Taking volunteering to the next level

Volunteers are not just free labour. Making the most of their vast potential requires significant investment and careful planning, Justin Hart-Davis, CEO of Volunteering England and strategic advisor to London 2012, tells Host City

Volunteering England is a national development agency on volunteering in England. It works to promote the value of volunteering by working with the government and public policy makers to make sure that volunteering is high on the agenda and that it is works to the benefit, and not to the detriment of, volunteers.

Justin Hart-Davis, CEO of Volunteering
England, has recently co-written a
report on behalf of LOCOG

Although the organisation does receive money from the UK government and works closely with it, Volunteering England is a registered charity that describes itself as “the voice of volunteering”. Its primary focus is on working with the voluntary sector to improve the management of volunteers. Part of this focus is improving the policy climate in which volunteering operates.

For example, the charity recently worked with the Home Office to develop a national strategy for the national offender management service, to manage how volunteers are involved in prison and probation work. It also works with the private sector, to encourage companies to set up schemes to release their staff in the community to get them involved as volunteers. Volunteering England also works closely with the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG).

Justin Hart-Davis, CEO of Volunteering England, says: “I’ve been working with LOCOG for the past few years now. I was seconded for about nine months in 2007 to develop a 150-page draft outline volunteering strategy that I wrote, alongside other organisations.”

Although this document has yet to be published, LOCOG has already engaged the community in a big volunteering process. He says: “My organisation has been involved heavily in this.”

The rewards of volunteering
“There are huge benefits from volunteering across a range of stakeholder groups,” says Hart-Davis. “There are values to the individuals who are volunteering, in terms of skills development and making new contacts and social connections. There is lots of evidence to show that volunteering is good for people’s mental and physical health as well as employability.”

The recipients of volunteering, including individuals receiving volunteering in a one-to-one mentoring relationship, also benefit. “It is clear that an individual gains a lot of value from the expertise and commitment of the volunteer – or the organisation more generally, whether it be the National Trust, the health service or a company.”

Then there are the broader societal benefits, in terms of social cohesion and integration. “People say that volunteering gives them a better feel for a community, makes them feel better about where they live, helps them to make connections with others that they wouldn’t normally come across as part of their daily working life, so it helps to break down barriers.”

There’s an economic benefit as well. “If everybody who was currently volunteering – all 22 million volunteers in this country – were to be paid the average hourly wage rate, that would be about GBP 40bn (USD 79bn) to the UK economy. So there’s a massive economic value, quite apart from the social value.”

This doesn’t mean that volunteers should be viewed as a means of keeping costs down. Far from it, he says. “There are cost benefit issues involved in engaging volunteers, but I think this is getting it the wrong way round as it immediately sets up the dynamic that volunteers are there as a cheap source of labour, which is an unhealthy attitude for organisations to take.”

Lessons from Sydney 2000
The Olympic Games that really embraced volunteering for the right reasons was Sydney. “This was the Games that really put volunteering on the map. The experience of involving volunteering in the Games really raised volunteering’s profile within the Olympic movement. Athletes, officials and presidents of the Olympic movement still talk in glowing terms of the role that volunteers played there, and it’s clear that the volunteers got a lot out of it themselves.”

The primary reason for the success of Sydney’s volunteering programme was that the organising committee signed up at a very early stage to the paramount importance of volunteers in the whole running of the games. “The chief executive of the organising committee took over the organisation of the volunteering vision. He’s passionate about the contribution that volunteers made to the Sydney games.” So right from the top level, volunteers were viewed as integral to the planning of the Games – rather than just an add-on extra. “They didn’t talk about paid and unpaid staff; they talked about the ‘Sydney Team’ – the staff team that was made up of both paid and unpaid staff – complementary people with valued roles to play within the life of the organising committee.”

The key ingredients in Sydney’s success were: “Vision from the top, ownership by the chief executive, and of course very good planning – they planned and invested in high quality training and consulted with the sector. I think it’s very important that the organising committee of any future host city doesn’t just reinvent systems that are already out there, but it works with the voluntary sector.”

Upping the ante
Can London compete with Sydney’s tremendous volunteering experience? Hart-Davis thinks it can take it onto a whole new level. “My reading of the Sydney experience is that it was a fantastic Games-time experience during the six to eight weeks of the Games itself. Where we can look to go even further in London is to match the fantastic Sydney Games-time experience, but to look at the Games on a slightly longer time-frame.”

But reaping long-term rewards will require significant investment. “If LOCOG is brave, if they are prepared to invest money in volunteering, we have a huge opportunity here to start thinking from now about how volunteers can be involved in the community in the lead-up to the games, through the games itself, but then crucially thinking about the legacy – partly in terms of employment, but for the legacy of volunteering as well.”

This investment will ultimately benefit the community. “If we engage 70,000 volunteers during the games, let’s not just lose that experience and enthusiasm after the games has finished. Let’s find ways of capturing that involvement so that the rest of the UK community can benefit over the next five to ten years.”

The key to achieving this will be carefully ascertaining the benefits of bringing more than 70,000 individuals into the organisation from a diverse range of people within the London community, and UK society as a whole. “While there are going to be many thousands of paid roles, they are going to be limited by the budget. What the volunteering programme allows is the opportunity to bring in a range of perspectives and experiences from people from different community groups that can really make a contribution to the Games.”

The overwhelming benefit will be to connect directly the people of London with the event. “Engaging in excess of 70,000 people in the Games will really root the Games in the community and let them feel that the Games is part of their experience.”

Volunteers can bring a wealth of skills and expertise to a project, but making the most of their experience involves careful management. London 2012 is in a good position to achieve this. “The UK is not alone in terms of its tradition of volunteering, but we are known as having a very strong tradition of volunteering and very well thought through structures for engaging volunteers. The Olympic organising committee needs to tap into those so they are getting the best advice and the best experience, so they are not duplicating work or trying to reinvent the wheel.”