May 12, 2013
A Shift in the Wind
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Earlier this week Volunteering New Zealand issued an invitation on FaceBook to consider the ethos of volunteering and the meaning of ‘giving time’ for the common good. It was in response to a news item about Christchurch youth who had pledged four hours of volunteering in return for tickets to a music festival –The Concert – held late last year. Except around 600 pledges have not been fulfilled, and according to the terms and conditions of the pledge (clearly stated) they are to be named and shamed. They can expect to be outed on The Concert’s website.
There is absolutely no doubt the people who have participated in Student Army projects deserve recognition and a thanksgiving for the work they have been doing in quake-ravaged Christchurch. From all accounts the concert was a great success.
The website includes clear information on whys and wherefores, including a FAQ section which defines volunteering as performing a service freely and for no charge.
Here’s the rub. There may be no fees for volunteering, though there is always an opportunity cost for the donation of time. The pay-back for that time can be offered in a huge number of ways, from a regular smile and ‘thank you’ to formal functions and speechifying, not to mention a lot of feel-good factors and personal gains. But to offer a tangible (and highly desirable) carrot suggests the volunteering response is not given altogether freely. What to do when the offer is not fulfilled? Just let it go and mumble-mumble about free-loaders, or do the public name-and-shame? To be fair, the 600 unfulfilled pledges represent only 7.5% of the 8000 people who created 50,000 hours of volunteer service. And if they are outed, will public humiliation put them off volunteering for ever? Will that matter? Is going public with non-volunteering so different from the bad-mouthing that a poorly- managed volunteer programme can attract?
Alternatively, will volunteers elsewhere now expect enticing carrots when they offer their time, something a bit beyond the annual Christmas party?
Let me add these questions to voluntary sector conditions I have been noting in my posts in recent months:
- A Register for violations of Volunteer Rights is suggested for Australia. (Leading to a Union of Volunteers, as one comment has suggested?)
- A major event is politicised to create a legacy for volunteering, to the point where £5million Lottery Funds are allocated “to be spent on Olympic inspired volunteering schemes”.
- New ways to fund and provide social services (Social Bonds, Social Finance) are being discussed, without consideration of volunteer input.
- Lack of understanding and appreciation of volunteers and the potential of volunteering are highlighted in recent academic research.
- The focus on measuring social service impact and outcomes is not doing any favours for volunteering, specially where the quality of relationships makes the critical difference to outcomes for individuals.
- The rise of Obligatory Volunteering is also evident, including internships, compulsory community service and conditional welfare entitlements. Which is where the Christchurch Concert pledge fits in: ‘free will’ is not so free after all.
- Corporate responsibility and ‘workplace volunteering’ can sometimes be more self-serving than real social responsibility.
- In addition we should take into account trends in volunteer preferences, like micro-volunteering, time-limited and task-focused assignments, and time-banking.
There we have a heap of shifts in practice to impact on the ethos of volunteering, and many of them influenced by Government directives. Government is even supporting a new approach to community development with funding and advice. It is disappointing to see how the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector is ignoring the long history and proud achievements of ‘community-led development’ that happens without any form of government intervention.
So it seems the ethos of volunteering has enlarged its sphere to include more formalised, more structured practice, and a variety of practice modes. Volunteering is certainly less central to service delivery for many NGOs than the volunteering I grew up with, decades ago. That’s OK – nothing is forever, and I’m getting used to living with constant change, in organisations and in volunteering.
But, and it’s a big but: formalised volunteering programmes, complete with policies and professional management of volunteers, are pretty small bikkies in NFP statistics. Ninety per cent of volunteer organisations in New Zealand do not employ paid staff. Think about it: that’s close to 90,000 organisations that do their own thing, working in their communities for the common good, and doing good, pitching in where needs must, scratching for funds, and keeping their services going anyway.
So the ethos of volunteering, performing a service freely and for no charge, has not gone away. It has just got a bit larger. Denouncing volunteers who do not fulfil commitments is not yet within the boundaries of regular practice, not yet in the spirit of volunteering, even though volunteers are free to tarnish an organisation’s reputation if they don’t get the experience they expect.
As any yachtie knows, a shift in the wind means you have to trim the sails, and adjust the course to make the most of the wind-power. That’s the excitement of sailing, being at the mercy of wind and ocean currents, and mastering your way around these forces. Volunteering can shift with the wind too, yet will keep enough of its core to maintain a true course.
April 21, 2013
What’s to Become of Volunteering?
There’s my question for the week, something to puzzle over after reading the headline Some community social services could be funded privately in future, under a new agreement with the Government. This is the first public statement on Social Bonds from a New Zealand government minister.
‘Social Bonds’ is a process of advancing funds to NGOs by philanthropist groups (‘private providers’) for the term of an outcomes-based contract, and then reimbursed by Government when the NGO delivers on pre-determined targets. This funding arrangement has been researched and discussed within government in New Zealand since 2009. Earlier this year a roadshow promotion from Treasury and Ministry of Health travelled the country to inform community organisations, and to start public discussion.
Those of us who do the media watching, monitor trends, and understand the politics of the day will not be overly surprised. In the UK Social Bonds have been transforming the community and volunteer landscape since Big Society became the favoured social policy of the Coalition Government. An Australian report indicates ongoing discussion and debate on details of a Social Bond programme. Maybe we should heed a Canadian view that says “Social Impact Bonds are a new way to privatise public services.”
On the face of it, the intention of a Social Bond arrangement makes a lot of sense – as any venture capitalist would want from investing in a new enterprise. You put in the money, and you expect to see some real returns on investment, like a reduction in the rate of teen-age pregnancy, fewer smokers, or a drop in criminal re-offending figures. Social Bonds also link favourably with current developments in New Zealand for user-friendly contracts between government and NGOs, including multi-agency contracting and simple format financial reporting. Social Bonds sit well with the results-based programme set by Better Public Services – though this ambitious agenda needs to involve all parts of the community and voluntary sector, from the beginning.
Nothing is yet certain, except for evidence of government intentions for change. In my reactionary moments I see a pincer movement to corral organisations into a private sector model of service delivery, to get the job done in the shortest time at the lowest cost. There are risks of reduced public accountability. Worse is how the ethos of a welfare safety net is further eroded, because investor profits will take precedence. At the work-face performance-based contracting could mean a selective practice devoted to the most ‘deserving’ clients who will boost the return on investment.
Nowhere in the discussion so far has there been a mention of volunteers – neither their existing contributions to NGOs, nor their future potential. Non-Government Organisations are those which contract with government. To be drawn closer to web and snares of government is to revert to the decades-old acronym of QANGO – a quasi-autonomous non-government organisation, the ‘almost, but not quite’ independent body, a phrase that will fool nobody.
Not-for-profit organisations (NFPs) can be thankful they are outside this net. Yet they too will be drawn into this new environment, if only in their efforts to secure a share of the charity dollar. Will philanthropists consider NFP applications favourably alongside a guaranteed return for investing with NGOs? And, if the ROI from government contracts is lower than finance market rates doesn’t that reduce the size of the over-all funding pool?
What will become of volunteering when government-sponsored community services become the norm?
Well, here’s your example. There is one institution, developed and run by volunteers for many years. Since it gained a government contract a few years back there has been a huge growth in paid staff, and volunteers have been side-lined, reduced to wondering what their role is, and whether they are needed any more. They do not feature on the organisation chart; they are bit-part players, not really essential to the way the organisation is playing out its mission and vision.
If I was writing a fictional scenario for the future I would be describing the growth in NGOs marketing and fundraising departments. The organisation-wide volunteer programme will be down-graded in favour of ‘greater efficiency’ from paid staff. Volunteer activities will be confined to promotional and fundraising events. No need now for managers of volunteers, because HR and FR people know how and can do.
But if I was looking for inspiration I would go straight to Inspiring Communities, where community-led change is still the mantra to follow, where they know about ‘learning by doing’, about community development thinking and action. Or I would read again the stories from NZ Social Entrepreneur Fellowship.
Volunteering shall not die, because it is in our nature to collaborate and to care about our families, neighbours, and communities. We just need to our voice to be heard, and heeded.
April 7, 2013
Underscoring
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A recently reported research study is titled Fears, constraints and contracts: the democratic reality for New Zealand’s community and voluntary sector. The results are hard-hitting, lifting a lid on current experience for organisations whose voice has been largely silenced by the political shift over the past forty years, to neo-liberal economics and the out-sourcing of social services to the community sector.
The survey covers both NGO and not-for-profit (NFP) organisations, all fields of social service provision, and both large national organisations and small community groups with no paid staff and no external funding. The promise of confidentiality and privacy allowed a freedom to respond to questions in an open and direct way. The results will not be surprising to those of us engaged in the community and voluntary sector, but the tenor and directness of the quoted statements leave us in no doubt of a depth of disappointment and frustration behind the words. For example (p 57):
NGOs play a unique and crucial role in New Zealand. Their contribution to political decision-making in NZ is currently undervalued and under-utilised. They are under-resourced and therefore undermined. (Emphasis added)
Small wonder these words deserved underscoring.
The report deserves to be read in full, to get the picture of how we have come to this pretty pass, and to note the references to earlier studies raising questions and alarm bells.
Those with long memories will recall the shifts we had to make in New Zealand from the early 1980s. Let me remind you:
A simple ‘begging letter’ to a philanthropic or trust fund changed to formal application requirements and for reports on spending and demonstrable benefits or gains. Organisations were forced to hire people to spend their days making funding applications, thus increasing overhead costs. And philanthropic funders got into cahoots to determine which social issue of the moment deserved the most attention.
Contracts for health and social services devolved from government responsibility might have brought funding security, but the new environment came with fish-hooks like health and safety regulations; like additional responsibilities and accountability for volunteer governance, not to mention compliance costs. What was previously a mission-based civil society endeavour changed to dancing to the tune of government direction.
Consultation quickly became a dirty word as proposals were presented with invitation to comment, only to find policy directions had already been decided. Very little notice was taken of community responses no matter the expressed outrage. Neither were organisations given time or resources to present community views to government.
These are the bones now cemented into the community and voluntary sector. Fundraising has become a professional occupation, accompanied by the marketing experts so that organisations compete for the charity dollar and corporate sponsorship. Contracts with government are confidential and a gagging clause ensures docile compliance. These days it seems a consultation document is issued one week and turned into a political or regulatory edict just a few weeks later.
The government’s ‘relationship’ with the community and voluntary sector bound in the Kia Tutahi document counts for nothing against the control imposed by the contracting environment. Adding to this disregard of communities the Charities Commission is disestablished, its responsibilities now determined and regulated by a government department. The rules change and over a thousand organisations lose their charitable status and their ability to raise funds via the carrot of tax rebates. Advocacy is out, so longstanding organisations like Greenpeace and National Council of Women (NCW) are no longer deemed charities. In ‘the good old days’ NCW was a political force to be reckoned with, up there with Federated Farmers and the Federation of Labour.
Here is the sound of the silence of democratic dissent.
And this reality happens, the report’s findings say, regardless of which political party heads the government. It’s an undemocratic reality when all the power is in the hands of government, when the voice of the sector is not valued, nor respected.
A few people will recognise a parallel universe in the way organisations can undervalue the work of managers of volunteers, and under-appreciate volunteer contributions to oiling social wheels and to maintaining community wellbeing in many different spheres. I could suggest this is a function of a trickle-down pecking order. I would sooner we took a stand to exercise our democratic voice, for volunteers and for the organisations that serve our communities.
There was plenty of encouragement to do just this at the recent Australasian Retreat for Advanced Management of Volunteers. Focus Up! was a key message. Recognise our roles as Leaders, Educators, Movers and Shakers and do something! Even if it means getting out of comfort zones, causing a stir, sticking heads over parapets. We owe it to volunteers and to our communities.
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.
July 15, 2012
Volunteering and its Variations
Last week I attended a fund-raising function organised by former refugees from the Kachin State in Myanmar. Most of them have not been here longer than 5 years. In very short order they learned about living in their new environment. They bonded as a group, like seeking like, as you do in strange territory. They learned from each other, finding out how to access resources, and supporting those who needed extra help. And the leaders among them established a national network to share local information and to keep in touch with homeland politics.
This function entertained both old and new Kiwi supporters with song and dance, and then provided a meal for 200 people. It was a superb demonstration of event management organisation and spirited goodwill: a totally awesome display of volunteering. Now they have raised a goodly sum to provide medical supplies and mosquito nets to send to the remote and primitive camps for displaced people in their homeland.
This story got me thinking of all the different representations of volunteering: there are a lot of related words and phrases in common parlance these days.
The Kindness of Strangers turns up as a book title, over and over. It’s there on You Tube presentations and in song lyrics, and a TV programme. It’s the title of a scientific study, which includes reference to that archetypal model of a kind stranger, the Good Samaritan. Pay it Forward is a variation on this theme – a practice that has been around a lot longer than the movie of this title. A Guardian (UK) article claims “a civil society needs the kindness of strangers and acquaintances”, and cites another report from the Young Foundation , which argues that
Civility is the largely invisible ‘glue’ that holds communities together, and that experiences of incivility cause hurt, stress and deeper social problems, and has a bigger impact of people’s sense of social health than crime statistics. Perhaps most significantly it shows that civility operates on a reciprocal basis and that it is ‘contagious’.
Volunteering is also touted as a glue to hold communities together; and ‘civility’ reminds me of Civil Society – which is just the term to embrace volunteering and all the ways we talk about community and people. Like this:
Civil society activity meets fundamental human wants and needs, and provides an expression for hopes and aspirations. It reaches parts of our lives and souls that are beyond the state and business. It takes much of what we care about most in our private lives and gives it shape and structure, helping us to amplify care, compassion and hope. (Making Good Society, 2010)
The Gift Economy is another variant of the concept of volunteering, that ancient practice of exchange and sharing that kept the wheels on communities before we got hooked into market-economy drivers. And the Gift Economy is still a big one. Pacific Nations can enjoy remittances from emigrants that total more than local economies. Maori consciousness of collective wellbeing and responsibility means ‘volunteering’ in the accepted definition has no equivalent in their language. So we refer to mahi aroha – “work performed out of love, sympathy or caring”, which is part of everyday cultural life within family/whanau, and marae communities. Nor should we forget that New Zealand’s 4.9% contribution to GDP by the community and volunteer sector is another constituent of the Gift Economy.
And then I think of Altruism, a virtue demonstrating a selfless concern for others, the opposite of Selfishness. It is a huge topic, involving religion, philosophy and pretty much all of the social sciences. Volunteering is a form of altruism, given the normative definition of free will and no financial reward. And wouldn’t you know it – research is showing a strong correlation between volunteering and personal health and well-being. Volunteering, as a Gift Relationship, is always a two-way stretch.
One more piece in the jigsaw of volunteering is Philanthropy, that munificent gesture that is going to keep an organisation solvent for another year. Etymologists will recognise the Greek origins of this word, meaning ‘love of humanity’. It’s another way to reinforce all the interpretations of volunteering I have highlighted. Philanthropy is about private initiatives for public good, operating outside government and business. You could say Philanthropy embraces all the elements above, writ large.
I learn from these reflections that “volunteering” is a fundamental element of being human, of belonging to a community of family and friends and to wider connections. Long may this premise remain without corruption.
May 20, 2012
There’s a New One Every Day
In all the gloom and doom of national and international economics the volunteer industry keeps on keeping on. Numbers of volunteers continue to increase, now spread across a wider age range than in generations past, and across different sectors. The range of volunteer activities broadens as organisations raise their expectations and the standards of volunteer programmes, as the manager of volunteers becomes recognised as a leader holding a pivotal role in developing and maintaining volunteer services.
There could be quite a number of people wanting to tell me “it ain’t necessarily so”. Somebody is bound to point out how volunteer recruitment and retention is so often the most wanted topic on Volunteer Centre training schedules. There are lots of reasons for this: turnover in people working with volunteers, a lack of specific training on management of volunteers, getting behind the times in new ways to attract volunteers, and the different expectations of volunteers – you know, using social media, getting upbeat in advertising, creating new roles for volunteers.
There will always be room for improvement. And there are always people out there thinking about volunteering who need a bit of encouragement.
Like a conversation I had last week that went like this:
- I am asked: Are you working, or retired?
- I talk a bit about being involved in the Management of Volunteers Project, and why. Of course it’s a great opportunity to do a bit of a sell, on volunteering and on the importance of good management for volunteers.
- Oh, she says a little wistfully, I’ve thought about volunteering, and I could ‘cos I work part-time. I do like shopping, she adds, eyes lighting up at the thought of being a volunteer that got to browse the malls and shopping meccas.
- Well, I advise, it’s really important that you get a job that you like, and managers try to match your interests.
So then I went on about how to connect, how to find out what volunteer positions were available. Easy as, I said – you can do it all on the computer. Or you could go to Facebook – there are regular inserts on volunteer opportunities. Or go visit a Volunteer Centre. That’s where you can get registered and get referred to places that could meet your interests and expectations.
I don’t know if I have enabled one more person to join the ranks of volunteers, but at least I have taken the opportunity to offer some good leads and some encouragement to give it a go.
In just four weeks’ time New Zealand will be alive with exhibitions and events to promote and to celebrate volunteering. Volunteer Awareness Week will have something for everyone. This annual programme serves to illustrate the breadth and depth of volunteering and all the organisations that go to make our Civil Society.
Volunteers are everywhere. When I go to catch a bus I walk past the Community Centre which is always alive with people meeting for community purposes. Around the corner I can find the local Community Garden, and further on is the Citizens Advice Bureau staffed by warm and welcoming volunteers. When I go walking on one of the many trails around Wellington I see the work of volunteers who have been landscaping a desolate environment, restoring native plants and trees, recovering a waterway to re-introduce native fish. During the weekend I’ll be watching some kids run around a cold and muddy sports field, and I will be admiring the volunteers who are team coaches, managers and referees, and the ones who organise the rota for half-time oranges and the jersey washing. My weekly community newspapers tell me more, about op-shops run by volunteers, about food collections for Food Banks, or a meal delivery service for new mums. Volunteers knock at my door, doing their stuff as collectors for a fund-raising appeal. Email newsletters turn up in my in-box, crafted by volunteers.
That’s the way of my community, just a small part of it. This year’s slogan for Volunteer awareness week is Building Communities through Volunteering. That’s what we do, and you can read more here.
