A missed opportunity

Just a few days ago Third Sector magazine published the welcome news that the government and Nesta were making a £4million investment into volunteering by people aged over 50. This comes just under three months since I blogged about the apparent youth obsession the UK has when it comes to volunteering and no, I’m not taking the credit for it!

With an ageing population and a decreasing proportion of the total population being made up of the under 30s, it is long overdue to see any sort of meaningful investment in volunteering by older people. In recent days the Royal Voluntary Service has called for a more strategic approach to volunteering by retirees and in July a paper was published by the Commission on the Voluntary Sector and Ageing reflecting on the slow progress over the preceding twelve months to address it’s recommendations, including those around volunteerism.

So £4million is welcome.

But, it is a drop in ocean compared to the £1billion being invested in National Citizens Service over the life of the 2015–2020 Westminster parliament. £4million amounts to just 0.4% of the NCS investment, highlighting how disproportionate the funding is!

More concerning is what the funding will support. One aspect was described in the Third Sector article as:

“The Join In Stay fund will award grants of up to £50,000 and non-financial support from behavioural science experts for organisations to carry out randomised controlled trials to understand best encourages volunteers to continue to give their time regularly.”

Whilst long term, regular, committed volunteering might have been a hallmark of the duty oriented parents of the baby boomers, it is not associated at all with the way the post-war generation want to give time. Repeated studies have shown that they want choice, flexibility, the ability to fit volunteering around busy, post-retirement lives that involve travel, leisure, caring for others (e.g. parents and grandchildren) etc.. As the Commission on the Voluntary Sector and Ageing said:

“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.”

Furthermore, another element of the funding was described by Third Sector as:

“Up to £100,000 in grants will be available from the Give More Get More – Exploring Intensive Volunteering fund to support organisations in trials of intensive volunteering placements, such as gap year-type trips, for people approaching or in retirement.”

Which leaves me asking why so much of this new funding is being spent looking at the long term, regular and committed model of volunteering which is becoming less and less relevant to the over 50s?

Simply put I think Nesta and the government have got this wrong. They are either ignorant of the realities of what people over the age of 50 want from volunteering or they just don’t care, remaining wedded to a form of volunteering that is less and less popular. Whatever the reason, with such a small investment in such an important area, I fear that a large amount of this money is going to be wasted. What a missed opportunity!

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.  ↩

One Nation Labour: renewing our bond with the third sector

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

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

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Our response

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

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

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

What could a Labour Government do to encourage and support more people to volunteer? 
We question the assumption that more volunteers are what our society needs. We are concerned Labour are falling into the common trap of assuming that more volunteers is a measure of success. Any professional leader and manager of volunteers would be quite clear that if an organisation’s mission can be fulfilled effectively with ten volunteers then to recruit 100 to do the same task is wasteful and inefficient.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Reflections on David Blunkett's proposed National Volunteer Programme

On 31st August, David Blunkett MP launched a report calling for the creation of a new National Volunteer Programme (NVP) as a response to the recent urban riots in the UK.  You can access his proposals here.

Such a programme of national community service for young people isn't new.  Mr Blunkett has made such suggestions in the past, thanks in no small measure to his long-standing association with Community Service Volunteers who run such volunteering placements and have done so successfully for many years.

Yet this particular proposal leaves me rather cold.  Here's why:


Opportunism and questionable evidence
Mr Blunkett's proposals smack of blatant opportunism following hot on the heels of the recent riots.

Rather than giving any evidence of why he feels the NVP approach would solve the complex problems at the root of the recent unrest, Mr Blunkett chooses to focus on the results of a YouGov poll taken shortly after the riots that said that 77% of people support compulsory service for young people (even though he states the NVP would be voluntary - mixed messages?).  Not a surprising survey result really given the flames had hardly been extinguished in British cities.

Mr Blunkett further states the case for a NVP on the basis that community service was a success in Germany and in China.  So his justification lies in a now scrapped German alternative to mandatory military service and a programme from a Communist dictatorship not know for its glowing human rights record?

Finally, in justfying his projected costs for the programme, Mr Blunkett argues they are drop in the ocean compared to the cost to the nation of youth crime and re-offending.  Yet Mr Blunkett fails to draw any link between such an NVP and evidence that it would reduce such costs to society.  If any organisation submitted such a proposal to a funder on so dodgy an evidence base it would be immediately rejected.

So much for evidence based policy making when one can just ride the crest of opportunistic public opinion.

Yet more money for young people's volunteering
The last government spent £117million on v.  This government is spending a small fortune on National Citizen's Service.  Now we are being encouraged to spend £950million (just short of £1billion) on Mr Blunkett's NVP (total direct and indirect costs based on 100,000 volunteers as per the figures in the paper) with no evidence that it will solve the problems that cause the riots.

Don't get me wrong, young people's volunteering is an important issue.  v have done some great work as did Millennium Volunteers before them.  And, with a fraction of the budget, Orange RockCorps do fabulous work engaging young people in volunteering.  Yet young people are a shrinking proportion of this country's ageing population and a group that the UK will reply upon to pay the taxes needed to meet the pension deficit, the health and social care deficit, the national debt repayments etc..  When exactly will they have time to volunteer?

Mr Blunkett acknowledges that young people are most likely to volunteer and states that 32% of young people aged 16-25 volunteer but in "limited" ways.  Their committment is limited because they live busy and complex lives like the rest of us.  Perhaps the money might be better spent engaging the over 25's, who volunteer much less, to engage in their communities, alongside young people.

Ah, but Mr Blunkett thinks the NVP important because young people were the majority of the rioters.  It is clearly aimed at getting our feckless youth off the streets for nine months whilst they serve society, thus becoming better citizens.  In that case, I ask again - where is the evidence that nearly a £billion of money spent on the proposed NVP would solve the problems that led to the riots?

Involvement of people knowledgeable about volunteering
As with many such proposals warm words are used about working with existing "major volunteer organisations" to make Mr Blunkett's ideas a reality.

Yet his proposed operation board seems to exclude agencies with expertise in volunteering in favour of health, crime prevention etc..

There is no explanation of the basis for the proposed £2,500 per participant indirect costs, other than it is calculated from a three year old CSV leaflet.  Would this make involvement in the scheme financially viable? Certainly £2,500 seems rather low if an organisation is to meet the management costs of a full time volunteer for nine months (although I accept that is a gut instinct judgement rather than one based on any evidence).

And where is the emphasis on helping and supporting organisations to provide nine-month, full time volunteering placements for young people?  Is that what organisations want and need in terms of volunteer engagement?  It doesn't seem to be the case for the British Red Cross.

I suspect that even if this idea had an evidence base that supported it as a sensible use of money - and I contend that it doesn't - the implementation issues have yet to be fully considered.

Legislative and ethical barriers
Finally, there are the concerns that will be raised by many in the volunteering movement because whilst this appears to be a voluntary scheme participants would be paid a £3,000 stipend, £1,000 for travel expenses, receive £500 of citizenship training and have their efforts rewarded/incentivised through receipt of a passport that would offer financial and other benefits.

Does this make the scheme volunteering or low paid work?  What might be the implications under employment legislation and national minimum wage if a NVP participant felt aggrieved at their treatment and took their volunteer involving organisation to a tribunal?  Would volunteering organisations want to involve people from a scheme that so stretched the understanding of volunteering?


These are some of my initial thoughts on Mr Blunkett's proposals.  Whilst I am sure they are well intentioned they are, in my view, opportunistic, ill considered and not fully thought through.

What do you think?  Is Mr Blunkett onto something or barking up the wrong tree?  Please do share your thoughts by leaving a comment.