johnramsey's blog

To celebrate Student Volunteering Week 2010 (22-28 February), Volunteering England commissioned a piece of research to increase knowledge and information about students volunteering in the UK. This analysis of student volunteering was carried out with respondents to wave two of the Futuretrack survey. Respondents were full-time students at UK Higher Education Institutions enrolled on an undergraduate degree programme. Respondents were surveyed during summer and autumn 2007 to record their experiences of their first year at university or college. Key findings include:

• 15.3% of undergraduates reported that they volunteered with a charity in their first year of studies;
• Volunteering rates were highest among students studying medicine/dentistry and social sciences;
• Students at higher ranking universities (ranked by entry tariff points) reported the highest volunteering rates;
• Volunteering rates were higher among some minority groups, including most ethnic minority students, students with a disability and those with caring responsibilities;
• Students who volunteer were more likely to take part in other extracurricular activities (both on and off campus);
• The most common reason for volunteering is to help someone or the community.

You can download a copy of the research bulletin at: http://www.volunteering.org.uk/WhatWeDo/Student+Volunteering/

The Queen's Award for Voluntary Service, the MBE for volunteer groups, was created in 2002 to recognise the outstanding contributions made by voluntary organisations in local communities across the UK.

To date, 750 groups have received the Award from Her Majesty; however, we are continually striving to recognise more of those who are operating to the highest standard. Previously, groups may not have been nominated because they, or those in a position to nominate them, are unaware of their eligibility for this prestigious Honour.

As part of our work to reach people who know such groups in their area, I write to request your support in sharing information about The Queen's Award for Voluntary Service with other members of your organisation - at a national and/or regional level. In doing so, we would like to encourage nominations from members of the public, someone who has benefited from the group or indeed someone in your organisation who has recognised outstanding voluntary work.

 For further information about the Award, please go to  www.direct.gov.uk/thequeensawardforvoluntaryservice

Martyn Lewis CBE,

Chairman of The Queen's Award for Voluntary Service committee

One of the emerging themes over the last year has been the growing demand for volunteering opportunities but the declining demand for volunteers from organisations. Within this debate, though, there seems to be an implicit criticism of organisations that we are not doing enough to accommodate volunteers.

Volunteering is a good thing. We all know this. And the Government has spent plenty of money on encouraging more people to volunteer. However policy has always focussed on getting more people to volunteer and not stopped to think about what the need for volunteers is.

I work for an organisation that is reliant on volunteers. 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.

In fact, I would go further. If there was a more effective way to support and improve the health and well-being of older people than through volunteering then we would go down that route. And as we are partly funded by public money, speaking as a tax-payer that is only right and proper.

Of course, many orgs could do more to involve volunteers (and there's plenty of info on what that is) but the debate has never really moved on to look at when does the cost of involving volunteers outweigh the benefits.

Towards the end of last year I met with some Age Concerns to discuss the DWP scheme and what they needed. What came through echoed the current climate. Enquiries were up, but the opportunities just weren't there either through a lack of capacity to manage any more volunteers or they just didn't need any more (other than the usual volunteer turnover).

My name is Eddy Hogg and I am a PhD Researcher at Nottingham Trent University, working in conjunction with Age Concern and Help the Aged.  I am conducting a national survey explore the extent organisations engage with older volunteers

I'd very grateful if you could spend just 10 minutes filling in the survey to help me explore the motivations for both older people and the organisations which they engage with. 

Information given in the survey will be completely anonymous.  However, if you would be interested in helping further with my study, there will be the option to leave your email address and the level of your organisation's engagement with people over 50.  This information will be stored separately to your answers given in the survey, to ensure that the information cannot be matched together.

If you have any questions, comments or requests for further information, do not hesitate to contact me;

Eddy Hogg

Email: edward.hogg@ntu.ac.uk

Phone: 07983 605957

Post: NTU, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU

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...

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.

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

Interesting article on the Third Sector website (www.thirdsector.co.uk), an interview with Louise Richards, director of policy and campaigns, Institute of Fundraising

Just replace 'fundraiser' with 'volunteer manager'...

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Her ambitions for the institute are clear. "We should be the voice of the sector, particularly so far as fundraising is concerned," she says. "We want to connect with our members, connect with those who benefit from the services charities provide and the impact they have, and connect with donors across the board."

The standing of professional fundraising is also something that concerns Richards.

"We want to make sure fundraisers are valued, that people recognise how important they are," she says. "Without fundraisers, charities just go under."

Richards would like to raise the prestige of fundraising so that it is considered a career choice on a par with medicine or the law.

At the moment, she says, fundraisers are not always given the recognition they merit, even in the charity sector. "It doesn't happen as much as it should," she says. "You really need trustee boards signed up to recognising the value of fundraising. I wouldn't say that happens in 100 per cent of charities."

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.

nfpSynergy have published a briefing (PDF) on over-estimating levels of volunteering which does make for interesting reading.

In it they suggest that loose definitions make for over-estimates and make some interesting recommendations; that 'informal volunteering' should be re-christened as neighbourliness or community spirit, that volunteering should therefore just refer to 'formal volunteering' and that how volunteering is defined within the Citizenship survey questions should be tightened.

Measuring volunteering is of course notoriously difficult. Not only does it depend on a person's own perception of volunteering or the questions actually posed, but it is easier to say what isn't volunteering rather than what is.

The differing figures from nfpsynergy, the Citizenship Survey and the National Surveys clearly indicate that we do need some form of acceptable uniformity. And maybe the answer will come from the UN. Earlier this year it confimred that it will issue guidelines on how national governments should measure voluntary work in national surveys.

Baroness Neuberger has published her report 'Volunteering Across the Criminal Justice System'. In it she says that 'volunteer management needs to be invested in if it is really to reap dividends, and the CJS, without doubt, needs more of this kind of investment' and 'a lack of investment in volunteer management inevitably results in volunteers having a bad experience. During the course of my research I have come across many cases of volunteers who have had a negative experience, as a direct result of poor investment in their management.'

Her recommendations:

• A ministerial champion should be established for volunteering across the CJS
• The agencies of the CJS on the ground should invest in volunteering and good volunteer management
• All agencies of the CJS should have a strategy to engage the skills and time of ex-offenders, to deliver those services alongside professionals.
• Employee volunteering should be rolled out throughout the CJS
• The Office for Criminal Justice Reform should produce guidance and a toolkit for local criminal justice boards on how volunteering can help them meet their objectives.
• Guidance should be produced for commissioners in the CJS on how to consider the involvement of volunteers when commissioning services.
• Examine how more specific schemes for offenders (and ex-offenders) who want to volunteer could be extended across the country.
• Unemployed people in contact with the Criminal Justice system should be signposted to volunteering opportunities as a stepping stone to entering the labour market.
• Government departments and their partners should work to develop a sustainable funding model for victims' organisations, where volunteers are clearly providing a vita service that is not being provided by statutory services.
• A coordinated cross-Government initiative to encourage employer support for voluntary roles.
• Joint guidance, by the trade union movement and Volunteering England, on the use of volunteers within public services should be published.

The full report can be found at: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/124076/volunteers%20in%20cjs.pdf

AVM now has a regular column in Volunteering England's Volunteering magazine. If you are a member you can access the magazine at http://volunteering.org.uk/members

February 2009 article: The evolutionary crossroads volunteer managers face

What is volunteering? Many things to many people, of course. To me, it conjures up images of enthusiasm and satisfaction, of happiness and sometimes sadness. But always of people giving, to make a difference.

And yet sometimes volunteer managers are the vampires of the volunteering world, draining the excitement and passion out of every volunteer we chance upon, by demanding references, CRB checks, interviews and risk assessments.

Volunteering will have an invaluable role to play during the financial downturn:

• Volunteers will provide services to the rising number of people who will be in need of help, advice and support.
• Volunteering will give people a way of developing new skills and improving existing ones.
• Volunteering will enable people to re-gain their confidence and give them a renewed sense of purpose.

Volunteering will give people the opportunity to be active in their communities at a time when communities are likely to become more fractured.

The role of Government in developing volunteering is threefold:

A new year is inevitably a time when we look forward, normally with more hope than trepidation. 2009 of course promises to be different - in charity parlance, a year of ‘challenges’ for all of us.

But let’s start with some of the more exciting events that will affect us. Firstly OTS hopefully will be shortly releasing details regarding their £4mil investment in volunteer management. Although this has been much delayed since its announcement last year, AVM has been assured the Govt is still committed to this and represents a real breakthrough in how volunteer management is viewed.

Of course, £4mil does not compare to the amount invested in, say, young people volunteering and equally whatever plans they have will never meet everyone’s approval but it’s fair to say that even 5 years ago the thought of £4mil being invested directly for VMs would have been outlandish.

Secondly the work of the Commission on the Future of Volunteering Action Groups will be coming to an end. I think one of the succeses of the work so far is how it has brought together players from across the sectors – the challenge for all of us involved in volunteering is to take forward what comes out of the Action Groups, build on it and not simply disappear back into our collective caves.

Thirdly, there is the revision of the National Occupational Standards on Volunteer Management. Strictly of course this happened last year although a new introductory guide will be coming out this year. The NOS were always very useful but in truth highly indigestible. The new format makes them much more user-friendly and should provide us with a tool to establish the skills and competences of a good volunteer manager, and enable organisations to properly value the role of volunteer manager.

Which leads me nicely on to what we as volunteer managers need to be doing.

Volunteering will have a crucial role to play in our society over the next couple of years – eg by meeting the demand for services and as a route for people to re-train and re-gain confidence having been made redundant. However, as charity income drops there will be internal jostling as funding decisions are made and the fear is that volunteer managers may be in the firing line as the work we do is not universally recognised.

VE is challenging the Government to invest in volunteering to contribute to national and personal economic renewal.

The Recession Challenge sets out nine key challenges to central and local government, volunteer-involving organisations and the private sector, in order to make the most of volunteering’s potential to contribute to economic recovery.

To government – central and local

1. Volunteering is a route to new employment for many people; volunteering can develop skills for employability and for new career pathways.