Defining outcomes in the voluntary and community sector: What’s the point?

Posted on August 26, 2011 by OPM

By Carol Ward, OPM senior fellow

Alongside my day job with OPM, I am the treasurer for a voluntary organisation CRASAC (Coventry Rape and Sexual Assault Centre). Having recently worked as a regional lead for the Commissioning Support Programme, a national initiative to improve commissioning practice in the children’s sector, I noted the increasing requirements from commissioners and grant-giving bodies for voluntary and community organisations to define their outcomes, rather than outputs, for funding and monitoring purposes. I subsequently did some work with staff and clients at CRASAC to identify the organisation’s outcomes.

Outlined below is a description of what we did, followed by my reflections on the process itself. In particular I wanted to understand the point of defining outcomes in the voluntary and community sector. Does it benefit the organisation in any way or is it just a paper exercise done to satisfy commissioners and funders? Continue reading →

Building the Big Society: can ambiguity lead to innovation?

Posted on May 26, 2011 by OPM

It’s been a bumpy few days for the Big Society agenda.

Following David Cameron’s speech on Monday and the launch of the ‘Giving’ White Paper, Lord Wei announced that he was stepping down as the Government’s Advisor on the Big Society. The timing could not be worse. Critics have argued that the whole agenda is deeply troubled and the Shadow Cabinet claimed it is “descending into farce”.

But should we be so negative? After all, Cameron’s speech referred to a number of exciting plans designed to push the Big Society agenda forward, such as the Community First scheme and revisions to the government’s Green Book to make politicians consider the social impact of key policy decisions.

It seems easy to criticise but isn’t it possible that the Big Society’s seemingly greatest weakness – its ambiguity – could also be its greatest strength? After all, as many others have pointed out, the agenda isn’t necessarily anything new! The levels of community involvement and types of local activities that the government is seeking to encourage have been happening all over the UK for many years. As Cameron said in his speech:

“I didn’t invent the idea… It’s just how I describe all the many brilliant things that people are doing to help each other in our communities and it’s how I show my determination that we as a government should get behind people and encourage more of their commitment in every way that we can.”

I was lucky enough to work on a project several months ago for the Community Development Foundation (CDF), which really made me aware of the incredibly innovative and diverse ways in which people are being empowered to participate in community activities. And this work is nothing new either; it has been going on for years.

We evaluated a strand of the Take Part Programme, a two year initiative that aimed to help people build the skills, capacity and confidence to get involved in their communities and contribute to public services. The strand we evaluated was a Regional Champions programme, which designated individuals and organisations to distribute Take Part grant money to local communities, and offer ongoing support to help those communities make their work sustainable.

We spoke to the grant recipients as well as the Champions to understand the breadth of activities that people were involved in. Some areas had chosen to focus on specific groups, such as young people, resident’s groups or BME communities and others commissioned a range of activities including training around the electoral system and local democratic processes to the production of DVDs about local issues.

The enthusiasm and commitment of the Champions at driving these areas of work forward was very inspiring, and the findings from the evaluation were overwhelmingly positive; the Champions played a crucial role in raising the profile of Take Part and supporting community empowerment work within their regions by bringing together their local community contacts and working strategically with small grants.

I think the key message to take from this is two-fold: firstly, the ambiguity of the Big Society agenda could actually be a way of allowing different communities to make their own interpretations and to continue to undertake exciting and innovative projects, and secondly having a regional champion is an excellent way of raising the profile of the work and providing support for people at a local level.

Learning from Take Part suggests that there are two crucial ingredients for the success of the Big Society work: support from the government in terms of funding, and enthusiasm from local people. Plans for funding seem to have come some way through the launch of the Big Society Bank and initiatives like Community First, but securing the ‘buy-in’ from the wider public is still a big challenge.

Regional level mediation, like the Take Part Champions, could be a way of achieving this local buy-in. The government’s community organising scheme has the potential to fulfil this role providing the organisers are local, experienced and well connected.

You can read our full CDF Regional Take Part Champion evaluation report here.

By Kate Allman, OPM researcher

Contradictions of community organising in the Big Society

Posted on January 21, 2011 by OPM

Last week, OPM, Turning Point and Catch22 held a seminar hosted by NESTA to mark the launch of their paper, the New Neighbourhood Army: The role of community organising in the Big Society.

The event raised a number of interesting contradictions around the role, purpose, nature and potential impacts of community organisers. There was the desire for clarity around the new Big Society agenda, alongside the sense that community organising was, and is, something that has been happening for decades. The audience debated how a national, state funded, training programme for community organising could be imposed when community organising, by definition, is a grassroots, independent movement. And there were questions of funding, accountability and independence – how can community organisers be funded and yet remain independent of these funding interests?

This blog contains just some of the questions and contradictions which were raised through the event and includes questions posed through twitter contributors (#communityorg). These included:

What is a community? When we talk of communities, are we referring to communities in a geographical sense, or communities of interest? Is the idea that everyone can be part of one community a worrying premise?
What is local? Do community organisers need to be local – but what if local people don’t have the skills to encourage, persuade and work within the wider community?
How will it work in different communities? Will community organising take off in the same way in suburbia? What about disadvantaged communities with fewer resources? If power equality is the root of the aim, what is the specific support for minorities?
Who is accountable? What will the oversight arrangements be for community organisers? How will community organisers be managed so as not to turn into vigilante groups? How do you strip away red tape but still protect the vulnerable?
How can funding lead to independent organising? How will fundraising work if not from local authorities? Who will community organisers really be accountable to if they are part funded by businesses?
How is duplication to be prevented? How will it be ensured that new community organisers do not take away precious resources from the community organisations that already exist? How can already existing organisations undertake work with new organisers if they do not bring funding with them?
How can technology support the process? How can digital technologies contribute to community organising?
How to build on existing activity? It will be important that existing organisers within the community who are already doing this work, and taking on this role are not overlooked in favour of new people. How can this be managed?
What is the role of elected members? Community organisers cannot exist outside of the already existing neighbourhood, community and democratic structures. Will there be some kind of joint training on offer for elected members to understand this new presence?
What are the logistics? What is best practice in terms of recruitment and incentives for community organisations? Is 5,000 a big enough number? Will there be a dense enough covering of community organisers or will they be too sparsely located to really achieve anything?
How will community organisers be supported? Is there a need for a support network for community organisers, akin to that which exists for WI institutes, to share learning, expertise and ideas?

Both the panel and the audience offered their own thoughts, experiences and some solutions to these questions. Turning Point offered examples from their Connected Care model and how to include communities in the decision making process and Catch22 talked of the importance of intensive support for community organisers in disadvantaged communities.

As argued in the main paper it is important to learn from existing best practice and understand the starting point of the specific community. Research needs to be done at the community level through mapping exercises to understand who are the key players and organisations already operating locally. It is essential to trial and test any new scheme to understand the different levels of impact on different sections of the community. The contradictions raised above need to be recognised, understood and contextualised for local application in practice.

As one attendee remarked, it is important to distinguish between community organising and simply people trying to do good things within a community. The definition of community organisation and how it is to be managed are two major questions of Big Society.

By Linda Roberts, OPM senior researcher

From political theory to grass roots change: Your Big Society needs you?

Posted on December 17, 2010 by OPM

At a recent RSA lecture, Jesse Norman MP, the man who has been brave enough to write an entire (and fairly well received) book of the Big Society agenda, gave a potted version of his publication. In response, both panel and audience members levelled the charge at Norman that his book, while persuasive, is both written by a politician, and for politicians, and as such is likely to have little sway or currency with the public at large.

The book contextualises the Big Society in a history of social and political thought traditions. This goes some way to clarifying the purpose of the agenda for those who are familiar with Hobbes’ Leviathan, and Edmund Burke’s ‘little platoons.’ But it will do little for the average citizen who is more concerned about the quality of life for themselves and their families, than about tracing the development of Conservative social theory.

How will the talk turn into action?

The lecture made me reflect some more on exactly how the Big Society will make the transition between political theory and grass roots change. For a number of reasons, it won’t be the coalition government’s Big Society brand that takes roots within communities and inspires change where it’s needed. Firstly, the Big Society is ensconced in the middle of the debate between the political left and right, and as such will remain inherently unappealing to those with certain political persuasions. But more fundamentally than that, the Big Society vision doesn’t take account of the complex motivators and drivers that make people want to, and crucially feel able to, get involved.

So what are the motivating factors and the psychological drivers that are going to be used to create a new community dynamic? It might be tempting to emphasise the budget cuts, as a backdrop of urgency to motivate new players to come forward and get involved in community provision. But for those who are at pains to stress that the agenda is not a fig leaf for cuts, this is likely to be a short sighted move, and could limit the longevity of any success. If community involvement is tied to the short term, short-fall in public finance, then what scope is there for the agenda’s aim of a permanent shift in the social contract between state and citizen?

Longer-term motivators for community involvement

So instead we have to identify and tap into longer-term motivators for community involvement. Important intelligence on these motivating factors has been provided by the NCVO’s Pathways through Participation, which is exploring how and why people get involved and stay involved in different forms of participation over the course of their lives. Is personal interest in a cause or issue a pre-requisite for participation? And what types of reward are sufficient to ensure sustained participation? The project’s briefing paper on motivations for participation identifies altruism, recognition and personal development as some of the key drivers for individuals to take up and continue in a participatory role, and for the full results of their case study research, we’ll have to wait until next year.

But national research can’t give us the full picture. It’ll be necessary to leverage the particular concerns, and local allegiances of a community if we are to shape meaningful opportunities for participation. As part of OPM’s Big Society ‘hothouse’ programme, supporting five local authorities to develop new initiatives for community involvement, we will be looking at the use of “community communicators”. These are key individuals who can spread information amongst their social networks about the value of and the entry points to community involvement and participation.

My suspicion is that we still have a lot to learn from new initiatives like the above, about how best to involve people at this challenging time. What is clear is that politicians’ debates over the history and validity of the Big Society idea will not be enough to instil a readiness and willing for a new collective responsibility – that will need a far more nuanced, clever and targeted campaign for change.

By Sarah Holloway, OPM senior researcher

Commissioning and the Big Society

Posted on December 15, 2010 by OPM

Big Society has implications for effective commissioning, as budgets and accountability become increasingly devolved to community groups and away from councils and central government. OPM are part of the Springboard consortium delivering the Commissioning Support Programme (CSP) since 2008. Together with Kindle, CSP recently launched its own paper on the role of commissioning (and the commissioning cycle of understanding, planning, doing, and reviewing) in delivering the Big Society agenda.

The paper delivers practical advice to commissioners on how they can work better with the community and civil sector in their area to bring service delivery closer to the community, and to widen the range of providers involved in public service provision.

Key messages for commissioners include:

1. The importance of including community organisations and service users early on in the commissioning process, to make the most of their detailed understanding of community resources and needs.

2. The need to avoid the use of overly technical jargon which can be alienating and confusing for those who are new to the world of statutory delivery – keep things simple and user friendly!

3. The value of encouraging collaboration and partnership between voluntary sector organisations, to increase their capacity for responding to competitive tenders.

4. Provide support to community organisations throughout the commissioning process wherever possible – they may need advice and guidance if they haven’t been through a competitive tendering process before.

5. Robust review practices should be agreed. These should always be appropriate for the scale of the contract in question, and commissioners should explain the rationale behind monitoring and data requests so that they are fully understood by providers. Make the review and monitoring arrangements clear from the outset and try to agree these with the groups being commissioned at an early stage, so there are no surprises.

6. The importance of proper decommissioning processes and the need to explain the rational being used to inform decisions. Where possible provide support to organisations so they can continue to deliver in alternative contexts e.g. via grant funding.

The paper can be accessed in full from this link and for more information and support, please refer to the CSP website.

By Lauren Roberts, OPM associate fellow and Sarah Holloway, OPM senior researcher

Building the Big Society: Views from the voluntary sector

Posted on December 8, 2010 by OPM

Over the past couple of months, we have been speaking to leaders from a variety of voluntary organisations to canvass their opinions on the topic of the Big Society. How does the agenda offer new opportunities to a sector that already focuses on engagement? And what conditions will allow the sector to grasp these new opportunities, while overcoming the challenges of impending funding cuts?

Watch the video below for the some of the key messages coming from leaders of the voluntary sector.

What do you think are the key challenges and opportunities for the voluntary sector in relation to the Big Society? Do post your comments below, we are keen to hear your thoughts.

We’d like to thank the following for their time and their valuable contribution to this debate.

Sarah Elie, executive director, Somers Town Community Association

Julia Carette, chief officer, Worthing CVS

Susanne Rauprich, chief executive, NCVYS

Penny Nicholls, director of children and young people, The Children’s Society

By Max Toynbee, OPM research assistant

Voluntary sector: Start talking about collaboration

Posted on November 24, 2010 by OPM

Effective collaboration is a pressing issue for the voluntary sector at the moment. In conversations over the past few weeks, however, I’ve heard a lot of people who work for small voluntary organisations say they’re feeling forced to collaborate. One person described the current situation as ‘collaborate or die’.

Forced collaboration is not a good basis on which to build a relationship. Many small organisations don’t have the resources to look strategically at the benefits that collaboration can bring.

Starting right

I know from my own work in consortia brought together for particular projects that the initial negotiation stages, in which assumptions and expectations are aired and shared – or not shared – are critical. This is the time when the basics of the relationship are developed, processes for working and learning together are agreed and the skills and knowledge of the collaborators can be combined in a complementary fashion. In the absence of this exploratory initiation stage, collaboration is likely to be strained, at best, or impossible.

The importance of this stage is even greater now that voluntary organisations need to consider collaboration not only with each other and with the statutory sector but also with the private sector. The ethos that drives many of those involved in voluntary work is seen to be at odds with the requirement to maximise shareholder profit.

The pressure to collaborate that small voluntary organisations are feeling at the moment comes in part, I think, from the desire to ensure that they are in the market to respond to tenders to deliver services. The nervousness – and at times anger – in the sector seems to derive from the fear of being squeezed out, by the private sector on one hand and, on the other, the new social enterprises, mutuals and so on, whose value is being heavily promoted by the government.

Have confidence

Voluntary organisations have grounds for more confidence in themselves and their contribution than they sometimes seem to show. Many of them already embody the benefits ascribed to the new organisational forms: flat management structures, responsiveness and the ability to change to meet new challenges. They have an infrastructure in place and are aware of the needs of most vulnerable in our society. This will be crucial for the Big Society to work.

Start talking

I would encourage those voluntary organisations not already looking at where they can share resources, or where they can collaborate to deliver services, to start having conversations with others sooner rather than later. This doesn’t mean making commitments. But it does mean that if (or when) the funding gets even tighter, the early discussions will benefit the voluntary sector and put it in a position to demand an equal place in the market.

By Diane Beddoes, OPM senior fellow

Big Society and small business

Posted on September 24, 2010 by OPM

Where should the state end and the voluntary sector begin?

This is one of the central questions of the Big Society. Supporters argue that the state has smothered grassroots activism in a way that is not only costly, but has actively undermined the ideas and energy of local people to make their lives better. Sceptics, on the other hand, warn that a rolling back of the state will do much greater damage still, and risks deepening our social problems and increasing inequality.

Role of the private sector

But where does the private sector sit in all this? For the most part, it gets a walk-on part as either heroic sponsor – the corporate philanthropist that steps in to fund community projects – or moustache-twirling fat cat, reaping the rewards of a policy that invites privatisation by the backdoor. Either way, ‘business’ usually implies ‘big business’, but this risks marginalising the vital role that small businesses have to play in achieving the aims of the Big Society reform agenda.

We hear the advocates of the Big Society urging us to think of all those supermarkets and other high street names that could act as new community hubs. Such venues offer a ready-made focal point for communities, these commentators say, where shoppers could find out about local projects and volunteering opportunities, and where space could be found for community groups, activities, and perhaps even social enterprises. These are already functions that some supermarkets encourage and are keen to develop – after all, it makes good business sense to be the hub of your community.

Certainly we should look to big private companies, particularly major retailers, to do their bit. They have the money, presence and influence to generate considerable social benefit if engaged in the right way.

But our notions of the private sector’s role in fostering and sustaining a genuine Big Society culture cannot begin and end with them. Does it not sit uneasily with the messages about the local, distinctive and bottom-up, to locate the Big Society in these identikit temples of near-monopolistic consumerism? Might a Big Society supported by – and supportive of – local small businesses, not also be stronger, more energised, and with a broader, more sustainable support base?

Starting and sustaining a small business isn’t usually about making a fast buck – it can mean long hours for little financial reward, at least initially and sometimes permanently. The commitment and vision these people show to their businesses is the same sort of commitment and vision we are being asked to show as citizens in our communities. Those businesses can help us to be active in our towns and neighbourhoods because they also want to see their localities succeed, and they understand where we’re coming from. Big Society supporters need to realise that social and economic entrepreneurship go hand in hand, and that the conditions and culture that support the one can support the other.

A personal example

To take the example of my own hometown of Wellington, near Telford: each year, some friends and I organise a series of free events in the town centre. The first, in June, is a historically-inspired fayre, with jesters, morris dancers, folk bands and craft and food stalls. Later in the summer, different local musicians perform every Saturday as part of a ‘Sounds in the Square’ season. Finally, over the August bank holiday, we hold a ‘Big Barbecue’ event in a field near the town, to raise money for charity.

Market at Wellington Midsummer Fayre

Pitching in

In the case of each of these events, local small businesses play a crucial role. They buy cheap advertising space in our promotional leaflet, which pays for 10,000 copies to be printed; they make donations of about £30 a head to fund the performances we arrange (with further funding – it should be said – coming from our local town council); and the business people themselves chip in with practical help, from helping us put up bunting to donating competition prizes.

Free music event in Wellington

Just as importantly, they tell their customers about what we’re doing, they enthuse them and they encourage us. Their involvement makes it feel like a real community effort. If we don’t have enough chairs for our brass band, Percy at the bookshop will lend us a couple; if we need more costumes for our procession, Joy and Margaret at the needlework shop offer to make us some more. And if our other funding sources ever dried up, I’m confident they would all rally round to keep our events going, because they believe they’re ‘good for the town’ – socially, culturally and commercially.

Costumes at Wellington Midsummer Fayre

It’s important to point out that ours is not a picturesque town of galleries and organic delicatessens – this is a struggling market town on the fringes of a larger urban area, hammered by out-of-town shopping, increasingly suburban in feel and at risk of losing its identity. That’s partly why we organise these events in the first place.

The point is that it’s the dozens of small businesses we look to for support, rather than one big charitable or corporate supporter – that might be easier and require less door-knocking, but it would also feel less authentic and less ‘owned’ by the town. The businesses we approach are often run by proprietors short on time and increasingly short on profits, but most appreciate our efforts and reciprocate either in cash or in kind – and certainly more than they would if these events were being organised by a paid council officer.

People will make the Big Society

In essence, the Big Society will require people to be interested, to care, and to make an effort. That’s a more inviting prospect if you live in a thriving, interesting place, and thriving, interesting small businesses are a key component in creating those places. As the debates about Big Society rage, we need to ensure that it isn’t just about the duet (or duel) between the public and voluntary sectors, and that when the private sector does come into view, it isn’t just the big players who get all the attention. It would be a missed opportunity – not to mention a terrible shame – if ‘Big Society’ just became another aisle at Tesco.

Planning for the Big Society

OPM is supporting local authorities to think through the role they envisage for the Big Society in their areas, and plans to hold a roundtable event with leaders of small and big businesses later in the year. To register your interest please contact Sarah Holloway on sholloway@opm.co.uk or 0207 239 7817.

By Rob Francis, OPM associate fellow

OPM blog

Tag Archives: voluntary sector