Can the voluntary sector learn from the army?

Just a few days ago colleague Kirsty McDowell published and excellent posting on her blog, “Can the army learn from the voluntary sector”. Kirsty rightly argues that the challenges faced by the military to recruit more reservists (volunteers) to the army could have been reduced if they had taken time to learn from what works in volunteer recruitment.

Good customer service, speedy responses to enquiries, an online applications that works, well briefed frontline staff - we all know that these things make a big difference to effective volunteer recruitment and, where they aren’t present, can act as a significant barrier to prospective volunteers.

But can it work the other way? Can the voluntary sector learn from the army?

The answer is yes.

Consider for a moment that much volunteer recruitment is still focused on messages like “help, we need volunteers”, or “help, we urgently need volunteers”. All the good systems and processes in the world won’t be worth much if we can’t inspire people to consider giving us their time in the first place.

The army, on the other hand, may not have the best systems for handling new reservist recruits but they do have a compelling and inspiring way of marketing their roles. Let’s face it, they have to if they are going to convince people to sign up for something where they may well find themselves laying their lives on the line - just like this famous advert Ernest Shackleton used to recruit volunteers to his Antarctic expedition:

No “we desperately need your help” there, instead it challenges, it inspires and it makes it abundantly clear to many (including me) that they are not the ones to volunteer for that particular challenge!

Beyond the front end of the posters, radio, internet and TV adverts the Army uses to attract their kind of people, their recruitment website highlights some lessons many volunteer involving organisations could learn:

Training and development - the army is up front that its recruits have a wealth of opportunities available to them from apprenticeships & learning a trade to a multitude of specialist roles. Do our organisations explain how we can help our prospective volunteers to learn their role and develop during their time with us?


Roles tailored to the interested of the individual - army recruits have access to thousands of jobs, and hundreds of careers. Do we offer choice and flexibility to our prospective volunteers during their 'career' with us or do we lock people into the role we need and keep them there forever?


Information for families - the army are very clear about how they can provide welfare and support services to their troops, family care for their dependents and how they can helping people move on at the end of their army career. Do we explain what support we’ll give to the volunteer? Do we show that we can be flexible and adaptable to the other needs in their lives (family, friends, work etc.)? In particularly emotionally demanding roles, do we explain the welfare and support we’ll provide to volunteers? Do we ever offer them support to find new volunteer roles when they decide to leave?


Socialising and fun - the army explicitly promote events, activities and leisure to their recruits, showing that a career is more than just the job but the social side of what they offer? Are we explicit about this with potential volunteers? Do we involve them in social activities? Or are volunteers expected to just turn up, do their role and then disappear rather than becoming a part of the team?

So yes, the army can definitely learn from us. But we can also learn from them. I’ve only touched on a few areas here - I haven't even touched on leadership - so please do comment and let me know how else we might learn from the army (and other armed forces) when it comes to working with volunteers.

She's Electric

One of the things I love to do in my work and my writing is showcase examples of the volunteering people do. I'm a big believer that people can inspired to volunteer by seeing and hearing about example of people just like them who manage to fit volunteering in to their busy lives.

To that end, this posting is from guest blogger and friend Katriona Bailey. Kat shares her experiences of volunteering and I hope others will be inspired by it.

>>>>>>>>>

It is April 2011, I am sitting in my car looking at the building in front of me. I am debating whether to go in or whether to drive home......inside is a man called Graham Main - and he has had the idea to start up a community choir in my home town. I am curious but terrified. My curiosity gets the better of me and I make my way in....there are a total of around 12 people who have shown up to find out more.

Fast forward to July 2013 - Wickerman festival - headlined by Primal Scream - but also playing to a packed tent are Dumfries community choir - all 100 of us. We go down a storm. Hours later, as I bop around to Dexy's Midnight Runners, a man approaches me - "they're good" he says "...but you guys were better".

This would all be an achievement in itself but the choir is now only a small part of what Graham and his colleagues do. It turns out there was a hunger in the town for a creative outlet and Graham has built "Electric Theatre Arts" from nothing and I am proud to say that I am the company secretary, a voluntary role that I LOVE. As a mother of 2 who works full time, I was unsure about taking on this role - where would I find the time? But let me tell you - I do find the time - and I get so much more out than I put in.

My role is varied, sometimes I have lots of things to do, sometimes not so much. Being a board member allows me to pop in and out of the building, to interact with the users of the service and to see the difference it makes in peoples lives. I love being involved and even though I have lived here all my life, I have never felt a strong sense of community here until I got involved.

Electric theatre arts is a non profit community interest company. We run youth theatre groups for kids and young people from 5 - 25, music groups for pre school kids, we have adult Spanish classes, samba classes, you can come in and learn the piano, the drums, the guitar, we will rent you a rehearsal space for your band. And all of this is done at the lowest possible cost to make it accessible for all. We now have a full time employee who is going out into the poorest areas of the town and to outlying regional towns to try and set up creative opporunities for the young people there.

It is a pleasure to be involved. I would recommend anyone to take on such a role if an opportunity presents itself. it will pay you back tenfold.

You can find more information on the organisations mentioned in this blog at www.electrictheatreworkshop.com, www.Dumfriescommunitychoir.com,  www.Dumfriesyouththeatre.com.

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.