requirements, the position many in the volunteering movement took was "so long as government don't call it volunteering it's ok". That was intended to protect the values of volunteering (and act of free will being key) from corruption by government. To an extent it worked but there have been two significant consequences.

First, government now feels they can get away with any such scheme so long as they don't call it volunteering. This has led to more of these initiatives which they defend accordingly. Except the public don't necessarily make the same distinctions we might. They see people working unpaid and being forced to do it and they make associations with volunteering anyway, in part because the media might still use this language even if ministers do not. So instead of facing up to a real debate, the volunteering movement could be accused of ducking the issue whilst the protection of volunteering they thought they were establishing hasn't been as effective as they thought.

Second, by saying "so long as you don't call it volunteering were not bothered", the volunteering movement has marginalised itself from having any relevant voice into policy circles that decide on such initiatives. After all, so long as they don't call it volunteering, why should ministers seek to engage with volunteering bodies over their ideas. As a result we get new schemes dreamt up with no real though given to the execution or resourcing of these by volunteer involving organisations.

Another example is around the more recent debates about internships.

In large part these debates have become higher profile because use of the word intern, especially in an unpaid context, has become more prevalent in recent years. From what I can see this seems to be for two reasons: individuals describe their volunteering as an internship because that term carries more weight with potential employers than the v-word does; organisations re-badge their volunteering opportunities as internships to attract more people as a result.

The consequence? First, by colluding with the idea that internship sounds more professional than volunteering we collude with the devaluing of volunteering, subordinating it to a lower class status below real work (i.e. paid) and internships. Second, we open up a can of worms such as that created by the recent debates on unpaid internships which - and let's not ignore this at all - risk fundamentally undermining the concepts of volunteering many of us hold so dear.

So back to microvolunteering.

As I said earlier, I really like the IVR report. There is much in there that I comment to anyone interested in the topic. But I want to add a real note of caution around the emerging trend for organisations to take what they alreday do and call it microvolunteering in order to attract people by using this sexy new word. Because if what organisation are doing is renaming something but still delivering the same unrewarding opportunity, doing little or nothing to change their actual practice in volunteer enagagement, then just as in the examples above, we risk real and potentially serious consequences. We risk deceiving people into volunteering with us, getting them all excited about our volunteer opportunities and then they get past the hype and sexy new words and find the same old things being done that never attracted them to volunteering before. That risks not only turning people of volunteering with your agency but with any orgaisation.

What's in a word? Potentially everything. Let's think really carefully about the words we use and the bandwagons we jump on. They may take us to places we don't want to go.

“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.