#volsec

Powerful Conversations – the benefits of face to face meetings

A couple of weeks ago I met up with representatives from 3 organisations Clarity CIC had worked with earlier in the year as part of the BLF funded Communities Can programme of development support provided to small community groups in Torbay.  I hadn’t seen them for a while so it was an ideal opportunity to catch up with their news.

The purpose of the meetings was to see how they had been getting on and to offer some additional support – as a Social Enterprise we offered this free follow-up to support our mission of providing supportive and practical advice to the VCS in the South West.

It was delightful to see the progression the groups had made – two out of the three had recently achieved registered charitable status and were now looking forward to developing their charities even further, showing me their bright new leaflets listing their planned activities. Another recounted their summer success, the fundraising they had achieved and the difference they had made. They all had specific questions which we discussed and a list of actions to be done was created.

Crucially, and I’d argue more importantly, we got a chance to chat about other subjects: The sad loss of a pivotal trustee; difficulties faced with another local organisation; concerns over liability, the obligation and tiredness felt in leadership; lack of funding and the difficulty in recruiting and managing new volunteers.

These issues only came out through conversation - they were not on the top of their things-to-ask-Clarity-about lists but were concerns not easily expressed online or in an email.

Some of the issues we addressed there and then – just by talking – others highlighted real concerns which they had been keeping to themselves which needed further follow-up support – but without our face-to-face meeting may never have surfaced until matters got too difficult or distressing.

The continuing move to online support for all kind of advice seems unstoppable – quicker, more cost effective, one size fits all, online chats rooms and never ending FAQ sheets are everywhere. So, not to worry if your exact circumstances don’t fit the form, or you haven’t got the right password, or you just have one simple question which for some reason never seems to have an answer – can you help me?

Too much to ask - Ethics in Evaluation

With measuring impact becoming increasing important for organisations to ‘prove’ themselves I have recently heard a few worrying tales about funders requesting organisations use particular questionnaires to monitor their activities with clients and record outcomes. On some occasions these questionnaires asked for very detailed and personal information and took over an hour to complete.  

This begs the question how does monitoring benefit clients and what should be the limits about collecting evidence to prove impact?

Forming filling is rarely an activity anyone relishes (please let me know if this is not true) and being presented with a questionnaire which asks for your personal information and/or how (generally bad) you are feeling before you receive a service does not seem a good way to start a conversation or build rapport and trust. Equally, if monitoring is to be effective it needs to be able to show progress (or not) - during and after service delivery with yet more questionnaires on ‘how do you feel now?’

It is understandable that organisations (and funders) want to know a starting point and end point so they can see if any change has happened. This is important so they can see what works, what doesn’t and what would be better. It helps with proving interventions and supporting funding applications. So what and when is too much to ask?

As evaluators for organisations with a social purpose we often work with groups where the clients are vulnerable for one reason or another: they may be elderly or young people; they may have disabilities or addictions; they may be lonely or bereaved – so monitoring should be sensitive to their needs, appropriately timed and people given the option of ‘not being asked’.

The type of monitoring and evaluation tools used and the way they are presented makes a big difference and care must be taken to ensure evaluation ‘does no harm’.

A thrown together, selection of monitoring types which involve the people themselves (rather than observed) are given below: They are roughly divided into categories:

Before and after trackers – questions are asked about how people feel; how skilled they are; how confident; how informed etc etc - generally recorded using a scale (e.g. very much, through to not at all). Services are delivered or interventions take place and a follow-up measure is taken. The advantages of this process is it is pretty clear – but care must be taken on the questions asked and if overly long will result in the middle of the road answers being ticked.  Timing and support to complete this form of questionnaire is crucial as it may re-affirm how bad someone is feeling (e.g. how lonely did you feel today?) without suitable support this may cause distress. There is a danger that if you catch a person on a ‘bad day’ the answers do not reflect the general situation.

Reflective – how was it for you? – this kind of monitoring is not uncommon when organisations haven’t thought about monitoring before intervention – (often seen at the end of training courses etc). This form of monitoring is quite often linked with quality (how good was the venue etc) but if used to measure if changed has happened (e.g. how better informed do you feel?). It can be difficult to be sure the answers are not unduly influenced by the recent experience. One exception of this is when it is done collectively and people have a chance to speak about their experience.  It can also be useful when completed by a third party (not involved in the service delivery) – this is particularly important when the service may be continuing (e.g. how well do you feel your volunteer understands your needs?) So the client can feel their comments will not jeopardise future relationships.

Self-monitoring and goal setting -  there are some tools which are completed for clients by themselves for themselves – e.g. personal goal measures – these tools are for the benefit of the client – so they can see their own progress – depending on how they are presented they can be done when and where clients feel most comfortable and puts clients in control. They can suffer from the effects of how people feel on a particular day but over time can show change in a positive and constructive way.

There are numerous other ways of collecting information which don’t require forms at all – using Photographs; Post-it notes and games, which make people (particularly children) more willing to take part.

So next time you pull out a raft of paperwork for your beneficiaries to complete – ask yourself (and your funder) questions – is this going to help this person? – Is this the best way we can measure the difference our services make?-  Is it fun/right for the purpose? Is it accessible? Is it relevant and is each question resulting in information we are going to use – remembering if you won’t use it – don’t ask it!

People are not born as trustees; they generally come to be one through a great desire to make things better. Often or not they are asked to become a trustee as they have been seen by others as having the right skills or shown an interest. It is a rare thing that a person becomes a charity trustee for their own good or kudos (although it can happen).

Many charities don’t have enough, so they take what’s on offer or that can be persuaded, pleaded with and cajoled into being a trustee - and if, for whatever reason, some fall short of the mark of what is expected of them, it is because they don’t understand what they have let themselves in for, are unaware of their responsibilities or are not being supported to do their role well?

On January 29th the Charity Commission updated three sets of guidance for trustees – mostly around finance management. 

The guidance recognises that trustees are under pressure saying: “These guidance updates are designed to help trustees make the right call and support them, not to overburden them”

And yet the role of a trustee is becoming increasingly complex and burdensome – take pre-schools as an example:

Fifteen years ago, pre-school committee members were largely (as they still are) parents or carers of the children that attended the pre-school. They organised coffee mornings and fete’s to raise extra cash for equipment, and helped with planning the activities with the pre-school leaders and staff.  They were recruited from the available ‘snack time’ parent volunteers and the role was not onerous or particularly stressful.  

Since then, pre-schools have become enterprises which are highly regulated. The introduction of Early Years Entitlement Funding (currently up to 15 hours free childcare a week for up to 38 weeks per year per term for children before they start school) changed the relationship that pre-schools have with parents and carers in such a way that it is rare today to find a parent/carer volunteer present during the day to day activities of a pre-school.

Being a Trustee of a pre-school today can be scary – as they try to manage paid staff (who understand much more about the job than they do); undergo scrutiny by Ofsted on their competency; understand and abide by a myriad of laws with regards health and safety, safeguarding, employment and many more.  To cap it off (pre-schools are often unincorporated organisations) the Trustees can also be personally liable if things go wrong.

Trustees of other charities are going through similar issues – as they diversify how they get income to meet their mission they have concerns about delivering ‘contracts’ and meeting targets.

Ethics in fundraising have hit the headlines recently and added to the issues that trustees need to be on top of, stricter regulation on such things as data protection means they need to keep up-to-date with compliance so as not to unwittingly fall foul of the law.

It makes you (potential trustees) think why would I want to do this?

And yet – without this caring; skilled; thoughtful; unpaid; generous of time; dutiful and passionate resource, charities could not exist and we would be without organisations that put people before profit, that have missions which do good and make the world a nicer place to be.

Trustees add so many things to organisations and need to be celebrated and supported.

At the end of last year I ran a workshop for volunteers who role was to support ‘older’ people who had or were going through some sort of transition - perhaps newly retired or dealing with illness or loss, by helping them reach personal goals.  

Interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly) the volunteers themselves were from within the targeted age group of 50+ years old and had or were in ‘transition’.

When I queried the reasons why they chose their role over other volunteering opportunities – the motivation was primarily to use the skills they had developed in their careers or through life experience and that it was, as they described it, ‘meatier’.

Many of the volunteers had work experience in health or social care – others were experienced business leaders or had life knowledge which they wished to share to help others reach their goals.

Looking at the other end of the working life, the NCVO UK Civil Society Almanac 2015 Volunteering Overview showed rates of regular formal volunteering among young people (16-25) in 2013/2014 were at their highest since 2003.

With unemployment still higher in young people (16-24) than of the general population - 14.8% compared with 5.4% for all people 16 and over (Source National Statistics bulletin: UK Labour Market, October 2015), there is an opportunity to get even more young people volunteering.

Looking at both young and old(er). People aged 16-25 and 65-74 were the only age groups to have sustained or increased their rates of volunteering since 2012/2013 (NCVO- again)

So what could be driving this volunteering activity at the beginning and towards the end of working life?

The role the ‘older’ volunteers described to me was about how it was fulfilling a need to do good in a way that was relevant to their feeling of self-worth and ‘usefulness’. And it is perhaps the need to be ‘useful’ that drives many of us throughout our lives and what causes us to be less than happy when we are made to feel less than useful to society – the Dalai Lama noted “What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful”– and yet, youth or old age, are perhaps not as celebrated as they should be by volunteer involving organisations – which is sad, as life experience, or new ideas, an ability to take a longer view or add a different perspective, are abundant but untapped resources in our communities.

So as January can be one of the busiest times for volunteer recruitment - perhaps it these people to whom we should be seeking to find this month, not only adding youth and wisdom to organisations, but useful as well.

The number of fundraising campaigns seems to have stepped up in the last few days – I mean it is not surprising in the season of good will and giving, charities and other organisations that do good are right to make a connection for their cause. The Big Give Christmas Challenge is the UK’s biggest online match funding campaign and £7,269,459 was raised between 4th to 14th December this year. If you think you would be interested in being featured in 2016 then you will need to plan ahead as applications will open at the beginning of the summer for Christmas next year.