Sustaining your organisational approach – the ‘what’ and ‘why’

The features of sustaining your organisational approach to volunteering include:

Ensuring that volunteering is aligned with organisational priorities and can be resourced financially

What action you can take

• Be clear about the real costs as well as the benefits of volunteering
• Be realistic – identify what is important to sustain and prioritise these within your available resources
• Gain buy-in from services that need to be involved.
• Retain your investment in skills and knowledge by identifying ways for individuals to stay involved
• Build sustainability and legacy outputs into the programme at the outset

Arguing the case for sustaining

[overcoming barriers using] support of the Heads of Service (especially having a senior manage advocating for the scheme and taking responsibility for acting on young people’s reports and creating a regular feedback loop) (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

The impact of the…. programme is that it caused most authorities to question how genuinely they had involved young people and how they could make volunteering and engagement more than superficial. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Far reaching transformation of attitudes on the part of adult service providers towards their young customers’ and, on the other hand, of young people towards public services is however only likely to be achieved through long-term sustained systems of involving young people. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Ownership needs to be corporate and should not reside in one service or department alone….. Other service areas and departments need to own youth engagement for themselves and develop the appropriate skills internally. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Retain skilled individuals as volunteers, partners or staff for ongoing learning and continuity

What action you can take

• Use a mix of people, so not reliant on a single means of continuity
• Collaborate with others on investing in skill development

Arguing the case for sustaining

[Paid opportunities for young volunteers] provide not only capacity but innovation in methods and a high level of empathy and understanding for the new cohort of volunteers. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Review and learn from experiences to generate evidence to support your ongoing work

What action you can take

• Collect a body of evidence – keep it – use it
• Celebrate and tell the story of achievements – maintain positive messages

Arguing the case for sustaining

The greatest effect of the programme was felt in having more imaginative ways of consulting young people. They clearly felt it had succeeded in involving more young people from target groups, improving communication with young people, and removing some of the barriers to engagement. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Several services had young volunteers who had not only increased capacity to deliver but had also given important feedback on how the services were seen by the public, how to recruit young staff, and how to involve minority communities. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

In a sustained scheme, young people may be able to see that they are part of a succession of effort to make things better for other young people and that they can hand the baton on to others when age, education or career make it necessary to move on. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Maintain an open dialogue with key stakeholders based on shared core values

What action you can take

• Agree and communicate the core values on which your volunteering is based.
• Include a regular review process to develop, replace and reassert these core values and related activities
• Bring people together as often as practicable
• Be clear who your champions are and develop and maintain these relationships

Arguing the case for sustaining

[Volunteering] programmes did contact and involve many officers in other local authority services and to some extent workers within voluntary sector partner organisations….[including] Youth Service staff, local authority services were represented by numerous other professional groups including social work, teaching, finance and support services, policy and strategy officers, children and young people’s services, libraries and museums, environmental health and the park ranger service. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Local councils….a range of reasons for their involvement….Motivations often related to particular stages of their service development or responses to key government policies. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Build in flexibility to allow for evolution on an ongoing basis

What action you can take

• Work with partners to evolve your approaches, responding to internal and external demands and pressures together.
• Look at how structures and processes can assist you in mainstreaming volunteering e.g. link it to corporate and community plans, LAA targets etc.
• Keep abreast of central government agenda and how volunteering fits in e.g. the Empowerment White Paper
• Don’t rely on one way of doing it – have a suite of approaches to delivery organisation and partnership-wide results.

Arguing the case for sustaining

Where there is an attempt to channel all volunteering and engagement through one ‘approved’ structure (such as a youth parliament or young mayors), this is likely to prevent other young people [from volunteering]. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Mainstream activities, including using no-cost and low-cost approaches, to make sustainability as easy as possible

What action you can take

• Look outside the youth service when considering sustainability – get volunteering into the life blood of the organisation by any means necessary.
• Get milestones into your council plans to keep volunteering in focus at a corporate level – link to key performance measures.
• Back up any objectives with clear plans – this helps with funding.

Arguing the case for sustaining

[Where] youth participation structures are particularly well embedded…..participation of the target groups will continue to develop well. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

[The] value of these schemes is best achieved where youth engagement is embedded and owned in the local authority and short-term funding is used to enable enhancements or extensions to an existing system of good practice in youth involvement. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

More generally volunteering and engagement are unlikely to become fully absorbed into the lifeblood of local government until they are part of mainstream resources. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Internally allocations need to be made not only for practical requirements such as travel or staffing but long-term investment is also needed to improve all forms of access more generally…. If at all possible it needs to be mainstreamed. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Link up your work to other internal and external initiatives

What action you can take

• Be strategic as well as operational – you need to be both to achieve a fully sustainable volunteering approach
• Link into corporate targets that belong to corporate officer groups
• Build links with national and regional organisations to access funding and support and publicise your achievements

Arguing the case for sustaining

The benefits to the public sector can also be substantial not only in assisting the delivery of services but in making them more responsive, as envisaged in the Russell report. (Doers and Shapers, DMU, 2009)

Find out about sustaining in action – learning from the projects >>