"Tonight, Opportunity Knocks for..." Volunteer Managers.

What I hear you all cry are you mad! Well bear with me for a minute and hear me out. The country is in the midst of one of the biggest economic downturns in living memory and yet it may just be the opportunity of a lifetime for all of us who manage volunteers and one we need to grab hold of.

Many of our organisations are making cut backs and looking at ways to save money or certainly do more with less. When I hear people talking about doing more with less my eyes light up and I see an opportunity to talk to people about volunteers and the contribution they can make to an organisation. Doing so I don't believe devalues volunteers. I'm not proud, I don't mind if someone wants to engage with volunteers because they feel it is a good thing to do in their bones, or the current economic downturn has simply forced them to rethink how they deliver that project or piece of work. Both are opportunities for the astute volunteer manager to see an opportunity and take it forward.

Let me just stop at this point and make it clear, I am not condoning volunteers replacing paid staff, but I am saying anything that gets people talking to me as a volunteer manager about how volunteers can help them in their work has to be a good thing. I don't know about those of you reading this article but for me half the battle I have as a volunteer manager is getting to talk to people about how volunteers can help and assist them in their role and their value. Doing that face to face sell of just how great volunteers are and what a difference they can make is the conversation I live to have.

The economic downturn would seem to have created boom time for volunteering. Volunteer Centres are reporting record numbers of volunteer enquiries, and the government has just put millions into a scheme using volunteering as a step toward employability for the long term unemployed.

But unless the sector is careful, this slump could have real risks for volunteer management, and the way volunteering is perceived.

Volunteering and volunteer management have transformed since the last time we were in a recession. Organisations involve volunteers much more professionally, using the gift of time more effectively, and ensuring that volunteering is a positive experience where both organisation and volunteer benefit.

However this step change could well come to a grinding halt as credit crunch sets in, and as the spectre of job substitution rears its ugly head. Money is scarce on the ground for everyone, and as organisations face cutbacks, one solution is to replace our paid staff with volunteers.

Funding bodies push us to reduce our overheads to the absolute minimum, arguing that as the ‘Voluntary' sector shouldn't more of our workers be just that?

As funding starts to dry up its easy to see why panicked organisations look at making staff cuts and relying on volunteers to take up the slack. Many would argue that job substitution is a pragmatic solution to a loss of funding.

Faced with having to close down and organisation, or withdraw funding, isn't it just the lesser of two evils? But what do we loose if we make this compromise? The practice of replacing paid staff with volunteers does not show up our sector in a particularly good light, and does little to persuade the public at large that volunteering is a positive thing to do.

A common argument people use for not volunteering is that organisations exploit volunteers.It becomes harder to argue against this if volunteers are being used purely to save on staff costs.

 As the new Equality Bill makes it's way through parliament, Tim Boswell, Conservative MP for Daventry, has proposed that it should be extended to cover volunteers. Boswell's new clause states that, with the exception of matters related to pay, "all rights of employees under this act are deemed to extend to persons who work as volunteers without remuneration; and all duties of employees and their employers to avoid discrimination are deemed to extend to volunteers working without remuneration".

 If this goes through it would potentially have quite a big impact on volunteer involving organisations, particularly smaller ones with less formal systems in place. Over the course of my career I have seen quite a lot of cases of blatant discrimination, and a big part of me would welcome a move to give volunteers the right to challenge this. However I do also worry that without the resources to develop, and manage appropriate policies, procedures and practice, many organisations are going to seriously struggle.

If Tim Boswell's amendment was accepted, would it be a positive step forward to making volunteering accessible to everyone, or would it create a burden for organisations making volunteer involvement to bureaucratic and formal?

When Google says it's getting into the volunteering search business, you sit up and take notice. This month it was announced that they were setting up All for Good- backed by none other than President Barack Obama as part of the volunteering initiative: "United We Serve". All for Good is supported by volunteers from web organisations such as Google, Craigslist Foundation, UCLA, YouTube, FanFeedr and Aha! Ink.

In addition, and in connection with this announcement, VolunteerMatch.org, an online resource for searching and posting volunteering opportunities has announced that it is opening public access to it's network. Part of this announcement was that they are making their volunteer data available under creative commons. As a result it's meant that you can find VolunteerMatch.org opportunities to volunteer via the All for Good website.

VolunteerMatch.org are just one of the many volunteer opportunity providers taking part in the scheme.

Founding activity providers include 1-800-volunteer.org, 1 Sky, AARP, American Solutions for Winning the Future, American Red Cross, City of New York, The Corporation for National and Community Service, craigslist, Girl Scouts of the USA, Habitat for Humanity, HandsOn Network and Points of Light Institute, Idealist, MeetUp, Mentor, Network for Good, Organizing for America, ServeNet.org, Sierra Club, TechMission, The Extraordinaries, Truist, United Jewish Communities, United Way, Volunteer2, VolunteerMatch and Youth Service America.

It'll be interesting to see how this influences the way volunteer managers recruit their volunteers in the UK. Already organisations registered on participating sites, such as VolunteerMatch.org, can see their opportunities listed (for free) on the All for Good website. The opportunities are location-based and are displayed on a map.

This development is the latest and highest profile in the technical infrastructure underpinning volunteering. But it's just an evolutionary next step in a series of progressive changes in how anyone can get involved in volunteering via the web. The social networking revolution is at the heart of this change in online volunteer recruitment. Facebook aps such as Volunteer Connect (in Canada) and I Volunteer are examples that have worked to promote volunteering via social networks.

Twitter aps like Twitter Job Search are accidentally building volunteering opportunity searches out of the fastest growing web platform that is Twitter. A search for volunteer or volunteering opportunity on Twitter Job Search pulls out a number of volunteer roles posted by users on Twitter.

Capacitybuilders has launched the £3m Volunteer Management Programme - as promised by the Office of the Third Sector last year -  to provide support to people who manage volunteers

The resulting programme will be delivered via three inter-connected strands: 

Strand A - £1.6 million to March 2011 - Grants will be targeted to around 25 local volunteering development organisations, to help them provide outreach and other direct support services to people who manage volunteers, particularly those who may not know about or access existing provision. More than 30 local partnerships are being invited to develop project proposals by the Autumn under this strand. 

Strand B - £200,000 to March 2011 - Grants directed at the national strategic support of volunteer management. Work will be co-ordinated via the existing Modernising Volunteering national support service, managed by Volunteering England. 

Strand C - Approx. £1 million, available from April 2010 - A bursary fund to help support training for people managing volunteers. Available from April 2010. Capacitybuilders will be consulting with key stakeholders during the Autumn to develop the bursary scheme.

Further information can be found at http://www.capacitybuilders.org.uk/content/WhoWeFund/Funding200811/Volun...

Have any of you been watching Mary Queen of Charity Shops?  I'm really interested to hear the insiders take on it.  In my household its had us shouting at the TV because she's so rude to, and about, the volunteers.  The concept that volunteers might need handling slightly differently to a paid staff member doesn't seem to have crossed her mind, and she doesn't seem all that interested in the volunteers having any kind of owenership of the changes she's making. On the other hand she's undoubtedly raised the shop's profits, and the shop is there to make money rather than to provide a nice volunteer experience, so maybe some bruised volunteer egos are worth it.  What do you think?

The former parliamentary private secretary to Gordon Brown, Angela Evans Smith, has become the new minister for the third sector.

She replaces Kevin Brennan, who has moved on to Peter Mandelson's new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Smith will become a minister of state rather than a parliamentary under secretary, as Brennan was. She has also been appointed to the Privy Council, though she will not be a full cabinet minister.

Smith, the MP for Basildon, was first elected to parliament at the 1997 general election. She became a government whip in 2001 before becoming Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 2002. She subsequently moved to the Communities and Local Government department before becoming Gordon Brown's parliamentary private secretary when he became Prime Minister in June 2007.

She lists her interests as home affairs, animal welfare, international development, employment and youth and children's issues, including child protection. She is a patron of several charities, including Basildon Home Start, Basildon Women's Refuge, Basildon Age Concern, the Captive Animals Protection Society and the Burned Children's Club. Smith has been an active supporter of volunteering and the voluntary sector. Angela Smith (photo left) is with longstanding hospital volunteer Mary Fairweather at her leaving celebration at Orsett Hospital.

Her leisure interests include watching Coronation Street and reading political biographies and Oscar Wilde novels and plays.

Last Friday, Tessa Jowell replaced Liam Byrne as Minister for the Cabinet Office, where the Office of the Third Sector is based.

Happy Volunteers Week!! And it should be a happy time, volunteering as an activity is increasing and I would hope that that is an indicator that people are happy doing it.

Over the past few years there has been an increase in the amount of money that has been invested in the development of volunteering. There has been project funding for the recruitment of specific groups of volunteers such as young people, disabled people and people from socially disadvantaged groups for example.

And the recent economic situation has lead to more investment in volunteering with programmes dedicated to enabling people who are out of work to retain their skills or develop new ones, there should be more people than ever before having a Happy Volunteers week this year.

So, my question is - is volunteering the happy experience we hope it will be? The 1997 National Survey of Volunteering in the UK (www.ivr.org.uk) found that the benefits that people reported from volunteering include enjoying the activity, the satisfaction of seeing results, meeting people and a sense of personal achievement. These were in addition to more tangible benefits such as the opportunity to learn new skills, get a qualification and gain a position within the community.

Below is a (slightly edited) transcript of a speech I gave at Derbyshire Volunteer Centres' Conference in Matlock bath on Tuesday 2 June 09:

Thank you for inviting me to your conference today.  It's good to see so many of you here today, especially as this is the 25^th anniversary of Volunteers Week.

We meet today under skies filled with the clouds of economic doom.  The ever present rumble of redundancy, cut backs and termination of funding fills the air and indeed, lightening has stuck not just in the banking and the car industries, but in the 3^rd sector too.  Many charities have let people go and these include volunteer managers.

One large national charity has made redundant members of its volunteer team cutting it from 3 full time people to one part time person and has decided not to pursue external funding as the economic climate has impacted on their cash flow.  Another very large cancer charity has been running its volunteering department at less that full strength for 6 months now.  I'm sure you know of many other similar stories.

So in these financial times, is Volunteer Management a luxury?  In actual fact has it always been seen that way?

 Let's look at some statistics:

 The 2003 Home Office Citizenship Survey found that:

• 42% of population of England & Wales formally volunteered.
• Est. 1.1m full time UK workers needed to replace formal volunteers.

 Let's also look at what's on the horizon:

• There's Gordon Brown's idea of Community Service for all 16 - 19 year olds with a budget of £156m ear-marked.
• There's a £6.5m scheme to help 40,000 long term unemployed back into work through volunteering.
• There's the Citizenship & Immigration Bill that encourages migrant to volunteer to fast-track applications.
• The Olympics are only 3 years away and needs 70,000 volunteers.

 And yet:

• 32% orgs have no funding to support vols; (not just about small turnover either 14% of orgs with £1mil+ turnover don't invest in it)
• 24% Volunteer Managers manage over 50 vols
• 59% Volunteer Managers said they only had capacity to involve less than 10 vols more

(stats from Management Matters:  A National Survey of Volunteer Management Capacity, Institute for Volunteering Research, 2008)

So are Volunteer Managers a luxury?  Given those figures why is it that we seem to get such a poor deal?  Why is it that the sector seems to think that "things will tick along ok" for a while without a Volunteer Manager or with poor investment in Volunteer Management.  Are we viewed as not totally essential?  I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted when I say that we at AVM think completely differently.  Volunteer Management is not a luxury.  Effective Volunteer Management needs proper support and investment.

It seems to me there is a perception from funders that it's a question of numbers.  More volunteers = better volunteering.  But surely it is a question of quality over quantity.  Properly funded, resourced and supported Volunteer Managers would lead to a better volunteering experience for the volunteer and the organization, which in turn would lead to greater volunteer involvement.  There is evidence to support this:

In an internal volunteer survey by Citizens Advice, found a strong correlation between the positive experiences volunteers had had and the existence of a specific volunteer manager.  For example:

 Do you feel valued as a volunteer?

•  Volunteers with a specific volunteer manager             94% said yes
• Volunteers without one                                           64% said yes

 Would you recommend volunteering at the organisation?

•  Volunteers with a specific volunteer manager            91% said yes
•  Volunteers without one                                          66% said yes

In addition, anecdotally, both the number of people with a remit to manage volunteers and the support available has increased significantly. If this is correct, then a correlation can be drawn with the results from the national volunteering surveys in 1997 and 2007. In 1997, 71% volunteers said they felt their volunteering could be better organised. Ten years later this had fallen to 31%.

A 2008 survey (Hutchinson & Ockenden (The Impact of Public Policy on Volunteering in Community Based Organisations), 2008 found that an increased capacity within volunteer management led to an improvement in recruiting and managing volunteers.

One organisation that secured funding to employ a volunteer manager noticed the benefits:

 'It's because we have been able to dedicate more time to recruiting, training and supporting the volunteers. We are getting better at attracting and retaining skilled volunteers'.

If more evidence is needed that we are struggling with capacity rather than necessarily a lack of volunteers, though I know of areas where this is the case, an article in Third Sector a couple of weeks ago (19 May 09) mentioned that Volunteer Centres were struggling with a 'tidal wave of demand'... with demand for placements outstripping supply.'

We also operate within an increased legal and regulatory framework.  We need to be vigilant about the legal status of volunteers and CRB checks for example.  Volunteers aren't covered by employment law, but that doesn't absolve us of our need to treat volunteers fairly and respectfully.  We need to ensure that we follow Good Practice in involving volunteers.

This can be backed up with some of the cases that have made the headlines such as the volunteer 'strike' at York CAB in 2008 and the consequences it had.

There is also a lack of understanding within government departments and parliament about volunteering.  Witness Dianne Abbott's recent early day motion about people on JSA not being able to volunteer for more than 16 hours per week.

 So no, Volunteer Management is not a luxury.  Our roles as Volunteer Manager are just as vital to organizations as fundraisers or campaigners and I think our roles deserve the same support and recognition.

 We as volunteer managers are gate keepers if you like, with an 'institutional understanding' of volunteering guarding against volunteers being used for what perhaps should be paid roles, being treated as paid staff and quickly becoming disillusioned.   

 So how can we raise the profile of volunteer management so that we have the recognition and support we need to continue improving the involvement and support of volunteers.

 Well this conference is one way.  Derbyshire Volunteer Centres' recognition of the need to support, train and inspire Volunteer Managers and your presence here today shows our commitment to developing our profession.

As a community we support each other through local networks, the UKVPMs forum on Yahoo for example and we now also have the AVM.

To conclude, Volunteer Management is not a luxury.  The roles that you perform are vital to your organizations; perhaps more so in today's current economical climate. 

Volunteering isn't just about numbers.  The primary aim of volunteering isn't to help the long term unemployed into work, to fast track citizenship or to create a better society through community service. 

We involve volunteers to help our organizations to do more.  Better resourced, funded, supported and understood Volunteer Management will lead to a greater capacity to support volunteers and an increase in volunteers.  This in turn will better support the motivations of people volunteering.

Thank you again for inviting me today, thank you for your time and I very much hope you enjoy today.

Thank you.

Andrea Rannard, Senior Student Volunteering Manager at Volunteering England, is working with the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Service to ensure the profession is considered as a legitimate career option for graduates and is reflected accurately.

As part of that work, your help is needed:

1. Please fill out the Job Analysis Questionnaire, and

2. If you have graduated within the last five years, the case study form

Both forms should be returned by 27th May to andrea.rannard@volunteeringengland.org

So what are you? A charity worker, a development manager or a community worker? Perhaps you're a tunneller, a toy-maker or a tea-taster?

You could be any of these. But, according to a list of over 1,500 occupations used by insurance brokers, the one thing you're not is a volunteer manager.

Volunteer managers do not exist.

That's a damning indictment when you think about how many people volunteer each year. Possibly half the people you'll come into contact with today. And half the people tomorrow. And next week. And next month. And next year.

An enormous number of people who carry out a bewildering array of activities in every corner of our society. And yet the occupation that manages all that goes unrecognised. Ask the average person in the street what a finance manager does and they'll have a pretty good idea. Or a chief officer, or a fundraiser. But a volunteer manager? In fact, we speak to many volunteer managers whose line managers don't even understand.

Of course, maybe that's not so surprising when most of you reading this aren't called volunteer managers. 85% of people who manage volunteers aren't actually called volunteer manager or something similar. Even worse, nearly 40% of you won't even have a role description mentioning it.

That legitimacy of what we do remains one of the biggest stumbling blocks we face. If people don't understand or recognise the role we play then effective investment and accountability will remain a pipe-dream, as will developing our own career paths or having salaries commensurate with our role (the majority of volunteer managers are paid below the national average).

And ultimately it means we are failing the volunteers themselves, by not having the capacity to ensure they have a fulfilling, rewarding and satisfying volunteering experience.

Sue Ryder Care currently has 6,000 people nationwide volunteering in its 370 shops, 17 fundraising teams, 14 care centres and support service teams.

Through volunteering, individuals can not only gain invaluable work experience and develop skills needed to thrive in a work environment but can also support charities such as Sue Ryder Care.

Volunteers are essential to charities like ours. Every year Sue Ryder Care needs to raise £13 million in voluntary income to continue to deliver expert and compassionate care at its six hospices and eight neurological care centres, as well as community based services, nationwide.

The additional income generated from our fundraising and retail divisions, as well as savings on employment costs, through the recruitment of volunteers has helped us maintain our existing services for the people we care for.

To ensure we maintain our strong and effective volunteering team, attention to volunteer recruitment and retention is vital.

Recruitment of volunteers

Changes in society and the changing face of volunteering mean that we need to look at new ways to attract the type of volunteers who have not traditionally worked with us.

Creating and promoting volunteering roles that are mutually beneficial has enabled us to attract volunteers of all ages with different skills to offer.

We actively promote over 450 volunteering roles on our website, the widest selection of volunteer roles within the volunteer charity sector, and develop bespoke roles for people where relevant.

Over the years volunteering has evolved and become much more diverse and professional. Creating roles that will provide the volunteer with transferable and useful skills to enable the volunteer to secure paid employment will help you appeal to school leavers and parents keen to return to work. In today's increasingly socially responsible environment, volunteering is viewed in a positive way by prospective employers too.

We also utilise our relationships with companies who have selected us as their charity partner to secure volunteering support. For a company, supporting a charity in this way is a great way to demonstrate its commitment to corporate social responsibility.

Another way we recruit volunteers is through our Prisoner Volunteer Programme. Last year the Programme placed 71 carefully selected prisoners in volunteer roles in our shops, providing 36,000 hours of valuable support and saving the charity £216,000 on employment costs.

Jamie Thomas, CEO of Red Foundation, has started a debate reacting to the recent announcement by the Prime Minister about the new community work scheme.

So let me get this straight. The government has decided to spend £146m of taxpayers money to launch a new community service programme for 16-19 year olds. This is on top of the £100m plus that has already been spent on the same age group to do practically the same thing, with another £100m already committed to extend this same activity over the next three years, for a demographic that has been proven time and time again to be more likely to volunteer or get involved in the community than any other. Am I the only person that thinks this is nuts?

‘But this is community service not volunteering!' I hear you cry. Well yes technically that's true, but the actual work of identifying and creating meaningful opportunities that can demonstrate community impact whilst at the same time hold enough interest for teenagers to stick with them for 50 hours, is pretty similar in my opinion, and the chances are it will be the same organisations, that currently offer volunteering opportunities, that will be most likely to deliver the scheme. And I don't suppose for a moment that the majority of young ‘community servers' will be able to distinguish the difference.

Jamie Thomas' blog post 'vDaft' asks the question about how effective the Government has been in promoting volunteering amongst young people.

One of the biggest problems with the announcement is how it is another step by the Government towards making volunteering compulsory. This language in the official press release itself doesn't seem clear about whether it's volunteering or community service.

What's clear is that volunteering has to be voluntary. At least if David Blunkett is to lead a taskforce looking at youth volunteering this should be clear. Remember this memorable quote by Blunkett in The Guardian in November, 2008?:

When asked whether the scheme should become a form of compulsory national service Mr Blunkett replied: "It's been reinforced to me in the last year that you can't have volunteering unless it's voluntary."

It would be great to get your views.

The Generations Together programme is seeking bids from all English local authorities with social services/children's service responsibilities to submit expressions of interest, in partnership with third sector organisations, for funding to develop demonstrator sites of intergenerational practice.

It wants local authorities to consider how they can utilise the talents of our younger and older people, whether it be for their own benefit, or the benefit of the whole community. It is a £5.5m programme which will run during 2009-10 and 2010-11. The closing date for applications is 10 June 2009.

The Generations Together demonstrator programme is designed to:

• Generate wider interest in and thinking about intergenerational work
• Increase the number of volunteers working on intergenerational activity by 20,000 by the end of the programme
• Encourage a more strategic and sustainable approach
• Provide robust evidence of the effectiveness of intergenerational initiatives, and in particular, develop evidence about which models are most effective in delivering which outcomes, for which groups of people, in which situations.

Although the local authority will hold the contract for the delivery of the scheme, it is worth contacting your local Director of Children Services and/or Adult Services to see how local organisations can support the programme. It is a commitment of the funding bid that half of money received by a local authority will need to be directed towards third sector provision.

For more information go to http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/youthmatters/ytf/generationstogether/

Dianne Abbott MP has put down an early day motion on volunteering, which:

"...notes that currently those volunteering more than 16 hours per week are not entitled to jobseeker's allowance; believes this is causing a trade off between gaining valuable skills and work experience and having access to financial support; and calls on the Government to allow people to work an unlimited number of hours on a voluntary basis and still claim jobseeker's allowance."

Whilst it's great to see an MP who wants to make volunteering more accessible, Ms Abbott has made the same mistake as Steven Bubb from Acevo did a couple of months ago, and assumed that there are the same restrictions on volunteering and claiming benefits, as there are on education and paid work.

In fact the rules state that someone on Job Seekers Allowance can volunteer as much as they want to as long as they are still 'actively seeking work'. The 16 hour rule in relation to volunteering, is nothing but a commonly held myth. It is worrying that this myth is so pervasive that it is held to be fact by Dianne Abbott, all the MPs who have signed the EDM, and the Director of ACEVO. It looks like a major programme of education on what the actual rules are is needed.

AVM have written to Dianne Abbott, and the MPs who signed the motion.

The letter follows below (click 'read more').  We'll keep you posted about whether we get any replies.