Five things I'd like to say about calculating the economic value of volunteering

Since incorporating Volunteering England into their work, NCVO have started producing some good blogs on volunteering. These are mainly written by their Executive Director of Volunteering & Development, Justin Davis Smith (former Volunteering England CEO) but good material from other authors appears too.

Just a few weeks ago a new blog post appeared entitled "Five things you need to know about calculating the economic value of volunteering". This post summarised a paper from Jakub Dostál and Marek Vyskočil of Masaryk University’s Department of public economy and administration which won the prize for best paper in the New Researcher’s Session at the Voluntary Sector and Volunteering Research Conference 2014.

In the post there are five tips for "confronting economic calculations in your work or in someone else’s". As I read the article I started to feel downhearted yet again at the lack of awareness of the dangers of perpetuating the myth of economic value of volunteering and the absence of vision or ambition to do any better.

I'm not going to attempt a full analysis of the pitfalls of attributing notional wage 'values' to the work of volunteers. My American colleague Jayne Cravens has written an excellent commentary on the problems of valuing volunteers in economic terms. I've also written an analysis of the well intentioned by flawed efforts by the International Labor (sic) Organisation (ILO) to capture economic measures of volunteering globally in their Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work. If you are interested in exploring this topic in more depth then both those sources are good starting points.

What I do want to do is provide five responses to the five things the NCVO blog (author unknown) tells us we need to know about measuring the economic value of volunteering.


1 - Remember it's an estimate
Yes it is, but everyone from the ILO down seems so wedded to it that almost no energy is being invested in coming up with something better. Economic value is measured because it's easy, not because it's the best thing to measure. That speaks volumes about the actual value placed on the contribution of volunteer to society when so little effort is willing to be spent trying to get more accurate.


2 - Estimates rely significantly on the type of replacement wage
I absolutely agree with the author here. They flag up why economic measures of volunteering are not only an estimate but a poor one at that. The ILO manual does try to standardise this but in practice that's an approach that is far more complex and involved than people are usually willing to be. Remember, this is an area where we can't even be bothered to develop a decent measure, just the easiest estimate.


3 - There are still good reasons for using the concept of replacement wages
No there aren't!

First of all, economic measures focus on wage replacement methodologies (i.e. attributing a notional wage value to the work done by volunteers) don't actually measure an output or on outcome. Rather, they attribute a financial amount to an input, namely the time that volunteers give. In my view they therefore fail to calculate any kind of meaningful value to the work of volunteers. Rather they ascribe an economic amount to something we'd never pay for anyway. Even if we did accept that there was some kind of value in these measures, it is calculated on the same terms as paid work, from which we know volunteering is distinctive.

In an age where demonstrating actual value - the contribution made to society, the difference made by giving time - is increasingly critical, whether in effectively recognising volunteers for the work they do or for securing income from funders, we have got to get better at evidencing this for volunteering. Replacement wage calculations do not do this and need replacing with something much better.

Second, the author argues that we should use economic measures because there are existing "statistical systems and surveys". That's following the same line of reasoning as before - we'll measure it because it's easy not because it's the right thing to do. They try to justify this by saying that in the absence of any other methodologies we should go with what we've got lest we end up with something of lower quality, done without academic support.

Frankly, this is someone saying, "Look, this is what we are prepared to measure. If you don't like it then we think you couldn't possibly come up with something yourselves and because academics wouldn't be involved if you did it wouldn't be any good".


4 - Ask for more: don’t forget future research
Here, the article's author accepts that there may be a better measure out there and that we should always ask for more. In fact, they say the academic world should ask for more but given the attitudes we've seen thus far I'd argue that it is the volunteering movement that should ask for more. For more interest in this topic by academics. For more vision and ambition that just settling for what's easy to measure. For more respect for the intelligence of leaders and managers of volunteers rather than assuming superiority over us.

They also argue that what we have now is better than we've had in the past. I'd make two observations here.

First, what we have now is not that different than we had 15-20 years ago. Progress on measuring the true value of volunteering is glacial. We may well ask for more but if we carry on as we are we're looking at decades passing before we get anything better.

Second, is what we have now actually better than not having economic measures for volunteering? Do statements like "Volunteers are worth £500m to the NHS" help? Do they instead suggest to ill-informed decision makers that they could cut budgets and get volunteers in for free instead? Big Society anyone? I'm sure many could do without these problems which we encounter because flawed economic measures of volunteering are so common.


5 - Not everything that counts can be counted
Here, the author acknowledges that other methods of calculating true value such as SROI exist. Again though, they state that these, "measure the social impact of volunteering, but it is extremely difficult to cover all the many types of benefits". So they conclude their article with an admission that its hard, so we'll stick what what we've got. Easy is better than meaningful. Again! Sigh.


What do you think?

Are there better ways to measure the value of the contribution volunteers make to society? What are they and how do they work?

What's been your experience (good and bad) of using economic measures of volunteering?

Is there anything else you'd like to say?

Has the time finally come to stop talking about job substitution?

Job substitution is a theme I've written about quite a few times (see these examples from this very blog). For those unfamiliar with the term, job substitution is used in the volunteering world to describe a situation where volunteers replace paid staff. It is a flawed term (as I argued in a posting back in May 2012) and it leads to a parallel and worryingly common belief that volunteers should only complement and supplement the work of paid staff. This position is even enshrined in a charter between Volunteering England (now NCVO) and The Trade Union's Congress (TUC).

It is this doctrine of 'complement and supplement' that I want to focus on in this post.

There are two reasons for this.

First, I attended a joint meeting of EVDC and NNVIA last week where we were invited to suggest policy positions NCVO might take with government in the run up to the UK's 2015 general election. One of the tables said that we might have to change our position on job substitution as it no longer matched the reality that many volunteer involving organisations (VIOs) face. Too many VIOs just cannot afford the levels of paid staff they once had and volunteers need to be a realistic option for delivering the organisation's mission in future, something the 'complement and supplement' position can make difficult to consider.

Instead of disagreement there seemed to be general agreement in the room.

To me this was brilliant news. It signalled that finally people might be ready to have a grown up and intelligent discussion about the roles of paid staff and volunteers in organisations. It signalled that the days of people being slapped down for trying to have a debate might finally be over. It signalled that instead of a wall of silence when this issue gets raised in blogs, volunteer managers might actually be ready to get stuck into the complex and delicate issues involved.

The second reason for writing about the issue again was Susan Ellis' excellent December 2013 Hot Topic, "Don't Let The History Made By Volunteers Fall Through The Cracks Of Time".

I was recently running a workshop in London with a predominantly female group. Over lunch, discussion turned to the 'complement and supplement' doctrine with many people saying how they completely agreed with it. So I asked the women present if they thought they would have the right to vote if we'd argued that the suffragettes should only have complemented and supplemented the work of paid staff.

In the UK, women have the right to vote because of the dedication, hard work and sacrifice of volunteer suffragettes. They weren't paid and to suggest that they should only have complemented and supplemented paid staff is an insult to those involved in the suffrage movement.

You see, as Susan Ellis is fond of saying, nobody gets paid to start a revolution. Social change happens, more often than not, because of the efforts and sometimes sacrifices of volunteers. They may not be called volunteers, they may not be recognised by history as volunteers, but do not be fooled into thinking that the major changes in our society are made exclusively or mainly by paid staff.

In history, as Susan argues, volunteers have played a crucial role in shaping the world we live in. If those individuals had sat around waiting for someone to be paid to make the change or had decided their efforts should only complement and supplement the work of paid staff then we would still be in the dark ages.

In modern society we face challenges unprecedented in human history, from global poverty & hunger to an ageing population, from wealth inequality to the environment. By suggesting that the efforts of volunteers should only 'complement and supplement' the efforts of paid staff working on these challenges is to vastly reduce the pool of knowledge, talent and capacity to find solutions. That is to all our detriments.

My sincere hope is that as we enter a new year the time really has come for the debate about job substitution to move on and grow up.

The missed opportunity of London 2012?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What lessons do you think we can all learn?

What would you have done differently and why?

“We’re doomed, doomed I tell you!"

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

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

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

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

Let me give you some examples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this isn’t an isolated example.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what then is the way forward?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think is the way forward?

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

The Giving White Paper: One Year On - an analysis

The government recently published its “Giving White Paper: One Year On” report, outlining progress since the white paper was released and plans for the next couple of years. 

As I wrote an analysis of the original paper I felt a similar look at this progress report was a good idea.  What follows are my initial thoughts and I’d love for you to add your own via comments at the end.

Giving isn’t just about money

One of the most striking aspects of the new paper is the relative paucity of reference to volunteering compared to a year ago.  It seems government, like many in the sector, seem to be (increasingly?) blind to the fact that people give time as well as money.  In fact many give both – and volunteers give more money than non-volunteers – but this is ignored with an almost sole focus on giving money apparently at the heart of government thinking.

Thanks in part to the Give It Back George (GIBG) campaign, the much vaunted – and often delayed - Giving Summit appears to have focused exclusively on giving money, and within that been dominated by the GIBG which, according to the treasury, only concerned approximately 340 donors.

In the new One Year On paper volunteering gets little attention.  There is mention of it in respect to criminal record checks and proposals for these to be portable (although it is still unclear if these would remain free to volunteers).  There is also, and quite interestingly, mention of volunteering in regard to Waitrose who are apparently extending their ‘green token’ scheme so customers can vote for which organisations they want Waitrose staff to volunteer for.  Quite what Waitrose staff seem to think about being voluntold by shoppers is conveniently glossed over. And of course we have National Citizen’s Service which, it should be noted, is only partly about volunteering and largely about conditioning young people into how government thinks they should be.

There is, at first sight, some glimmer of hope as government refer to a priority for the coming year to be supporting providers of opportunities to make giving easier, but further reading reveals this to only be focused on providers of opportunities to give money.

Government’s complicity with many in the sector to make giving synonymous only with giving money is a worrying development, not least because it supports the sidelining and subordination of the giving of time at a time when we perhaps need volunteers more than ever and where donors (of money) are in ever shorter supply.

Baby Boomers

Last year I welcomed the White Paper’s inclusion of baby boomers in addition to the ever present focus in the UK on young people volunteering.  As I noted at the time, demographic shifts in the population are resulting in many more older people than younger people, now and in future.  Couple that with the interests, motivations and expectations of the boomers being very different from their parents (who have been the mainstay of many organisations core volunteers for years) and we have a growing market of potential volunteers who need much more consideration. 

Whilst everyone’s favourite (former) Big Society Czar Lord Wei has recently proposed a National Citizens Service for retirees, the One Year On paper fails to mention boomers at all.  Instead we get a sole focus on youth engagement, including volunteering – socially engineering a generation of givers through expensive national programmes that, in Opposition, the Tories promised would not happen on their watch.  I’ve already highlighted my anxiety with constantly talking about volunteering to a generation facing unprecedented levels of youth unemployment and the government doesn’t say anything here to alleviate those concerns.

Quality and ease of giving

Last year I acknowledged the original Giving White Paper for giving attention to the importance of the giving experience.  If people give – time or money – and have a great time doing so, they are surely more likely to do so again.  Conversely, if they don’t have a great experience not only may they not give to that cause or organisation again, they may in fact be turned off giving altogether.

A year on and this focus on the giving experience is gone, replaced by the increasingly dominant view that the priority is to make it easier to give, with apparently little focus on the quality of the experience.

From my perspective, this approach over the last year has resulted in an almost bewildering array of new (mainly) websites through which people can find opportunities to donate time or money.  Does this ever expanding number of websites make it easier or more confusing?  Does it result in more giving, or do we simply see people pledging to give (as with the recent Jubilee Hour) but not always following through on that pledge?

In her July 2012 Hot Topic, Susan Ellis look at whether such a focus on pledge programmes and calls to action really make a difference to volunteering or whether they are, in fact, just the Emperor’s New Clothes?

It is all well and good for government to highlight the work of Future First who are helping schools develop alumni programmes which, One Year On suggests, will create a pool of 75,000 volunteers.  The key questions, however, are; what will 75,000 volunteers do in our schools?; how are schools being supported to develops opportunities for these volunteers?; what resources will schools have to manage these volunteers?; etc. etc.

What we need is not more schemes to dress up volunteering as something sexy and new. 

What we need is not new campaigns to try and encourage more people to give. 

What we need is organisations to be encouraged not to cut their volunteer management posts at the first sight of tightening budgets.

What we need is investment (by organisations primarily but government showing willing and leadership wouldn’t hurt) to increasing the capacity to involve volunteers in ways the meet the goals of volunteer involving organisations and fit with the interests and availabilities of people in our 21^st century society.

We should be transforming the country’s attitude to giving time by giving people great opportunities which they enjoy engaging with and want to do again and again, not by developing more and more websites or running campaigns to show willing but little action.

Sadly however, there is nothing in One Year On about volunteer leadership and management.  Nothing.  The support of the last government for volunteer management now seems a distant memory.  We appear to have it all to do again.

Impact measurement

In keeping with the zeitgeist, the One Year On paper makes reference to the importance of impact measurement in stimulating giving.  To an extent, this is a good thing.  Organisations that can demonstrate the difference the contribution of time and/or money can make to their mission are in a strong position to secure support, especially if they can demonstrate how people can make such an impact through giving in ways the fit with their complex and busy lives.

However, there seems to be little acknowledgement of the need for any kind of assessment of the impact of the work the government has supported over the last year.  We’re not saying there hasn’t been any, but with £millions spent and £40million more promised to "mobilise large numbers of people to get involved with good causes", it would be good to see some evidence that what government has supported and wants to support in future has/will actually make a difference to all forms of giving in the UK.

Which leads on to…

…Civil service volunteering

The One Year On paper makes passing reference to the government’s pledge last year to get thousands more civil servants volunteering.  But that’s all we get – a mention of the proposal.  No report on progress.  Has anything happened?  What impact has it had so far?  Or is it a case of the sector must do impact reporting but government doesn’t have to?

Infrastructure

It hasn’t been a great year for volunteering infrastructure since the launch of the original Giving White Paper.  We’ve seen some Volunteer Centres close or scale back their services and most recently there has been the announcement of the “loss” of Volunteering England as they merge into NCVO.  This could be a good thing for volunteering as I suggest in my blog on the proposed merger, but even if it is we will still see the loss of a distinct national infrastructure body for volunteering (in England at least) as opposed to the voluntary sector, the first time we will have no such body in over forty years.

The One Year On paper is relatively silent about infrastructure, at least in terms of its importance in enabling volunteering to happen.  As I’ve highlighted already there seems to be a focus on technology and website as a short-cut solution to good brokerage.  Whilst investment in long standing sites like Do-It is welcome, not everyone is online, not everyone wants to find out about volunteering online and sometimes we know face-to-face support for those who want to volunteer is far more important and necessary.

Local volunteering infrastructure gets two main mentions in the One Year On paper.  First is in regard to the government’s Transforming Local Infrastructure Fund.  Yes, this fund should have some positive impacts on volunteering locally but it is primarily focused on infrastructure support for the voluntary and community sector and that is not the same as support for the volunteering sector.

Second, is the reference to an opportunity for "pioneering Volunteer Centres to test ideas for modernising their offer" via funding from the NESTA innovation in giving fund.  On the face of it this is much more positive but the key question is what does this mean?  What is a pioneering Volunteer Centre?  What does modernising their offer mean - more brokerage done online?  So a cautious welcome until we see the detail.

Finally, towards the start, the One Year On Paper states that:

“We have also got to recognise that this a time when many people feel they have less time and money and may be reluctant to do more”. 

Interesting considering recent research seems to indicates that the act of volunteering makes people feel like they have more time.  As the researchers put it:

“Ultimately, giving time makes people more willing to commit to future engagements despite their busy schedules.”

Perhaps the thinking that inspired at least some of the Giving White Paper is already out of date?  Or is this an area where evidence based policy making isn’t really done?

So, what do you think of the One Year On paper and the issues it raises?

Do you agree or disagree with anything I’ve said?  Why?

What are your observations on the government’s attempts to get people to give more, whether time, or money or both?

Let’s hear what you have to say.

NCVO and VE in formal talks about merger

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

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

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

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

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

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

What might the implications be?

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

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

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

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

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

Where might the proposed merger leave volunteer management?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, over to you.

What are your thoughts on the proposed merger?

Good news?

Bad news?

Why?

Let's hear what you think

We need to think differently about job substitution

In April Volunteering England, in conjunction with other strategic partners of the Office For Civil Society,  published "A Guide To Avoiding Job Substitution".  The guide aims to "help organisations ensure volunteers are not substituting for paid staff when services are being cut".

This whole issue is a thorny, complex and emotive one.  It is an issue that mainly effects voluntary and public sector organisations and it isn't a new one.  Sadly it is also an issue that many in the sector, including volunteer managers, shy away from.  Because of its emotive, complex and challenging nature, job substitution is often a topic that, if given any time at conferences and the like, provokes such strong views that few want to face the conflict it raises.

Last summer I wrote an article for The Guardian with colleague Lynn Blackadder entitled "Dispelling the myths around job substitution by volunteers".  Lynn and I wrote the piece to try and constructively help organisations facing the reality of cuts to think through the issues associated with volunteers doing work that was once done by paid staff.  Out intent was good but, as you'll see from some of the comments, we were criticised none the less.

So Volunteering England are to be commended for taking a constructive stance on the issue.  Their guidance is sound, if perhaps a bit brief given the complexity of the matter.  Their exhortation to plan well in advance of any changes from paid to volunteer 'staff' is certainly one that is not heard enough.

What I am less comfortable with in Volunteering England's document are some of the underlying assumptions about volunteering and job substitution.  These aren't unique to VE, I've come across them before, but I do think they need highlighting and perhaps challenging if we are to get the matter in perspective.  I want to pick out the three main ones.

“Volunteer motives vary, but depriving paid workers of an income is not one of them.”
- Noble, Rogers and Fryar.

First up, right in the first line of the Volunteering England document, it says the issue has become critical.  Really?  Is it that serious?  However challenging an issue it is, I don't see or hear of it so often that I'd say it's critical, and I like to think I have my finger on the pulse of volunteerism.  Sure there have been some high profile cases - notably Surrey libraries - but there is also a lot of baseless scaremongering too, usually union driven and linking a modest increase in the number of people volunteering with an inevitable removal of all paid work in an area.

With the levels of paid staff growing again in the sector (after a 40% rise in the first decade of this century) and with volunteering levels largely static, the statistics suggest it isn't that big a deal.  In fact, what may be a bigger issue is volunteers being replaced by paid staff!

Second, the term job substitution doesn't help.  It implies that one volunteer can be brought in to substitute for one employee.  This almost never happens and demonstrates a misunderstanding about volunteering.  

In the article Lynn and I wrote for The Guardian we talked about job displacement and job replacement rather than job substitution:

• Displacement – when paid staff make way for (are displaced) so that volunteers can fill their roles. 

• Replacement – when work previously done by paid staff is reallocated to volunteers, i.e volunteers replace employees as the means of delivering a service.

In my view this is a much more helpful way of looking at the situation.  If paid staff are being deliberately removed so volunteers can do the work instead then I think most people would have an issue.  If, however, the paid staff are going - perhaps because of inevitable cuts - and the choice is to stop the service or bring volunteers in to pick up some of the work paid staff used to do, then I'm sure most people would recognise that the latter option is preferable to the work stopping all together.

To be fair to Volunteering England, this terminology of replacement and displacement does occur in their guidance and they do helpfully make the point that the boundaries between the two can sometimes be very thin.  But why wasn't this terminology used throughout?  Why do people who are supposed to be standing up for volunteering insist on using unhelpful 'substitution' language instead of making a clear argument about the issues?

Take the example from page one of VE's guidance:

"There are a range of scenarios that could be considered job substitution. At one extreme, an organisation may decide to cut jobs and recruit volunteers to fill the gaps. At the other, when a service has been withdrawn due to funding cuts, members of its community or service-users may volunteer themselves to run services which meet similar needs." 

"The first case is clearly a direct replacement of paid staff, and it is therefore likely that the organisation would receive objections from staff and trade unions, and find that volunteers do not want to be involved. In the second case, volunteers are, to some extent, providing services previously delivered by paid staff, but now as a new group taking over the service. This service could, however, be significantly different from the one delivered by paid staff." 

The first case, when looked at as job substitution, may appear to be a case of volunteers displacing paid staff.  But will it be one volunteer for one employee?  Very unlikely.  And what if this were a case of replacement rather than displacement?  Looking at it that way puts a different complexion on the situation.

Interestingly, the logic of the second case suggests it would be acceptable for a public service to make staff redundant, convert to a co-operative set up staffed with volunteers and that would be alright!

Third, the Volunteering England guidance states that:

One of the key principles of this charter is that the involvement of volunteers should complement and supplement the work of paid staff.

This is common language around job substitution and it's language I detest.  It totally fails to recognise the distinct value that volunteering can bring compared to paid staff.  It dismisses anything unique and precious about volunteering and simply subordinates it to a second-class activity next to paid work

I've worked in programmes where volunteers had a credibility in the eyes of the clients that paid staff could never have, a credibility that comes from the client viewing the volunteer as someone who wants to spend time with them, not someone who is paid to spend time with them.  That is distinctive to volunteers.  It isn't about them supplementing or complementing paid staff, it is about them bringing something to the organisation that paid staff cannot.

As long as we perpetuate this second class status through our use of language, then volunteering will bee seen as nothing more than the poor cousin to paid work, and volunteer managers as poor cousins to other professionals.

In conclusion then, please be clear that I am not having a dig at Volunteering England.  As I said at the start, I commend them for publishing this guidance.  Rather, I am commenting on the philosophical basis on which their guidance and many other people's practice is based.  I am doing this to stimulate debate, to challenge thinking and, above all, to try and help us all (myself included) to do a better job of standing up for volunteering in the challenging environment we face.

So what do you think?

Do you agree?

Am I talking a load of codswallop?

Please don't be silent, join the debate by leaving a comment below.

As this is an emotive issue and one I have seen result in hurtful comments in the past, I will please ask for comments to be respectful of others views, even if they don't agree with you.  Thank you.

Why so silent?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe we have to do it without them?

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

Write a letter to your local paper.

Write a letter to a national paper.

Comment on an article online.

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

Do something.

If we don't it appears nobody else will.

Looking back on 2011

OK, so where did 2011 go?

Seriously, it seems like only a few days ago we were entering into 2011.  Lots of people I've spoken to this year have commented on how fast the year has gone by.  Before we know it we're on the cusp of 2012.

This post is an opportunity for me to reflect on the year coming to a close and say some thank you's before, in the new year, I consider what may lay ahead in the year to come.

For me, 2011 started on a low note.  Never one to be particularly enthused with new years (for me it always feels more like 'here we go again' than 'yay, its January again!') 2011 was, I knew, the year I was going to lose my job.  I ended 2010 having failed at interview stage to secure a new job.  January was just three short months away from redundancy from Volunteering England (VE).

Not far into 2011 I decided I was going to take the plunge and set up in business for myself when I left VE.  As soon as I made the decision things began to fall into place.  It seemed I'd made the right call as people responded to my news enthusiastically and the first invitations to pitch for work came from prospective clients.

Considerable activity ensued to get the business set up in time for my last day at work.  I bought domain names, set up email accounts, built a website, set up this blog, established a Twitter account, found insurance, a bank, bought equipment etc..

I remain indebted to:

• Mike Marshall at eastsleepthink who helped me immeasurably by designing my logo.  If ever you need design work doing, Mike's your man.
• David Swann and Nathan Hopkins at Greenstones, my amazing accountants.
• Kate Moss (yes, really!) at Barclays for getting the bank account set up.
• My brother-in-law David Byworth who helped me learn how to build a website.
• My great friend Susan Ellis of Energize who has been a constant source of support and challenge.

March was an emotional month, closing down projects that had occupied me for the previous 3-5 years, saying goodbye to friends and colleagues, and having to make others redundant whilst getting set to leave myself.

On the upside I had the chance to kiss goodbye to five years of commuting over 100 miles from Lincolnshire to London and back for four days a week and to the season ticket that cost £6,000+ each year!

And so my journey as Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd started.

I can honestly say I have never looked back.

I've had great fun this year, both in establishing a new business and in meeting & working with some amazing people.  Some of the highlights and thanks owed are, in no particular order:

• Working with the amazing Sue Jones of Volunteer Centre (VC) Warrington.  I've known Sue for many years and have had too few opportunities to work together before 2011.  We put that right this year and will hopefully collaborate even more next year.
• Developing and delivering the Turn Your Organisation Into a Volunteer Magnet tour with Martin J Cowling of People First Total Solutions.  We'll hopefully be bringing the tour back next year and are discussing some exciting developments for early 2013.  Thank you Martin for your friendship and support.
• Working with two other old friends, Lynn Blackadder and Moyra Weston.  We have exciting plans for 2012 - watch this space.
• Being asked to re-work Essential Volunteer Management into a new Complete Handbook on Volunteer Management for the Directory of Social Change (DSC).  Particular thanks to Rick Lynch and Steve McCurley, the book's authors, for the opportunity and to John Martin at DSC for his support and patience.
• Working for and with some amazing clients.  In just nine months we've had over 20 clients, more than I ever dreamt we would have had by the end of 2011.  Thank you all.
• Getting to be a part of the Volunteer Squared team as their UK representative.  Thanks in particular to Tony, Anne and Andrew.
• A big thank you to Gemma Quainton at Third Sector online for asking me to be their blogger on volunteering issues.
• Thank you to everyone who has read this blog.  As I write we've had 8,279 views of 29 posts (this is my 30th).  That's just over 900 views a month.  The most popular post was my analysis of Pathways Through Participation.
• Travelling around Europe during the European Year of Volunteering 2011.  I've been to Dublin (thanks to Volunteer Ireland), Budapest (twice), Brussels (three times) and Warsaw (once).  I've met and worked with some great people and become even more convinced of the value of volunteering organisations in the UK linking up with our fellow European colleagues across the EU.  You can read my thoughts about the European Year of Volunteering in my latest blog for Third Sector.
• Thanks to our newsletter subscribers, the 400+ people who follow the company/me on Twitter and everyone who follows me or I have interacted with on Facebook, LinkedIn, , Flickr and YouTube.

At the risk of this becoming rather like the Oscars, I am sure there are people I haven't thanked.  That's because so many people have been hugely supportive of me and the business in just a short period of time.  

To all of you, a very sincere and heartfelt thank you.

And so 2011 comes to a close.  It has been a rollercoaster ride that I have thoroughly enjoyed.

In my next post I want to share some of my thoughts about volunteering in 2012.

Have a great Christmas and New Year.

Rob

Are Volunteer Centre brokerage services under threat?

There is a great discussion going on over on i-volunteer about the perceived threat to Volunteer Centre's from the current growth in online brokerage services.

I would encourage readers of my blog to go and take a look at the full discussion.  However, I also want to share my response to it here so a wider audience can see my views on the issue.  as ever please do share your thoughts in response by posting comments below.

>>>>>

Brokerage may the first of the six core functions of a Volunteer Centre (VC) but that doesn't make the it the most important.

For a long time I have said that brokerage is actually the outcome of other VC core functions. Brokerage services depend upon VCs working with Volunteer Involving Organisations (VIOs) to develop meaningful opportunities that people want to do, helping VIOs to develop their practice in engaging people effectively as volunteers, and marketing volunteering locally so people know about the option of volunteering.

Brokerage alone does not help address a key (if not the key) problem facing volunteering today - a lack of suitable opportunities that people actually want to do, that they can fit in around their busy and complex lives and that still meets the needs of VIOs. we know that via VCs, interest in volunteering went up 87% a couple of years ago. There hasn't been anything like the same level of increase in volunteering according to the citizenship survey. That speaks volumes. People want to volunteer, they see what's on offer and they say 'no thanks'.

The growth of online brokerage site is not a threat to VCs but an opportunity. An opportunity for them to show the added value of what they do. An opportunity to show how they develop volunteering, not just broker it. An opportunity to show their strengths in supporting people into volunteering who wouldn't use online brokerage systems.

Sadly a number of factors work against VCs in this.

One is that they are largely funded (if they are still funded at all) to put bums on seats and broker people into placements. Until funders of all kinds realise that successful brokerage relies upon these other elements (good practice, marketing, opportunity development etc.) they are always going to struggle to change, especially in hard financial times.

A second factor is that this funding regime focuses VCs onto brokerage can create a victim mentality when other providers come along with new models (including online) and get funding for them.

And you can understand why.

If I run a VC and I do so on what little funding I can get from local government and some whizzy new media types come along and set up an online brokerage system that barely does half of what I do but gets a small fortune from government (or the lottery or whoever) for it, I'd be narked too. And that's what's happening. In fact, government want those new media types to be given - for free - the opportunities VCs post to Do-It so they (the new media types) can broker the opportunities to organisations who pay them for the privilege. That's not fair when VCs work hard to source the opportunities and someone else gets paid for filling them.

[See my post on The Giving White Paper earlier this year for more information on this]

And VlOs don't care so long as they get volunteers.

A third factor is that as VCs become part of other organisations (commonly Councils for Voluntary Service - CVS), often all that remains unique about their volunteering infrastructure role is brokerage. So that's all they have left to focus on. The development and marketing is done by the host agency staff and that's normally aimed at developing voluntary sector organisations not volunteering (which happens across all three sectors). The evidence shows that independent VCs provide a broader range of services, more of the core functions, and are better funded than those run by other bodies. Yet only a third of VCs are independent agencies compared to half five years ago. And with the cuts, that number is probably even lower.

As you can see this is a complex and emotive issue - I know, I lived and breathed it for six years. Some will blame Volunteering England, some will blame government, some will blame the new players on the brokerage block, some will blame everyone.

Who is to blame is not the point. What is done next is the key thing.

For me one of those key things has to be much closer work/dialogue between VCs and VIOs. I remember VCs refusing to go to conferences with VIOs because they didn't see they had anything in common with them. That was never true and is quite frankly a suicidal attitude in this day and age. VIOs need volunteers. VIOs need support to grow their good practice and develop opportunities suitable for 21st century volunteers. If VCs don't help them, someone else will.

The world is a different place from just a few years ago and the old models of doing things need to change to fit that world.

VC brokerage may be under threat but complaining about it won't solve the problem.