Blogs

A new report published today reveals the need for more training and development for managers of volunteers. The research by the Institute for Volunteering Research was commissioned by Skills - Third Sector and shows that nearly half of people who manage volunteers have not received any training that would help them in their work, despite the fact that volunteers are crucial to the government's Big Society.  Despite identifying that there is much good practice in volunteer management in England today, it also reveals that volunteer management remains undervalued and underfunded in many organisations, including those with the largest incomes.

42% of people who manage volunteers have not received any training that would help in their work with volunteers 

Members of networks were considerably more likely to access training and support than those who weren't members - 74 % compared to 49%

The Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd, in the report's foreword, says: "This research highlights the skills needed and the importance of valuing them... It also highlights the need to think strategically about how volunteer managers are trained and supported. This is vital, whether they are engaged in work to empower and enhance their local communities or to deliver complex public services."

The report Valuing Volunteer Management Skills is based on a telephone survey conducted in March 2010 with 1,004 people who manage volunteers, representative of voluntary sector organisations of different sizes acorss the nine regions of England, plus an additional ten biographical interviews. The full report is available to download for free at www.ivr.org.uk

One of the things we have been thinking about at AVM is how volunteer managers become volunteer managers and then how their career progresses.

Members may remember we conducted a survey when we started in which many managers identified a lack of a career path as a drawback of the role. This got us thinking about a number of things.

One was the idea of professionalization. This seemed to give volunteer managers the opportunity to have a career structure like other professions. It is something we are still thinking about. But linked to this must be ideas of what is ‘the body of knowledge' needed to be a volunteer manager - and where managers access that knowledge.

There is some work going on in this area, but we would like to add a little more And draw on your knowledge as AVM members.

This link takes you to a short survey (not more than 10 minutes to fill out we promise). We will be feeding back findings in a few weeks.

This was in today's Guardian. What do people think?  A good use of corporate expertise, or an assumption that anyone who can sell burgers can manage volunteers?

McDonald's is to help recruit and train 70,000 volunteers who will be involved in staging the London 2012 Olympics, it was announced today.

It is believed the fast food giant's customer service expertise and strong high street presence means its 1,200 outlets will be helpful in recruiting the volunteers. They will be called "games makers".

McDonald's, which spends more than £30m annually on training its 80,000 workforce, becomes the "presenting partner" for the London 2012 volunteer programme.

London 2012 chairman Lord Coe said: "Volunteers are vital to the success of the Games, and there are few organisations with the scale and experience required to help us prepare such a large team in a relatively short space of time."

The wide-ranging volunteer roles could be anything from the glamorous to the mundane, including interpreting, first aid, checking tickets and giving travel advice as millions of people descend on Britain's capital in 2012.

Steve Easterbrook, the McDonald's UK and northern Europe chief executive and president, said: "While nothing quite compares to the bustle and excitement of an action-packed 2012 Games, our employees know a fair bit about working in a fast-paced, busy environment - providing quick and consistent customer service to over two million people each day."

Recently there's been a lot of chatter about the idea of the 'Big Society', some of which has direct implications for how we think about volunteering. Those active in volunteering need to speak up for a clearer understanding about volunteering in the wider 'Big Society' debate.

In the Hugo Young lecture last year, David Cameron talked about the Big Society's aim to empower "individuals, families and communities". Volunteering is one key route to empowerment, though Cameron argued, too much state involvement in social issues has reduced volunteering:

"As the state continued to expand, it took away from people more and more things that they should and could be doing for themselves, their families and their neighbours. Human kindness, generosity and imagination are steadily being squeezed out by the work of the state. The result is that today, the character of our society - and indeed
the character of some people themselves, as actors in society, is changing...

The Independent Safeguarding Authority was established to stop children coming into contact with dangerous adults, but by forcing responsible adults to go through the rigmarole of a vetting procedure it will actually reduce the amount of care and love in children's lives as adults will give up volunteering to help children."

It's worth highlighting that this argument conflates two dimensions of volunteering that are often used interchangeably, but should be understood separately. Those dimensions are 'the noun' (I am a volunteer) and 'the verb' (I volunteer). Cameron suggests that volunteering and empowerment can change our character because it goes to the heart of who we are. It's volunteering as an identity, as a noun. But he also describes volunteering in very practical terms. Volunteering's a doing word, a verb. For Cameron it's the 'rigmarole' that's getting in the way of us volunteering.

recognise and reward groups across Scotland who are good at involving volunteers, 

has a new website at http://www.volunteerfriendly.org.uk 

The standard has been developed by Volunteer Centre Dundee, 

which has been funded to spread it wider.

The brief look I had showed that they have really put five simple headings

to outline good practice principles. Maybe use to some of us as a way of reviewing

what we do?

I've been thinking about the future of volunteer recruitment recently and as a result, I have been struck by a simple fact.

According to Helping Out - A Survey of Volunteering and Charitable Giving (2007 - by IVR for the Office of the Third Sector) 68% of volunteers were recruited via word of mouth. All other recruitment methods are, statistically, almost irrelevant and yet, with apologies to volunteer managers everywhere, we seem to concentrate our efforts in other areas.

We think about the future as being about technology and worry about whether we need to Tweet our volunteering opportunities, set up a blog or find new ways to advertise via SMS/text. If the feedback from volunteers is to be believed, we need to ask more people to get involved, to take on a role or to help out at an event.

This is the scary part of looking at the information available. My reaction tends to be: "It may work for a community group, or other very small charities, but how do we do this on a larger scale?"

Volunteer managers, and those whose responsibilities include the leadership of volunteering programs, know that their workload will not allow them to spend time asking people, one to one, if they would be willing to volunteer and so we turn to ways of getting our message out to large numbers of people via the media, campaigns, the internet, etc. This is a logical and time efficient way of achieving our recruitment targets and of filling those all important volunteer vacancies, but are we missing the point, failing to see the wood for the trees?

I believe that, as volunteer managers, we have a unique skill set and a range, breadth of abilities that is rare even in the overstretched world of the Third Sector, so the obvious next step, of recruiting a volunteer to concentrate on attracting more people through direct, word of mouth communication, has a drawback.

We (Age UK and the Age Concern Federation Volunteering Partnership) have produced guidance on how to obtain funding for volunteer management. It's primarily aimed at Age Concerns however I hope it's useful more generically across the volunteering sector.

I don't pretend it's the magic answer but more a starting point. Over time I'd like to improve it so if you have any suggestions or case studies please do let me know and I'll produce a revised edition later in the year.

Renaissance London has just produced two new volunteering publications. 

Working With Volunteers in Collections Care a publication looking at best practice in collection care and conservation volunteering. It provides an overview of the benefits of involving volunteers in these roles and guidance on how to set up a new volunteer programme or improve current ways of working.

And an evaluation of the Volunteer Inclusion Programme at Museum of London, a project which involves volunteers from all sections of the community working with archaeological finds.

This event brings together key voices in the volunteering sector to highlight the work of NNVIA (the National Network of Volunteer Involving Agencies) who, in partnership with Volunteering England, has been working at local, regional and national levels on ways of overcoming barriers to volunteering, and finding out why it is good business for all organisations to do so.

This event is being held on the first day of Volunteers' Week on 1 June 2010 in Westminster, London.

All registrations are managed by CSV. To book online go to www.csv.org.uk/nnviaconference2010

To celebrate the second London Museums Hub Volunteers in Museums Awards we've made a short film about volunteering in museums.  You can view it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKg4KoVpouE

Did anyone see Mary Queen of Charity Shops Revisited last night?  This time Mary tried to tackle volunteer recruitment.  She identified that asking volunteers for a set commitment might be off putting, and came up with what she called 'V-day'. where volunteers could come along when it suited them and help out. I see this is part of a wider campaign - any of the Charity Shop People been involved in this?  Any of you got any comments?

I had mixed feelings; I can see how this might work well as a taster session, or even longer term as a once a month chance to get a big job sorted, but she seemed to be suggesting that shops should be permanently run this way, and I can't see how you could practically run a shop if you had no idea when and where volunteers might materialise. 

I found it interesting that Mary seemed very happy to say that someone donating an old t-shirt that has a resale value of less than the resouces needed to clean and price it, is insulting the charity, but a volunteer who says they can only give an hour, and can't say in advance when that will be, isn't seen as a similar drain on resources.

I think it was an interesting example of one of the massive problems that volunteer management is facing at the moment.  We need to be creative in how we think about involving people, and look at ways of being flexible.  However, if we are too flexible then there can come a point where what the volunteers are doing has ceased be that useful, or the amount of extra work we have to put in to accommodate new types of volunteering is not justified by amount of extra work we get out of the new volunteers.

I don't know about any of you but round me petrol prices are at an all time high, about £5.50 a gallon (£1.20ish a litre).  Last time they were this high it stirred up a bit of a debate amongst volunteers and volunteer managers about mileage rates for volunteers travel.  Now appears to be no different.  As there is no sign of fuel prices dropping soon I suspect the issue will rage on.

In light of this I thought it might be helpful to add a few additional thoughts to the debate.  I'd be really interested in reader's thoughts on these.  I feel it's time we had a sensible discussion about volunteer travel expenses and what we are actually trying to do with them.

Good volunteer management practice states that volunteers should not be out of pocket as a result of their volunteering.  A principle I fully subscribe to but I feel we may have lost sight a little of this principle when it comes to volunteer travel expenses.  Let me explain.

Most organisations seem to take Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs approved mileage allowance payment (AMAP) rate of 40p as a volunteer's mileage rate.  However if we are starting from the principle of not being out of pocket logic would suggest we find out what it costs per mile to run a car and then pay mileage at that rate for our volunteers.  How do we do that I hear you cry.

On Volunteering England's website the current poll question is 'Should volunteers be managed in the same way as paid employees'. The answer was so obvious I almost didn't bother answering - they might as well have asked whether the Pope is Catholic or if bears pop behind a tree to relieve themselves.  It was a slow day, though, so I hit 'no' anyway.

And to my utter shock I was in the minority. Just 37% of us believed yes, they should be managed differently. I would have been disappointed if that figure was 80 or 90% but just over a third?

Now I could rehearse the arguments as to why it's not the same (legal issues, motivations etc) but we've become so hung up on the details we have forgotten the fundamental importance behind managing volunteers and paid staff differently.

In the last few years, there has been a radical shift in both the how and why people engage in voluntary action. Patrick Daniels has blogged eloquently on how the web is changing the ways people give, for example. But there is much we can also learn from the more activist and self-help end of the giving spectrum. However for those of us who work in the 'traditional' voluntary sector, we are unable to really explore how these could benefit our clients because we don't have the flexibility to engage with them. And we don't have that flexibility because we have sleepwalked our way into adopting the work-place model of management.

How did this happen though?

As volunteer management became more accepted and more established within organisations, there was obviously a need to fit it within the organisational edifice. And for many, the best fit was to follow the HR structure.

I had the good fortune to attend a lunch at the House of Lords recently, held by Baroness Emerton to celebrate the OBE-ship of our Chief Executive. During the lunch, I was tickled by her reference to the House of Commons as 'The Other Place'.

Quite often this is how HR and Volunteer Management view themselves. Election to 'The Other Place', (oops, I mean the HR profession) tends to require qualifications, while volunteer managers tend to have this task bestowed on them!

I was interested to read the issues that 'The Other Place' is experiencing in relation to their role in the world of work. (People Management - 11 March 2010). The article stated:

'To date, HR has been locked in a destructive psychological battle about its relevance and raison d'être. As Martin Tiplady (Director of HR Metropolitan Police Service) says: "It's a confidence thing. In HR, we make a full-time job out of worrying about our position." He continues: "HR can be too precious about status. To survive, let alone develop, we must get out of this constant cathartic self-analysis. It is indulgent and destructive. It serves no purpose. Not for us or the next generation."

Sounds like a familiar story, although I not sure whether I am encouraged or discouraged by this?! The article continues:

'....For David Smith (former People Director of Asda), the mark of a good HR leader is "to be as un-HR-like as possible".'

Again, food for thought if applied to the Peers (oops I mean the Volunteer Management profession!)

I've noticed that when we seek to understand the benefits of volunteering, we often do so in two ways: either positioning volunteering as a means to an end, or as an end in itself.

I want to just look at these two approaches and try to understand how these approaches contrast and sometimes contradict each other. But also look at how these two approaches complement each other, so that we can make the strongest possible case for volunteering whoever we're talking to: policy makers, funders, senior managers in our organisations, or even potential volunteers.

It was a post by DJ Cronin on i-volunteer.org.uk that got me thinking on this. His post gives a bit of context, i.e. raising awareness about the personal and social benefits of volunteering and the specific responsibility of those in volunteering development and management to get out of their "cocoon and educate".

Volunteering as a means to an end

"Volunteer is a pay rate, not a job title" - @ChanceUK

John Ramsey's recent post on the Association of Volunteer Managers website "The conflict between want and need" made the case that it makes more sense to view volunteering as a means to an end. He uses the specific example of managing volunteers for an organisation like Age Concern:

"Volunteering is part of our ethos. However, we are not 'about' volunteering, we are 'about' the health and well-being of older people. Volunteering does of course play a crucial role in the health and well-being of older volunteers but we do not exist to provide volunteering opportunities per se."