ESV: Realising the Potential

ESV: Realising the Potential

Summary of the Exeter Workshop Discussions

12th July 2016

Dr. Jon Burchell (University of Sheffield), Dr Joanne Cook (University of Hull)

Reflecting on Current Challenges

During the first workshop session, participants were invited to share their reflections on current challenges and developments emerging within their organisations in relation to ESV and ESV engagement. In this summary, these issues have been drawn together under the ‘gaps’ classifications utilised in the supporting research to the workshops.

Several regional demographic and location challenges were raised by participants, rural isolation, urban pockets and the predominance of small and medium size charities and businesses were discussed. In Somerset for example, 70% of charities operated on less than £20,000 per year. These organisations struggle to become ESV ready and exist by moving from one grant to another. One of the problems raised in Devon was that of rural isolation and the challenges of bringing small charities together across a dispersed region to engage in ESV. There were some success stories but these tended to be located in urban centres with pockets of positive activity in rural areas but no current way of bringing this together and making it sustainable.

Skills Gap

Some of the charities discussed how the offers from companies around ESV often don’t match the areas that they really need support in. They wanted to see more skills based volunteering opportunities. Some volunteer Centres discussed how they get 2-3 businesses coming to them every week for team challenges which they simply did not have the capacity to meet because their charity members were simply too small to take 40 volunteers. Timing was also an issue since these requests are mostly last minute. Employers acknowledged these challenges in terms of how they engage their staff in ESV, team challenges were seen to be a good way of introducing employees to volunteering so they could build engagement in skills volunteering. Overall participants agreed

You need to get corporate organisations to change their approach - rather than having 20 people on a Monday, have one person for an hour. That’s far more sustainable and more valuable in the longer term. The 3-day policy doesn’t lend itself to regular volunteering.

Other employers discussed the challenge of transforming their ESV into more skills based activities, you need to find out what employees want to do, what skills they have to offer, and what the charities are after, and how they envisage that it would work. The difficulty is there is no established forum where these dialogues take place and where we can jointly learn how to develop skills based ESV. A further challenge is that employees want to do something different to their day job so finding a way to engage them in skills volunteering needs to take account of this motivation. Perhaps one solution is to focus upon impact as one employer explained:

It’s not really about the pitch it’s about explaining the impact of skills volunteering, if you can actually inspire somebody, ‘if you do this, the benefit will be this’ - that’s all you need to do. It’s very individual (business participant).

Engaging beyond the usual suspects was also raised by some charities who felt that ESV wasn’t reaching their organisations.

A lot of ESV that happens within the voluntary sector happens with organisations that have big profiles – smaller organisations don’t have this, it’s hard for them to get the attention of business (charity participant).

Knowledge gap

One core issue that emerged is that work needs to be done to build for the business case for charities around ESV, so it is clear what they can gain if they actually invest that little bit of time and resources. The challenge is that the majority of charities do not understand what ESV can do for them because they have never engaged with it. Spreading the culture and the ethos was seen as key and this was interpreted as a two-way process. When looking at how to innovate into a space that’s been left by a lack of funding, culturally it’s a difficult thing to do. Charities face a massive challenge in terms of adapting to a culture and need to be entrepreneurial, although there are examples of some charities that have been extremely successful in this transition. There’s also a challenge around the education of business so that they engage a broader range of charities and do more skills based volunteering.

Participants talked of the ESV successes as being happy accidents. These need to be shared more so we can build upon this knowledge and learn how to make these engagements less accidental. ‘Let’s take those accidents, unpick how it was successful or how an opportunity was missed’. Collaboration is also needed to break down the barriers between businesses and charities:

The similarities between running a social enterprise, a business, a charity, are massive. It’s an artificial distinction – we’re all employers, we’re all employees.

Capacity gap

Several obstacles were raised around capacity namely an already stretched Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector and challenges of cooperation in a climate of increased competition for dwindling resources. Despite these challenges participants recognised the need for greater collaboration between VCSE organisations especially in terms of learning from each other and joining together to attract ESV opportunities.

Some charities are perfectly well set up to do that for themselves and will do so, but there are a whole lot of others who aren’t but who could benefit. It’s the same with companies too.

Charities operate in a little bubble, we’re trying to get a bigger slice of that cake, well actually let’s make that cake bigger and work together.

While many recognised the benefits of pooling their resources to build ESV capacity, many pointed out how the sector is nervous about sharing together. Time was seen as a big issue as the sector is already quite stretched so investing time into doing something new is quite a risk for some VCSE organisations.

One business respondent addressed this issue by explaining that

it’s about charities understanding that there is this resource that they can go and use and how do they unlock it?It’s knowing who do they communicate with in business, how do they start these conversations? The group events are a great hook, they’re popular, fun etc. People see an end product for their volunteering day. That’s really valuable but it’s the charity understanding that there is this resource there and what that resource can mean to them.

One charity discussed how they had got over the hurdle of finding the time to invest in capacity building to reap real gains from ESV. The employer they worked with provided the broker – it was an Engagement Officer from the Civil Service Local who came with ideas, did the organising and supported the whole process. They offered mock interviews, but the charity said they didn’t have time for this. To free up resource, they scrapped another ineffective project and used that space and time to do the workshops with the Civil Service. Now they run workshops every week themselves – repeating and tweaking what the Civil Service provided. Their statistics on people engaging in education and training have subsequently increased from 45% of people engaging in education and training to 100%.

Businesses also discussed their own capacity gap around transforming challenge day volunteering to more sustained skills based volunteering.

The challenge is getting people to engage with the opportunities. It’s getting senior engagement that’s the challenge.

One way this was being addressed by employers was through micro volunteering and work that can be done from their desks. The challenge is to control this and not let it become too much work for the employee.

Infrastructure gap

Brokerage structures were patchy across the regions with some areas having no infrastructural or brokerage support. One of the areas where this was raised a significant challenges was in Cornwall:

There’s a plethora of voluntary organisations within Cornwall – how would you even start to pull them together and link them up?

Other groups discussed how the brokerage knowledge exists but the key is how to pool it and disseminate it;‘a lot of it is about individuals and that knowledge that’s already there.’ One group raised the issue that while brokerage can offer important support some people want to have a direct relationship and don’t necessarily want a third party negotiating the collaboration. The challenge however, if not all organisations are in this position,isthat equipping the VCSE sector to broker these relationships for themselves requires resource development as the above discussion about capacity indicates.

Building a Regional Picture of ESV Development in the South West

In the second workshop session, participants were asked to focus upon developing a picture of ESV within the region. In particular, groups were asked to examine three central themes, which are summarised below.

• ‘What’s There?’ (What exists that can be built upon? Examples of good practice? Areas and aspects that work well?).
• ‘What’s Needed?’ (What is missing from the region? How might some key barriers and challenges be overcome? What frameworks could be developed?).
• ‘What’s Possible?’ (Given the current context and limited resources, what can be achieved? How could ESV be moved forward and engagement strengthened?). The sections below summarise and synthesise the discussions from the four working groups, under these three headings.

What’s there and what works well?

From the discussions it is clear that some good models of brokerage were operating the pockets across the regions but coverage was extremely uneven with some areas being left without any brokerage support.

The network that’s there at the moment is very fragmented and very informal. Parts of it work but it’s not spread enough. It’s just who you stumble across.

The BITC business connectors were key in some areas. For example, one group stated that for Devon the business connector was the only available form of brokerage. It was also pointed out that the Devon and Cornwall Business Council do some brokerage but at the moment this concentrates on the education sector. They have been looking at how to engage with the VCSE sector but they are only a team of three and without funding they would have to charge. However they are currently exploring how to make their network accessible to charities, since it already exists so this could be one way to offer support to the VCSE sector. The challenge for all the brokers was how to make it affordable ‘we can’t do it for free because we have a job to do and it needs to be covered, but we could do a lot, for not a lot’ - thus, how to offer something tangible for a really small charge. In addition Devon Voluntary Action have been doing some partnership work; they’ve been looking at volunteering more strategically. One of the possibilities is that they would want to look into brokerage a bit more. Overall there is an uneven presence of brokers across the South West.

What’s Needed?

Brokerage development

Groups agreed that the development of an effective brokerage service was a priority, especially one that understands the needs of each region. Participants felt that there are good models out there, Oxfordshire was given as an example, which other regions could learn from in terms of what’s possible and a sharing of the tools and models that are out there already. Brokerage support could usefully create a place where businesses and the VCSE sector could come together to develop collaboration around ESV. The need for ESV to be used to make real change and have a core skills element was expressed by one business participant who explained:

If you have the opportunity to make a difference, you don’t want to be scaling hills in Cumbria, you want to put that energy into something that will be lasting. It’s not just about that drop-in individual challenge, it’s about the ethos and how that changes the mind-set and the planning, the productivity, and builds relationships.

In order to build the types of ESV collaboration that can deliver these kinds of changes, participants stressed the need for a two-way dialogue between the sectors. They pointed out how there had been a lot of talk today around how business can help charity, but equally there’s stuff around how charities can help businesses. How do we formulate that into something that’s a plan rather than something that’s quite ad hoc at the moment?

Another group talked of the lines being blurred between the sectors due to the commercialisation of the VCSE sector and the growth of social enterprises.

The division between charitable and private sector is becoming greyer and greyer – there are social enterprises in the middle, we are being told ‘charities are businesses.’ That’s the ethos we’re trying to drive through. Maybe the distinction isn’t helpful all the time. One system could maybe work for both sides, where we say that we are just matching people with skills and talent with needs.

In contrast, any brokerage system still needs to develop that personal detail and this can’t be done by just bringing the sectors together it requires tailored brokerage support.

The brokerage need for charities was conceptualised as follows:

Charities want people who have chosen them because of the work they do and who are willing to give a longer-term commitment so that a relationship can be built. Many charities find it difficult to identify opportunities and when asked to receive ESV volunteers they are sometime reluctant to say no in case businesses don’t offer again. One of the key elements of capacity building for charities is therefore to help them to signpost opportunities and where the offer is not suitable to be able to indentify other charities that it would suit.

Brokerage should act as a bridge to enabling businesses and charities to become able to broker their own relationships. The challenge however is that even experienced business have returned to using brokers in some cases because this can only go so far. Some aspects of brokerage are not possible to develop entirely in-house so it is likely that some reduced form of brokerage may always be necessary. The groups outlined that perhaps the role for brokers is to empower the charities and the businesses, rather than doing it for them.

When you’re working with organisations, you do give them the tools to go on and do it themselves, it’s giving them a pointer. You need a key mentor for your organisations to help you set up the infrastructure internally so you’re ESV ready, then you’re more likely to be able to attract the support that you need. It shouldn’t be limited to a website.

Brokerage/Charity collaboration

Discussions focused on the need for greater VCSE sector collaboration and this falls into two broad areas: 1) how to foster a cultural of collaboration between small, medium and large charities. 2) Since brokerage coverage is so patchy there is considerable value in getting brokers to collaborate more so these gaps can be addressed.

Shaping greater collaboration between charities in some respects build upon what some parts of the sector are already doing but for some areas it requires a transformation away from competition for scarce resources to developing shared sectoral support and pooling the rich knowledge that exists in the sector around ESV. One participant explained how ‘It’s about making it easy for the charities to achieve the aims without having to worry about accountancy, legal, etc’. Another added ‘If charities don’t collaborate then they’re gone.’ Participants recognised the funding crisis that has hit the sector and saw collaboration linked to developing engagement in ESV as one way of addressing this. Examples were given of where these strategies were beginning to emerge; Exeter CVS has moved to a very collaborative model and Local Authorities do this and have done for a long time. This cultural change was not without its problems as ne participant explained;

Charities are so precious about themselves – they’re trying to sell to their funders how they are unique. You don’t take away that fact, it’s just about looking at back office and how they can collaborate more. It’s getting someone to help with accountancy, PR, all the back office function (VCSE sector participant).

Some participants shared the different ways their organisations had taken step changes towards viewing ESV as an opportunity despite the context of severe resources shortages. They discussed how they had overcome resistance in their organisations to create sustainable volunteering for the future. These discussions identified a role for larger organisations in supporting medium and small charities to pool resources and to see opportunities in ESV.