April 1, 2013
Measuring Up
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What do you reckon? How does your organisation rate for effectiveness in what it does? What is your performance rating? Can you ring the bell at the top of the scale? Bottom line question: what is the return to donors and funders for their investment in the services provided by your organisation?
There’s a global push these days to find answers to these questions, putting pressure on NGOs and NFPs to lift their game. Do not mistake me, I am all for demonstrating impact and effective social change, but why do I feel like a captured mouse being teased by the cat? Or like the caged big cats being whipped along by the circus ringmaster?
When you de-code the signals you can see how philanthropic donors and funder contracts are controlling and directing the community and voluntary sector environment. There’s a sinking lid on what we are allowed to do in the name of ‘charity’, as well as reduced funding. It’s like there is a takeover in progress, and we are letting it happen, being sucked into the ways and means of the public and private sectors. Corporate sponsorship and partnerships with business are attractive to get leverage and influence for social change, but how long before we are dancing to the whims of the corporation’s board? To the tune of the latest marketing programme? Or to the political good idea that gets turned into a statutory regulation?
The language of inputs / outputs / outcomes, of efficiency and effectiveness has been around in business for decades, and community and voluntary organisations have made efforts to record their work along these measures. But nothing is clear-cut, and I have yet to see a proven methodology for measuring outcomes and impact that works for the NFP sector.
Years ago I had to persuade a new manager who had come from a canning factory that disabled people were not cans of peas; they did not roll off an assembly line in neatly packaged ways; and really, there were multi-multiple factors to take into account in service planning and delivery, and in what could be counted as measures of ‘success’.
It’s still much the same these days. Consider Buddy or Befriending programmes for example – they are out there in organisations for the elderly, in mental health programmes, in services for disabled people, for de facto grand-parenting and parent support groups, and for disaffected youth. Think about the multiple stakeholders who could be involved in these services: funders and donors; the provider organisation; families; volunteers, and hello! the manager of volunteers who is responsible for making the programme work and best possible experience for the volunteer and for service users.
The impact of services like these goes in several directions. Families and individuals get support / advice / information to keep on keeping on and to take new leaps into the future. The organisation takes another step in fulfilling its mission, and maybe reporting to funders and donors on real achievements. Volunteers gain in their personal sense of well-being, and in health benefits. There are spin-off benefits for other health and welfare organisations, and for government services. Managers of volunteers can glow with pride when they see what a great team of volunteers they are leading and what they have achieved. The spread of impact goes way beyond performance indicators and a one-eyed review of measuring what the organisation does, even if we are not talking it up, or making formal assessment of achievements. That is Civil Society for you, a large amorphous collective that keeps on keeping our communities and societies keeping on.
We should not need to be reminded about the role and function of Civil Society. We should not need to recall there is a much larger view of the world than profit and loss accounts, of measuring outcomes and impact and social change. Civil Society is the third leg of the stool that vies for social harmony at local, national and global levels. As a significant part of Civil Society our community and voluntary sectors offer a countervailing force against the might and main of government and big business. Do not let us lose traction by succumbing to hard-nosed political dogma, nor in being seduced by the attractions of social enterprise or the lure of venture capital and other funding arrangements.
But do – please – let us work together to find ways to report on achievement, successes, volunteer stories, and what really works to create change. We – the community and voluntary sector, and the managers of volunteers – need to state our case, and to stake a claim in the politics of impact measurement.
February 10, 2013
Marketing a Volunteer Programme
I am old-fashioned enough to still be a regular reader of a daily newspaper, one that has not yet turned to tabloid format. I reckon it’s a more leisurely way to get my fix of the news. That includes a browse through the business pages: I look for the columnists who can explain the economy or market trends in plain language. Often there is good advice for retailers and entrepreneurs. And the funny thing is, the recommendations could apply equally to NFP organisations.
Marketing and fundraising, for example, are important features of contemporary NFP business plans. There’s a lot of competition for the charity dollar, and gaining sponsorship or partnering with a for-profit business can require a delicate courtship ballet and some well-honed promotional skills. Here‘s what is recommended for small retailers and for-profit enterprises:
- Do everything you can to improve your online presence, website and strong social media representation.
- Tune in to today’s market – expectations are changing.
- Make sure you include ‘stepping stones’, a range of products and price affordability.
- Make shopping trips an ‘occasion’ filled with experience, service and old-fashioned hospitality.
It does not take much to translate this advice for promoting a volunteer programme:
- Get cracking with regular social media entries and pics; make sure the website is specially volunteer-friendly;
- Heed the current trends in volunteer profiles and adapt to changing expectations;
- Offer a range of volunteer and donor opportunities and defined commitments; and
- Remember that quality ‘customer service’ can extend to volunteers as well as service users, and to all organisation relationships.
All familiar stuff we have been talking up for a while now – right?
Trouble is, the ascendance of marketing and fundraising in our sector is pushing volunteering aside, ignoring the potential returns on comparatively low-cost investment in volunteer skills and time – and overlooking the salary costs for those well-paid marketers and fundraisers. Some of the tales that come to my notice – the shoddy treatment of volunteers by fundraisers, or the last-minute engagement of the manager of volunteers for organising an event – demonstrate a kind of discrimination against volunteering, not to mention the exploitation of volunteer goodwill.
So it has never been more important to get switched on to principles of marketing, to pushing barrows and proclaiming achievements, and to demonstrating the value of our volunteer programmes. I’ll bet the carpet-bag of management skills carried by volunteer leaders will include patience, tact, empathy, assessment and negotiation – all attributes extolled for fundraising and marketing. I reckon we could teach those teams a thing or two.
We just have to get out there and do it. Now!
If you think you need a leg-up to get started just get yourself to the Australasian Retreat for Advanced Volunteer Management in Sydney, March 20-22. Quite simply, and honestly, it is the best ever opportunity for professional development in managing volunteers, being simultaneously challenging and supportive, and fun. Try it, and see for yourself.
January 20, 2013
Prospecting for a New Year
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It’s that time of year for reflection, to look into the pool of 2012 and to assess the prospects for volunteers and their managers in 2013.
Looking good from last year was the continuing increase in numbers of volunteers, especially from youth cohorts. There was a lot more corporate volunteering too. I was heartened by the increased support and recognition for International Volunteer Managers’ Day (November 5) and for International Volunteer’s Day (December 5). And it seemed there was greater and more effective use of the e-waves than previously – for recruiting volunteers, for creative news reporting on volunteering, and for producing better and brighter organisation websites.
Volunteering New Zealand stepped up with the publication of Best Practice Guidelines for Volunteer-Involving Organisations, outlining a steer on supporting managers of volunteers, getting the best from a volunteer programme and enhancing organisational attraction for volunteers and paid staff. I am looking forward to the next publication, the Learning and Development Pathway for managers of volunteers.
But there is no time to rest on our laurels. At the top of the search list for my blog, again, is Bad Volunteer Experience. Again, it shows how many people miss out on good practice in management of volunteers. More disheartening are the continuing accounts of raw deals for managers of volunteers, overburdened and under-appreciated, by organisations that should know better. So work on promoting and educating on the basics – the essentials – of managing volunteers will continue to be a priority in the coming months. Business as usual, you might say.
I picked up some signals last year that are going to be my worry-beads for 2013. I am not alone in my concerns:
Volunteering is becoming more transient, more promiscuous, more blurred
Convergence between NFPs and the business sector is not the panacea for all ills
Volunteering is an unloved child generally but was particularly so in 2012
Volunteers are demanding to be led – not managed
Resources are being drawn away from volunteering for investment in fundraising
These quotes come from different sources and could all be placed under the rubric of The Great Unsettlement. Here are the features I reckon are the ‘big-picture’ issues:
- Corporate social responsibility has spawned corporate volunteering, and also sponsorship and partnerships with NFP organisations. Good stuff, and sensible in cash-strapped times. Except there is potential risk to maintaining organisation branding and identity if relations with a corporate business are not well-managed. Worse is the way volunteering and the management of an ongoing volunteer programme seem to be sidelined in preference to scoring big business patronage. This is particularly evident in marketing and managing fundraising events.
- ‘Social enterprise’ has risen in popularity stakes as a business model for social outcomes. Yes, good for the national economy, and more sexy than ordinary everyday volunteering – which (if you need reminding) has promoted social outcomes for generations. I sigh, because the definition of volunteering is up for debate, again.
- Government out-sourcing of social services has turned many NFPs into NGOs over the past 30 years, introducing an active if unequal interface between government and community. Proposals for new models of funding such as social bonds will put a whole new agenda in front of many organisations, again challenging the place and the contribution of a volunteer programme.
- Accountability, the business of measuring performance, not just inputs and outputs in dollar terms, has been around for a while now. The current attention to Social Return on Investment (SROI) is more serious, more intense and we’d better get to know about it. Except the impact of human service delivery is difficult to formulate, expensive to administer, and risks turning volunteering into a commodity.
The political and economic environment rules – OK? So it seems, and in the process that part of social structure that is called Civil Society, or the Third Sector, or simply ‘the community’ becomes marginalised. What’s a manager of volunteers to do?
Top of my wish-list for this year is to get beyond the hand-wringing and to turn questions of ‘what can we do?’ into ‘how do we get there?’ Notice how ‘we’ reminds us of the collective and the collaborative approach to action. There is the stimulus, to seek out allies in local networks and to enlist support from the progressive organisations that were pilots for the Best Practice Guidelines. Take some leafs from marketing and fundraising strategies: cultivate news media contacts, and never let up on social media plugs. Become social entrepreneurs in the sense of community-building for social innovation, for volunteering and volunteer organisations.
There are already pockets of volunteering enterprise in various communities. Just think what volunteering could become if we stitched those pockets into overalls. There is our challenge for 2013: to gain a stake in the future we need to stake a claim, on our terms, for the territory of community and for volunteering.
April 22, 2012
Minding Our Values
It’s always enlightening to bone up on organisation missions and visions. The office reception or the organisation’s website or letterhead is the place to go. That’s where I also look out for the values, the words that act as the moral compass to guide the organisation’s operation and practice.
Many NPF organisations claim they are Values-Driven, drawing on their foundation manifesto. But organisation values are not exclusive to our sector. Basic manuals on organisation development will include reference to the importance of developing a Mission, Vision and Values. Corporate businesses and government departments can spend time and a lot of $$ pinning the right words and statements to their mastheads. The mission describes the intention of an organisation’s design and plan, and the vision defines the desired end-state. The values express ends and means underpinning both mission and vision.
That is, the abstract words that name our values become real in our behaviour, the way we do business and in our relationships.
One writer* calls values “the DNA of an organisation, the glue that holds culture, leadership and strategy together”. So even if there are no values identified they will be operating under the radar. Much better to have them up front.
Many an organisation has failed because it got diverted from its mission and the vision got blurred. But none failed so spectacularly as the energy corporation Enron, in 2001. Engraved in granite at head office reception, Enron’s values were Communication, Integrity, Respect, and Excellence – decorative words that came to be a false deal in the company’s business practice.
This cautionary tale might be an extreme example, yet is a reminder to pay attention to organisational standards and everyday practices. And to go about identifying values if not already established – involving all staff and volunteers.
Choosing particular value-words is the fun part. What does this organisation stand for? What words represent the way we want our mission and vision to be understood? And more particularly, what words will inform our actions and behaviours? Yes, but value-words are abstracts that have no substance until we put meaning and actions to them. And then we have to understand how commitment to a particular value can operate on a continuum: people will put different weights to the meanings, depending on their own beliefs.
Let’s take Respect as an example. A discussion might go something like this:
Q: Why have we selected this value-word?
A: Because … we believe in the fundamental dignity of all people; people have rights; we are a people-centred organisation; because it fits with our mission.
Q: How can we live up to this value? How can we demonstrate ‘respect’?
A: We listen, actively; we want to empower others; we answer messages and queries promptly; we can agree to disagree; we accept differences.
Clearly such questions involve extensive discussion of the ‘makes you think’ kind. Values then become embedded in organisation planning and policies and operations. Values will be on the agenda in recruitment interviews. And the pay-off will become evident in organisation culture, staff and volunteer cohesion, and flow on to reputation in the community.
This piece is a very brief introduction to the business of values. A recent UK survey of NFP organisations will take you a bit further, under the title To Practise what we Preach. Exactly!
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* Henderson, et al. (2006) Leading Through Values: Linking company culture to business strategy. Auckland: HarperCollins.
