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.  ↩

Three things I want to say about controlling volunteers on social media

I’ve just read a great blog from Kevan Lee in the team at Buffer [1]. The blog explores the concept of 360 degree advocacy and the future of social media. Kevan looks at how brands can maximise their social media potential thus:

“A business feels personal not when it speaks like a person but when it reflects the persons that make up the business.”

This line really got my attention because I think it hits upon a key belief I come across regularly when the subject of volunteers and social media arises. You see, quite often when I train on social media in a volunteering context I am told that volunteers cannot be involved in an organisation’s social media work because what they say and do cannot be controlled. The fear is that volunteers will be loose cannons, firing off any old tweet or post that might cut across the carefully controlled brand the organisation wants to project.

There are a three things I want to highlight in response.

First, it isn’t just Communications / Marketing / Branding and / or Senior Management staff I hear this from. It is sometimes from Volunteer Managers too. That might be out of fear or ignorance about social media but sometimes it’s born of a real concern that volunteers won’t be able to be controlled on social media. To me such comments speak volumes about what volunteer management has become to some people, a means of organising people to control their involvement in as low a risk setting as possible rather than inspiring and enabling people to achieve the most for our mission & cause.

Oh, and why by default assume what volunteers say online about you won’t be positive? What does that tell you?

Second, to steer clear of involving volunteers in social media because of an anxiety that we cannot control them is to fundamentally misunderstand social media. As I frequently say in response to such anxieties, control disappeared on 4 February 2004, the day Mark Zuckerberg turned Facebook on. For more than eleven years we’ve had less and less control of what people say about us as more social networks have appeared and more of us join them.

The appropriate response is not to foolishly try to shut the gate a decade after the horse has bolted but to learn to work with the lack of control and manage it appropriately. People, including volunteers, are already talking about you on social media - if you do not or are prevented from engaging with this key communication tool you just won’t know what they are saying. It’s the digital equivalent of putting your head in the sand and hoping it’ll all be OK.

Third, not engaging volunteers (and indeed other supporters) in social media might mean you are failing to realise an emerging key aspect of the very purpose of social media in an organisational context. This is where Kevan Lee’s blog post comes back into focus.

You need to read the post in full to get the complete picture but this quote sums up the key issue:

“Fundamentally, they [businesses, in our contact Volunteer Involving Organisations] are not a person, they are not a human being. What they are is a collection of humans.The individuals that make up the company are what also make the company unique, approachable, relatable. And for a really long time, the best practice for social media marketing has not been about embracing these awesome people. Wow, what a big miss! With a full view of social media advocacy, I think it raises the question: What if this changed? What if we began inviting individuals to contribute to the voice of the brand?”

In other words, we’ve been getting it all wrong if we’ve been trying to control the brand / message on social media and only engage people who are prepared to toe that party line. Instead of running scared that volunteers may say something ‘wrong’, what we perhaps should be doing is finding a way for the corporate voice to be made up of all the individual voices of staff, volunteers, donors and other supporters.

For example, on Twitter, a non-profit organisation maintains a list of all it’s supporters who have Twitter accounts. It then retweets what it’s supporters say that chimes with the brand, making use of those peoples’ own unique voice rather than trying to control what they say. In fact, in a charitable context, doesn’t this make even more sense as often volunteers and other supporters have a persona connection to the cause and so speak with far more authenticity than a social media employee in the central communications team?

Put like that it sounds so obvious. Well it does to me anyway. We need to stop trying to do the impossible and control what people say about us online and instead inspire and enable people to use their voice to help our cause. Just like our approach to volunteer management needs to become less about control and fear of risk and more about empowerment and enabling opportunity.

As Kevan says:

“Brands can embrace the individuality of their team and become more relatable to their audience. The team can have a positive impact on the quality and variety of content the brand shares. I’m particularly excited about how wholeness, personality, and diversity can fit into the equation here, too. For all the work we aim to do with refining and perfecting a social media strategy, perhaps this exact type of variety is the next frontier for brands to engage on a deeper level with the wonderful, creative, unique individuals that make up an audience.”

Once again, you really need to read the whole of Kevan’s blog to get a firm handle on what he is exploring. I highly recommend you do this.

Afterwards, pop back here and let me know what you think about his ides in a volunteering context. I’d love to hear your thoughts and maybe discuss these ideas further through my blog’s comments function.

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1. Buffer is a company which provides a social media scheduling tool. They also produce an excellent blog on social media issues that is both informative and highly practical.  ↩

Please, no more research into volunteer motivation

Just the other day I was browsing volunteer management stories online and came across an article published by ProBono Australia entitled, “QLD to investigate volunteer numbers”.

To put the article in context, earlier this year the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported the first ever drop in the numbers of people volunteering in Australia: 31 per cent of Australians volunteered compared to 36 per cent just four years ago[1].

In response to this decline, the recent ProBono Australia article states that:

Researchers at Cancer Council Queensland and Griffith University have received a $220,000 Australian Research Council grant to improve understanding of motivations for volunteering. Cancer Council Queensland CEO and lead researcher Professor Jeff Dunn AO said the study could help to improve social and economic well-being by stimulating volunteering.

This grant is one of only nine awarded the ARC Linkage Grant nationally (in Australia) in the field of psychology, and one of two in Queensland.

Professor Dunn is quoted as saying:

“Not for Profits such as Cancer Council Queensland rely heavily on volunteers to carry out work in cancer control, ensuring the delivery of vital community services and fundraising events - which is why it’s imperative we invest time and research into this area.”

“Our aim is to address knowledge gaps about short-term volunteering, to improve uptake of regular volunteering, and to evaluate the economic and social impacts of volunteering."

“It is critical that we understand how we can make short-term volunteering a satisfying experience to encourage longer-term relationships."

“The findings will inform recommendations for sectoral policy and practice on volunteering.”

“At the moment, little is known about why people take up volunteering, and the factors that inspire them to volunteer on a short or long-term basis."

I think these aims are laudable ones. Much more work needs to be done to develop better ways of measuring the impact of volunteering. Research that helps Volunteer Managers and volunteer involving organisations transition people from shorter-term to longer-term (i.e. regular) volunteering is also needed. Both are topics I have blogged about before[2].

However, I do have a major issue with that last quote from Prof Dunn, “At the moment, little is known about why people take up volunteering, and the factors that inspire them to volunteer on a short or long-term basis."

What, you mean like these studies and articles?

• Developing the Volunteer Motivation Inventory to Assess the Underlying Motivational Drives of Volunteers in Western Australia
• Helping others, helping ourselves
• Want better volunteers? Understand their motivation
• Understanding and Assessing the Motivations of Volunteers: A Functional Approach
• An analysis of volunteer motivation: implications for international development, VAJ 2008 (Vol 9, number 1)

Or perhaps Prof Dunn means the 260,000 search results from Google Scholar when you type in “volunteer motivation research”!?

The fact is that the motivation of people to volunteer is the most over-researched topic in volunteering research. In my opinion it also one of the least helpful areas of research to help Volunteer Managers in their day-to-day work. Why? Because such studies are so generic they actually help you when you have a mix of people wanting to give time all of whom have differing motivations and interests.

As Susan J Ellis says:

“I question the relevance of the question why do people volunteer?; when asked generically. Too many studies (not only those on motivation, I might add) approach volunteers as if they are indistinguishable from one another and are interchangeable parts of some monolith. After all, do we think it’s interesting to ask, why do people take paying jobs?”

I firmly believe that all anyone needs to know about volunteer motivation can be summed up in five points:

1. Every person’s motivational mix is different
2. Every person’s motivation mix changes
3. Every person has a differing mix of altruistic and egoistic reasons for volunteering
4. Nobody wants to have their time wasted, not matter how little or how much they give
5. Everybody who volunteers wants to make a difference

So please researchers, no more studies on motivation.

Please funders, no more giving significant amounts of money to study topics that have been explored to death already.

Instead, I encourage anyone who wants to do some academic research on volunteering to take a look at this blog post by Susan J Ellis from 1998 and the associated article Susan wrote for the Journal of Voluntary Action Research back in 1985!

I’ll end with three questions for you to consider and respond via the comments below:

1. What research questions would you like to see studied?
2. If you could communicate with academics, what would you want them to know that would be helpful to you?
3. Have you read any studies that you were able to apply to your work?

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1. For an excellent analysis of the decline and what it might mean for volunteering in Australia take a look at Volunteering Tasmania CEO, Adrienne Piccone’s, excellent blog post, “Is the decline in volunteering cause for panic?”.  ↩

2. See these three blog posts for example: Five things I’d like to say about calculating the economic value of volunteering; Volunteering: measuring what counts; and Short-term thinking on long-term volunteering.  ↩

A challenge to change

Last week saw the much anticipated (by me anyway!) publication of the final report of the Commission on the Voluntary Sector & Ageing.

The report is a joy to read, presented in an engaging way and running to a mere thirteen pages. It is also, in my humble opinion, essential reading for anyone working in the voluntary sector and / or working with volunteers.

For me, the following quotes from the report highlight the importance of Volunteer Involving Organisations looking in new ways at the volunteering potential of people of all ages, but especially the baby boomer generation:

The reserve army of “little old ladies” (and men) upon whom so many voluntary organisations depend, will be juggling ever more demands
on their time. Informed by their more varied cultural, educational and professional backgrounds, future generations will have different expectations of, and attitudes towards, their later lives.

Our sense of community may change, with the local less relevant as global loyalties are easier to maintain.

All these changes will disrupt society and also the way charities work - ”business as usual” is not an option.

Older people have historically volunteered in large numbers, so the retirement of the baby boomer generation could offer the voluntary sector a boost in numbers and talent. However volunteering will have to “compete” against increasing demands on people’s time and resources—including paid employment, caring for parents, spouses and/or grandchildren, as well as travel and leisure.

We need new types of flexible, skilled volunteer roles and consultancy-style internships, which will be attractive to people looking for new opportunities
to use their skills in later life.

The four generation “4G” workforce should be the norm across the sector, with young and old working together.

The full report can be downloaded from the Commission website (opens a link to a pdf document) and whilst it's origins are in the UK it is both of relevance and interest to other nations too.

There are huge challenges resulting from the work of the Commission. For example:

• How can organisations make the necessary changes to maximise the potential of volunteers  when understanding of and genuine support (the kind that goes beyond mere warm words) for volunteering at a strategic level in many organisations is, to put it kindly, extremely poor?

• How can leaders and managers of volunteers develop their programmes to engage people in new ways when the resourcing their receive from their organisations is so poor and seen as such a low priority?

• Will many in the sector finally see the need to break down traditional silos, for example between fundraising, volunteering, membership etc., so that properly integrated supporter journeys become the norm not the exception?

I spend a lot of time helping organisations of all sizes think through issues like this and reflect on what steps they can take. If you would like to discuss how I can help you understand and tackle these issues please get in touch.

Three lessons for volunteer programmes from customer service

Dan, a colleague of mine at the volunteer management software provider, Better Impact, recently recommended a new blog to follow called "Win The Customer". Initial impressions have been good so I've added it to my already lengthy list of blogs I follow.

Here I want to share one early highlight, a post entitled Three Retail Experience Trends That Will Change Your Service Approach.

I highly recommend reading this article before you go any further with my post as I want to highlight three parallels for leaders and manages of volunteers. So, off you go and I'll see you back here in a couple of minutes.

>>>>>

Right, I hope you liked that. Here's my thoughts on three applications of those lessons for us in our work with volunteers.

The Rise Of The Mobile Wallet

In retail the use of mobile devices as a method of payment seems to be growing. How is is or could this be manifesting in volunteer management?

Well, online searching for volunteer opportunities is nothing new. The soon to be re-launched Do-It is a teenager already and similar sites exist across the globe.

What is less common is online signup to volunteering. So many organisations, if they even have a good webpage dedicated to their volunteer programme, still ask people to download a form and submit it via email in order to apply to become a volunteer. 

The aforementioned Better Impact system enables volunteers to fill in a form online and apply directly into the organisations volunteer database. No more print and send. What’s more volunteers can do this, and manage there profile, sign up for shifts, log hours etc., via a smartphone.

Mobile use of the web is skyrocketing and the expectations we all have to manage our lives on to the go - from banking to online shopping - continue to grow too. Volunteering is not immune. Volunteers want to manage their volunteering online and not being able to do so could increasingly turn people off your organisation.

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned things like paying you volunteers’ expenses via mobile payment systems like PingIt or people applying to volunteer direct from Facebook with their applications populated automatically with the data Facebook holds on them (which is probably more than they even know about themselves!). 

Brick-And-Mortar Gets Interactive

The point the original article makes here is how can we enhance a shopper’s experience in store via mobile technology? For example, wan we give them free wifi and augmented reality apps so they can virtually try on that item of clothing and see all the different colour choices available, perhaps including those not available inshore?

In volunteer management terms I think there are two ways we can consider this trend, both relate to that period between the volunteer signing up and actually starting their role, a period that can be drawn out if intensive screening is involved.

First, how can we use online and mobile technology to provide or enhance the induction and any training we offer. Could volunteers take a virtual tour of the site via a YouTube video? Is there online learning material specific to their role that they could be working through? 

Second, if the vetting period takes a while, are there roles volunteers could be doing online that would be suitable for them until vetting is completed? What needs doing that could be packaged as a short-term, bite-sized opportunity that could lend itself to mobile? For example, monitoring the social media feeds of similar organisations to broaden the new volunteers awareness of the issues they will deal with (whilst at the same time perhaps gaining insights into ‘competitor’ behaviour for you).

Harnessing The Power Of Social Shopping

We’re all used to rating our shopping experiences online. Amazon has provided that facility for years and whether its a war and peace review or one of those “quick delivery” two-worders, chances are most of you reading this have rated something somewhere online.

I remember the idea being mooted a few years back that volunteers should be able to rate their experiences online on sites like Do-It. The reaction from Volunteer Managers and Volunteer Involving Organisations was less than enthusiastic. Perhaps because the Volunteer Involving Organisations involved are all too aware that what they offer volunteers is far from satisfactory and their ratings would reflect this?

Social media has opened this up regardless of whether a formal rating system exists. If someone has a bad time volunteering with you they can be straight onto their social network of choice ensuring their friends, family and colleagues don’t repeat their mistake.

Conversely, however, give volunteers a great time and they may be all to happy (perhaps with a little encouragement) to share their positivity about your agency with their networks.

Erik Qualman, in his book Socialnomics, refers to this as both ‘Word of mouth to world of mouth” and “Word of mouth on digital steroids”. In other words, social media is not to be feared so much as embraced as a key way to enhance the form of recruitment that consistently comes out as most effective around the world - word of mouth or personal recommendation.

You can do simple things like give your volunteers a hashtag to put on any posts they make about their volunteering, or give them some simple guidelines on what is appropriate for them to post on Instagram or Pinterest when they are volunteering?

So, there you have it, my three lessons for volunteer programmes from customer service, or at least adapted from the blog Dan shared with me.

What lessons can you share from customer service for volunteer programmes?

Specifically, what ideas do you have for how the customer service experience we give our volunteers can be enhanced via online and mobile technology?

Finally, if you’ve embraced online and mobile in this way, what did you do and what did you learn?

I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts.

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. 

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?

What's in store in 2013 - what do you think?

Happy new year!

Yes, 2012 with all its expectation and hoopla is now a receding memory and 2013 stretches before us.

This time of year is of course when people make resolutions and commentators, fresh from analysing the year just gone, gaze into their crystal balls to foresee what may be in store over the next twelve months.

I’ve done a little bit of that concerning volunteering through my January blog for Third Sector Online but I want to try something different here. Instead, I want to invite you to share your thoughts about what you see happening in the world of volunteering during 2013.

Please use this opportunity to post a comment below and briefly share what you think the key issues, themes, developments, challenges and opportunities are going to be.

If you have any problems posting a comment please contact me directly and I’ll post your comment for you.

Over to you.

Are we alienating a generation of volunteers?

That's a question I'm starting to ask myself about young people.

Here is a generation that has had £millions spent on encouraging them to get volunteering.

Here is a generation who have been told that volunteering will help them get a job when they leave school, college or university.

Here is a generation who are leaving school, college and university (those that can afford to go to uni anyway) and are now facing levels of unemployment unparalleled in recent memory.

Here is a generation who are told that the solution to their joblessness is to volunteer, to become interns, in short to work damned hard for no pay in the scant hope someone will give them a job.

Here is a generation who are now being charged to take part in their so-called rite of passage to adulthood, National Citizens Service.

Here is a generation who we risk becoming very cynical and negative about volunteering.

Here is a generation who in 20, 30, 40, 50 years time we will expect to be the core volunteers organisations rely on.

Here is a generation who, if we are not careful, will tell us to go to hell when we ask them to volunteer.

What can we do now - right now, today - to make sure this generation of young people don't abandon volunteering in future, branding it as a cynical ploy to get them to work for free whilst others profit, and pass those same values to the generation that will follow them?

Answers on a postcard via the comments section below please.

Positive deviants & the importance of effective volunteer management

Three papers that have come across my desk in recent months that have all been sitting in a folder for me to blog on.  As I re-read them recently common themes cam through that chime with one of the issues I'm passionate about at the moment - the need for voluntary sector leadership to adapt from funding driven models of mission fulfilment to embracing a wider range of community resources available.


In this post I want to outline the key findings from those three papers I have recently re-read and suggest what they might be telling us about the way organisations need to respond to the new reality of more scarce financial resources.


First up, is a December 2009 report from TCC Group, published for the USA's Reimagining Service initiative and with perhaps one of the best titles I've ever come across, Positive Deviants in Volunteerism and Service. The report summarises findings from work done using TCC Group's Core Capacity Assessment Tool (CCAT) which examined the effectiveness of non-profit organisations against four core competencies.  The work sought to find links between effective volunteer management and effective organisations, in other words those that positively deviated from the average/norm.


Key findings from the report were that:

• When organisations engage and manage any number of volunteers well, they are significantly better led and managed than organisations not engaging volunteers or engaging them but not managing them well.
  
  
• Of the eight volunteer management behaviours explored, there was plenty of scope for improvement, with organisations especially needing to focus balance the involvement of skilled and unskilled volunteers, defining roles for volunteers and resourcing volunteers to do their work.
  
  
• There appeared to be a tipping point of engaging ten volunteers.  Organisations that involve more than ten volunteers, regardless of whether they have figured out all of the best practices necessary to manage those volunteers, have just as much capacity as other organisations that don't involve volunteer but at about half the cost.

Second, in February 2011, the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration (MAVA) published their report into The Status of Minnesota's Volunteer Programs in a Shifting Environment 2010.  This report followed a similar study the previous year and so was able to draw some conclusions as to the effects of organisations' responses to the financial crisis in regard to volunteer management.

The MAVA report concluded that:

• Organisations were increasingly reliant on volunteers who were having a real impact during tough financial times as organisations adapt to the new reality.
  
  
• Cutting staff for volunteer programmes results in fewer volunteers and less service.
  
  
• It is unrealistic to expect continued growth through volunteers without increased investment in management and support for volunteers.
  

Finally, at the end of May 2011, Skills Third Sector issued a position statement on why volunteer management requires specific skills.  The statement succinctly outlines how volunteer management differs from the management of paid staff and summarises some of the key skills effective volunteer managers must have.  The authors conclude by saying that:

"...the evidence from research is that investing in volunteer managers is the best way to raise the skills and opportunities for all volunteers in the voluntary sector. Not understanding the different skills needed to manage volunteers and how they differ from managing paid staff, can lead to poor quality services for the people who use the services [and] poor volunteering experiences for volunteers."

To summarise:

• Organisations that manage volunteers well are better led and managed overall than organisations that don't involve volunteers or don't manage them effectively.
  
  
• If an organisation involves more than ten volunteers, they seem to have as much capacity as organisations that don't involve volunteers at just shy of half the cost.
  
  
• Increased volunteer involvement can be an effective way for organisations to continue to deliver and develop effective client services in tough economic times.
  
  
• Conversely, cutting resources for volunteer programmes results in fewer volunteers and reduced service provision.
  
  
• Investing in volunteer managers is the best way to raise the skills and opportunities for all volunteers.
  
  
• Failure to understand the distinctive nature of volunteer management can lead to a poor experience for volunteers and poor quality services for clients.

So, what is all this telling us?


I suggest that it is saying we need to rethink our response to the challenging times we find ourselves in.  


Many organisations seem to be increasingly fixated on generating more income from different sources to replace the money being lost due to cuts and tightened personal finances.  They continue to invest increasing amounts of money to find ways of getting more golden eggs from a dying goose.  Sometimes this investment comes as a result of cutting resources to the volunteer programme.


This dependence on money to supply the resources to enable voluntary sector organisations to achieve their missions has to change.  If it doesn't then organisations will go one of three ways: 

1. close down;
   
   
2. chase funding and so risk mission drift;
   
   
3. compromise or limit their mission and vision because they don't have the money to do what we want.

But things can be different.  The sector needs to think differently and get wise to how they can make best use of non-cash resources, investing the money they do have to maximise the impact of and value rather than chasing an ever shrinking post of money.  


This means opening up to the potential that well led and managed volunteers can bring to the way we work.  This means being wise to the way the world is changing and the opportunities this presents for donated time if organisations are smart enough to adapt to the new realities.


I think many leaders are adrift, unsure of how to respond to the challenges they currently face because the environment has changed so dramatically from what they know.  These leaders need to become more aware of the kind of findings summarised above and be encouraged to apply the learning to their organisations.  Volunteer managers have a key role to play in this.


Now is the time to step forward, to educate and support your CEOs and their senior management colleagues to change.


Have you done this, supporting senior managers to reduce your organisation's dependency on cash and embrace non-cash resources like volunteers?  How did you do it?  What role did you play?  What advice do you have for others?


Do you think this is step beyond your role?  Why?  What support might you need to play such a change advocate role?


Please share your thoughts below.  


[See also my Third Sector blog from June 2011 which looks at this issue from a voluntary sector leadership perspective.]

Six Key Trends (and what they might mean for volunteerism)

I recently came across a good resource for small businesses called Start Up Donut. Their blogs and articles are helpful and I can reccomend following them on Twitter for their best links and bits of bit sized wisdom.

Last month, one of their articles caught my eye, "Six key trends to bear in mind when planning your business".  I thought the issues highlighted were potentially transferable to leaders and managers of volunteers so this blog aims to draw out what those parallels might be.

The tyranny of speed

We live life at a faster pace than before. We used to be content with 28 days delivery and now get stressed if delivery isn't available next day.  The expectations of volunteers and those seeking to volunteer are equally high. We need to respond quickly, making people wait wil communicate that we don't care and they'll end up going elsewhere. Even if all we do is acknowledge (and thank!) volunteers for getting in touch and advise them of when were likely to give a fuller response.

Like it or not, speed is of the essence.

The impossibility of controlling the market

We're starting to see websites that allow volunteers to rate their volunteering experiences (e.g. Timebank and Charity Republic). We're likely to see more of this in reponse to encouargement of such initiatives in the recent Giving White Paper.

The broader policy agenda of Big Society and associated deregulation efforts are encouraging more people to take action to meet social needs. Alongside this we have the growth of social entreprenurship and shifts to more volunteers wanting a say over their volunteering and having considerable skills to bring to the party.

We have less and less control over how people engage in volunteering and what they tell others about it. We need to be more agile, more flexible, more adaptable. We need to offer better experiences for volunteers and focus as much on their needs as what we want from them.

Be authentic in whatever you're planning

Following on from the previous trend, if we market volunteering as one thing and then deliver something very different people will glady share their bad experience with others. Using social media such messages can quickly travel far and wide leaving our reputation damaged.

We need to be able to walk our talk and deliver on what we offer volunteers. This authenticity and integrity is critical if we want to run a succesful volunteer programme.

Add more choice

When I was a child we had three TV channels. Now we have nearly 600 available in the UK.  We live our lives in an endless barrage of choice, from the coffee we drink to the destinations of the holidays we take.

We need to reflect this comfort with and desire for choice in the volunteering opportunities we offer. People don't want to see that they can do a couple of things with you, especially if they want a variety of experiences. So evaluate what your organisation's needs and desires are and explore the potential for a wide variety of ways for people to give you their time and skills.

Can you outsource any skills or processes?

As I mentioned earlier we have a richness of skills possesed by volunteers and potential volunteers like never before. From baby boomers with long high powered careers to some amazingly bright young people.

Many organisations have less money than in the past, especially with the cuts hitting public and voluntary sectors hard at the moment. Yet demand for services is increasing.

Faced with such challenges we have the opportunity to re-evaluate what volunteers can bring to the table. We mustn't limit our vision to that which we can afford to pay people to do. We have to look at the needs we must meet and decide how best we can meet them, incuding the powerful potential of volunteers.

The definition of scarcity has changed

The things we have a more freely available than ever before. The demands on our lives are greater than ever. Today, time is scarce. We all have the same amount each day but it is under pressure like never before. Even in this challenging financial season, our time is our most valuable resource.

So when people freely pledge their time to us we must not waste it. We need to make sure our volunteers have a rich experience and make a real difference to our causes.

So, those are my thoughts. Please share yours by making a comment below.

If you'd like to discuss what these trends might mean for your organistion then please get in touch to see how Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd might be able to help you.