Why Francis Maude is wrong and concerns about the sector response

Seventeen years ago today (4th July 1994) I started work.  I didn't know it at the time but the job I took at the University of Surrey was a volunteer management role, recruiting a placing undergraduates as classroom assistants in local schools.  The experience I gained in that role led me on to subsequent jobs in volunteer leadership and management and to a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding career in their field.


So it is perhaps no surprise that I was intrigued by Francis Maude's comments last week that people made redundant from the public sector should, with little or no training, be deployed into the voluntary sector to manage volunteers because "There is nothing more frustrating than seeing charities with too many volunteers they can't use because there is no one to manage them".


The comments beneath Third Sector's article do a good job of highlighting the stupidity of Mr Maude's suggestion - about the only thing he got right was the need to invest in more volunteer management support for organisations - but I want to make just five points myself.


First, Mr Maude seems to believe that volunteers work in the voluntary sector.  Many do, but large numbers are also involved in the public sector too.  So why does he propose these people only help charities?  One might argue that charities are more used to working with volunteers than many in the public sector and so it is the latter that need more help, not the former.


Second, why would public sector workers automatically make good volunteer managers?  What uniquely qualifies people from the public sector to come into charities with little training or orientation and be able to effectively lead and engage volunteers?


Third, let's just suppose for a moment that Mr Maude's idea becomes reality.  Would this not lead to the displacement from employment of many skilled volunteer management professionals as organisations think they can have the work done for 'free' by Maude's army of redundant public sector volunteers?  Perhaps those volunteer managers can go on to one of the many wonderful private sector jobs currently being created, skilled as they are at asking "would you like fries with that?".  Or is job displacement from the voluntary sector not a concern of the government, fixated as they seem to be (the media even more so) on the public and private sectors as places of employment.


Fourth, aside from displaying his ignorance and lack of understanding on a number of issues, Mr Maude seems to have it all wrong about volunteer managers.  His proposal suggests that organisations could engage redundant public sector workers to manage the large numbers of volunteers those organisations lack the capacity to involve.  But that isn't how the model of volunteer management tends to work these days.  Having the volunteer manager directly managing the volunteers would be like having the HR manager directly managing the paid staff. 


Instead, today's volunteer manager commonly plays a supportive role to other staff and volunteers who provide the line management support and capacity that enables an organisation to effectively engage volunteers.  The volunteer manager is a skilled and knowledgeable expert, adept at influencing, supporting, inspiring, leading, engaging and motivating volunteers, employees, peers, managers, the community and many others in the fulfilment of their organisations mission. 


And that leads me to my fifth and final observation about Mr Maude's comments.  Volunteer management is an increasingly skilled task that requires competence in perhaps a wider, more diverse and more essential range of skills and abilities than almost any other job.  That's why Skills Third Sector recently published an excellent position paper on why volunteer management requires specific skills.   Its is in part why I recently argued that volunteer leadership and engagement is an essential yet under-developed skill the voluntary sector needs to invest in for the future.  And the HandsOn Network in the US have recently spoken about effective volunteer engagement being a collective responsibility of all staff too.


To suggest anyone can just walk in and do a good job of managing volunteers effectively not only shows gross ignorance of the role but is hugely insulting to me and others like me who have built a career in the field through hard work and dedication to the causes we've worked for and to our own professional development.


As you can tell, I feel strongly about this issue.  That's why I have limited my post to just five issues or I could have gone on for hours!  That and the desire to not repeat the excellent points made elsewhere by others such as the comments beneath the Third Sector article.


However, I do want to make one final observation in conclusion.  


As I write this post nearly three working days have passed since Mr Maude's comments were reported.  In that time I have not seen one single comment or response from Volunteering England, the Association of Volunteer Managers or any of the other bodies who purport to represent volunteer managers.  


I may simply have missed such a comment (I was away volunteering in Yorkshire last week) so I would be happy for people to share links to such statements in defence of volunteer management by posting a comment in response to this blog.


However, if, as I suspect, not one single statement supporting volunteer management has been made by any of the key representative bodies, publicly or privately, then some serious questions need to be asked of their ability to stand up for volunteer managers when they come under attack like this.


What do you think of Mr Maude's comments?  Is it right that bodies like VE and AVM have apparently stayed silent?  What would you like to say on this issue?  Please leave your comments below.

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

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

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

The tyranny of speed

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

Like it or not, speed is of the essence.

The impossibility of controlling the market

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

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

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

Be authentic in whatever you're planning

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

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

Add more choice

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

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

Can you outsource any skills or processes?

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

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

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

The definition of scarcity has changed

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

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

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

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

People-raising is needed as well as fundraising

NB - This blog post is a longer version of the blog of the same title I wrote for Third Sector in June 2011.

In a recent issue of Third Sector magazine (10 May 2011) there was a short article about the preliminary findings of NCVO’s Leadership 20:20 Commission.  The key finding highlighted was that the biggest challenge the voluntary and community sector will face in 2020 will be funding. 

Perhaps you’re not surprised by that, especially given the state of sector funding at the moment.  The Voluntary Sector Cuts website alone details 483 cuts reported so far, worth £75,541,527.  In some ways, especially as a recent senior manager in the sector and as a victim of the cuts myself, I agree with the finding.  The road to recovery will be a long one and come 2020 there will still be many funding challenges for the sector to face.

However, I do worry at the short-sightedness of the finding.  To focus on the financial challenges above all else is to suggest a mindset in the leaders of the future that isn’t that much different from the one dominating the current sector leadership.  In fact, I might even suggest it smacks of a mindset that has been so prevalent and has been so money oriented that it has led us to the depths of our current problems.  These problems, it could be argued, stem from a failure to look beyond how the voluntary sector can do anything unless there is money attached, much of it public and so now in short supply.  Now that money is scarce many of us find ourselves sailing perilously close to the proverbial creek.

If, as NCVO claim, the Leadership 20:20 Commission contains the “20 most inspiring emerging leaders in civil society” then I hope they and the 512 of their peers who responded to their consultation can break the constraints of this narrow and potentially failed money-focused mindset and seek out something more creative.

I would argue that a key challenge facing the leaders in the voluntary and community sector is to move beyond a slavish focus on money as the only substantial resource at their disposal. 

When you stop to think about it, no organisation is going to have all the money it needs to do all the things it wants to do, particularly in the kind of economic climate that is going to dominate in the coming years.  So, we are faced with two choices: cut back our aspirations to meet our financial means; or find creative ways to make what money we have go further.

The Commission’s findings suggest the former choice might be dominating people’s thinking, something along the lines of “unless we can get the money we can’t do the work, we want to do the work so money is our big problem”. 

To me that’s not leadership but a lack of vision leading to curtailed ambition. 

Instead we should be exploring creative solutions.  We should be saying “OK, we have £x and we want to achieve y. How can we leverage a, b and c to make £x go far enough to realise our goals?”.

So what are a, b and c?

I think one of the biggest areas of potential is in volunteering.  For too long we’ve limited our thinking on the potential for donated time to really have major impact on our organisations.  We’ve focused on what volunteers can’t do because of perceived legal risks, or on how they should meekly complement paid staff.  And God forbid they should do anything that even strays into the territory of work done by an employee, past or present.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating for wholesale replacement of paid staff by volunteers.  Nor am I suggesting we open the door to unskilled or unqualified people coming in and doing roles for which there are specific skills and qualifications required.

What I am suggesting is that voluntary sector leaders should be developing their skills in volunteerism and actively supporting and developing people-raising as well as fund-raising. 

They should be looking to find ways to maximise the potential contribution of an increasing number of people who have considerable professional skills that they want to use for social good. 

They should be going beyond the self-imposed boundaries of ‘the way we’ve always done it’ and embrace new ways of working that incorporate the use of the most precious resource many people have to give to charities, their time.

To do this, to move beyond a myopic focus on funding and embrace volunteering, we need leaders who are skilled in leading and engaging volunteers.  Unfortunately, there are too few of them about.  Rarely does volunteerism appear on the programme of many CPD programmes for voluntary sector leaders.  And when it does, it tends to be in terms of governance issues and not creative education about how well run and managed volunteer programmes can add significant value to organisations, making those precious pennies go even further.

Of course, I could be wrong here.  The Leadership 20:20 Commission could have picked funding as a major challenge because it recognised the need to embrace non-financial forms of support.  It has perhaps focused on funding as a key challenge because its members think the issues I’ve briefly raised here will be addressed in the next few years.

Experience tells me that this sadly won’t be the case though and so I look forward to the Commission’s views on what leaders need to do beyond just worrying about money.