The Future of Volunteering

Volunteering has gone professional. The days when being a volunteer meant helping out at the local soup kitchen or picking litter off the streets may not be gone completely, but charities are now recognizing the opportunity – and the need – to recruit and use their volunteers in different, more effective ways.

As the number of volunteers swells due to the recession, employer-supported and skills-based volunteering is becoming more common. Only one-sixth (16%) of the general public who responded to the Office of the Third Sector’s 1997 National Survey of Volunteering and Charitable Giving said their employers ran volunteering schemes. That had risen to more than a third (36%) by 2007.

Among charities there is also growing recognition of the need to find volunteer trustees in a more efficient way. A key point in Good Governance: A Code for the Voluntary and Community Sector, put together by a steering group of organisations and published in 2005, was that trustee boards need to have a diverse range of skills, experience and knowledge to run an organisation effectively.

Third sector support organisations are responding forcefully to these changing trends, and are working on solutions to help frontline organisations keep up with the times and continue to attract and keep volunteers and trustees.

"Volunteering is as much about what the third sector can do for businesses as the other way round."

“Employer-supported volunteering in general has increased, and alongside that the tide has been changing towards skills-based volunteering supported by employers – and that’s vital in terms of capacity building for charities,” says Edie MacGill, National Support Service Senior Operations Officer at Volunteering England.

In this respect, the recession doesn’t seem to have had a detrimental effect. “Businesses are recognizing that supporting their employees to volunteer is a costeffective way to meet their corporate social responsibility objectives. It’s also a good way to develop their staff’s skills and improve their motivation alongside more expensive formal training,” says MacGill. The benefits of employer-supported volunteering for charities are clear. “As a small charity it makes a big difference to us,” says Emma Chapman, General Secretary of In Deep, a charity which organises events such as dinners and complementary therapy afternoons to bring communities in London together. “It really boosts our volunteer pool. We’ve had around 20 volunteers from places like the Home Office. They help out at events, and some become more involved with the charity. One person started serving breakfast to older people and is now a trustee.”

In Deep finds many of its employer-supported volunteers through Time & Talents for Westminster. This is an employer-supported volunteering brokerage service set up in 1996 and based at Westminster Volunteer Centre. It started out with one staff member; now four people work on the programme. “It’s been very successful,” says Employee Volunteering Manager Marie Broad.

“Only 5% of people are aware that the role of trustee exists – this needs to change”

Businesses pay an annual fee of £5,000 to Time & Talents to find volunteering opportunities for their employees, although this can vary depending on the size of the company. For this fee, employers also get five days’ support to make sure they get the right placements for their staff, as well as invitations to events where employers and charities can share good practice.

Broad believes the longevity and success of Time & Talents for Westminster is down to the time her staff spend with each charity and employer working out what they want to gain from taking part.

“Sometimes we have very big corporations and tiny charities working together, but we always try to maintain a balance of power. We believe in equality of partnerships – that each party should get what they want out of the arrangement,” says Broad. “We try to make sure the different sides understand each other by having five networking events each year. Also, our website is very interactive – people can share tools and case studies. Communication is so important.”

Time & Talents for Westminster’s experience is being used to help other third sector organisations. Volunteering England has contracted the organisation to give advice on the employer-supported, skills-based volunteer schemes that it is piloting in Darlington, Exeter and Oxfordshire. In each area, they have funded a volunteer centre to employ a Local Business Partnership Coordinator (LBPC) who, supported by Volunteering England, is working to create partnerships between local employers and volunteer-involving organisations. Capacitybuilders is supporting and funding Volunteering England to run the pilots as part of the ‘Modernising Volunteering’ workstream, its programme of work to provide support to take volunteering  into the future. Grant Hayward is the LBPC working on the scheme in Oxfordshire. Based at Oxfordshire Community and Voluntary Action, he has just finished setting up the scheme, culminating in a recent launch event. He is now trying to get as many local charities and businesses as possible involved.

“Setting up the scheme has been a definite learning curve,” says Hayward. “At the most basic level, with our launch event and the literature we’ve put together, we’ve had to educate some charities about skills-based volunteering – not all realise help is available in areas like HR and marketing. Working as part of a network of three pilots has helped – we can share ideas. Using real examples to demonstrate the difference a partnership makes has been important.”

In terms of getting businesses on board, Hayward has found that working with established groups has been extremely beneficial. “We were fortunate in that the Responsible Oxfordshire Business Involvement Network had already approached us wanting to get involved in employer-supported volunteering. I would recommend trying to engage with similar groups when setting up an initiative like ours, perhaps Business Link or the chamber of commerce.”

Hayward is keen to point out the benefits employer supported volunteering has for businesses. “It’s just as much about what the third sector can give to employers as the other way round. It’s been really important to stress that when promoting the scheme,” he says.

“Volunteering gives employees lots of different skills and experience that can make them better at their own jobs.” Volunteering England is creating a good practice resource on how to set up a skills-based employer supported volunteering scheme as they develop the pilots. They plan to roll the scheme out more widely across the volunteer centre network in the future.

Employer-supported volunteering isn’t the only area of volunteering that is evolving. Third sector support organisations are also recognising the need to support frontline organisations to get the right blend of trustees to ensure solid governance.

"Only 5% of people are aware that the role of the trustee exists, and what it involves. That needs to change.”

NCVO is leading the field, piloting a programme to empower volunteer centres to support local frontline organisations to recruit trustees. “There’s similar work going on across the third sector, but we want to pull it together and share learning across the board about what works and what doesn’t,” says Charmaine Sainsbury, Governance and Leadership Training and Development Manager at NCVO.

The pilot is taking place in collaboration with Voluntary Action Chiltern & South Bucks. NCVO is training the centre’s staff to support local organisations to find trustees. They will then support the centre to run events to inform both charities and potential trustees about the initiative. NCVO is planning to make this support available nationally in 2010.

“When we were putting together the pilot we looked at innovative things other charities abroad were doing to attract trustees,” says Sainsbury. “We learned that those who are successful at recruiting put the benefits the role will have for the applicant at the forefront when advertising vacancies. By comparison, vacancies in the UK third sector are often advertised in dry terms.

“Looking for trustees in the right place is important too, especially if you’ve got limited resources. Boards need people with commitment and passion for a cause as well as skills. Approaching groups where people are already giving their time is a good idea.”

Diane Rutter, Voluntary Action’s Chief Officer, is pleased with the support they have received from NCVO. “Charities and community groups need trustees that can adapt to the changing world and steer them strongly into the future,” she says. “Having a mix of experience and skills on boards is essential, and I hope the programme will provide it for organisations in our area.”