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ESV: Realising the PotentialSummary of the Oxford Workshop Discussions

22nd 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.

Skills Gap

The skills gap held resonance with the majority of the Voluntary, Community and

Social Enterprise (VCSE) participants who spoke of the misconceptions around

volunteering from some businesses.

…they don’t understand– they think it’s painting, but it’s really about skills and

trying to encourage to offer that more to charities.

Lots of businesses want days (team challenges), but charities are reluctant to

engage because they don’t have the capacity.

Conversely brokers spoke of how many of the charities they work with struggle to

identify what they need from businesses. Most companies were moving their

volunteering in new directions to encompass challenges and skills sharing but this

involves stepped changes for some employees. For example, participants talked of

using challenges as taster session to pull volunteers into more skills based projects.

One broker observed that most companies go through a journey where they start off

with the practical stuff and then move onto more skills based activities, broadening

the range of opportunities as the offer evolves.

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The evolution of skills based employee volunteering is fundamental for the VCSE

sector as for many small charities sustainability of their service in the long term is an

imminent issue. Therefore more long term skills based volunteering targeted to

towards VCSE sector sustainability is important. Participants spoke of the

Nationwide experience as being a great example of how to develop long-term

relationships that offer real value. It was acknowledged that this may be a more

difficult ask for smaller businesses. VCSE sector participants were keen to

emphasise the two-way nature of skills sharing and again Nationwide had an

excellent example of this with their partnership with Marie Curie.

What the business brings to the voluntary sector is enormous, but what the

charities take to businesses is even bigger (broker).

There were also skills gaps from the business side employers spoke of how they

found it difficult to map out what their employees are already doing:

…companies struggle with that, large companies struggle to gather the data,

they can gather it from those who have done ESV, but finding those doing it in

their own time is problematic. Skills-based volunteering never gets recorded.

Employees just don’t provide the data, even if the employer asks for it. People

don’t often recognise that what they are doing is volunteering. Some people

may volunteer every Saturday at their children’s football team, but they wouldn’t

consider it volunteering. There’s an education piece.

Knowledge gap

Key issues were discussed around language, mutual respect and how to effectively

pitch an offer to businesses. Despite the increasing development of ESV there

remain significant levels of misunderstanding between the sectors and some

examples were given of how this can close the door from the onset. Some

businesses spoke of how some charities were still pitching their ask in terms of

money, instead of thinking about how in-kind resources and time could be more

valuable and also considering the two-way relationship in terms of what they can

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give back to the business. There is too little focus given to impact as this is also a

major pull factor for business support for example charities could usefully;

talk about the impact on the charities, on the beneficiaries, the impact etc. and

for the businesses too, employee retention, community engagement, all of

these benefits need emphasising (broker).

They [charities] need to think really clearly, ‘what do I want’, ‘how can I achieve

it’, before just diving in (employer).

The language used to pitch ESV collaboration is also key, it has to draw upon the

above to include issues that speak to employers. Equally businesses could increase

their appeal to charities by pitching their offers in terms of the values and objectives

of the charities they want to work with. Indeed if all the movement is in one direction,

ESV could present some problematic issues for the charity sector.

In all this knowledge through familiarity and bringing the sectors together seems to

be essential. For example, until attending this workshop, one participant

(representing a charity) didn’t know that brokering was an activity. This kind of

awareness raising and open discussion of the issues and drivers offers opportunities

to develop successful ESV partnerships.

Capacity gap

The challenge of breaking down the barriers to collaboration and awareness raising

is closely related to the issues that both sectors face around the capacity to engage

in ESV. Some VCSE sector participants were acutely aware of the importance of

selling their offer to businesses in a climate where some offers look more appealing

than others, and where some VCSE organisations were ahead of the game and

possessed the necessary capacity to make their offers attractive. One participant

who worked with clients who were homeless and with offenders, talked about the

challenges they faced in engaging business in a hugely competitive market where

the cancer charities, the Air Ambulance, etc. werer the popular ones for businesses.

This is both a reality of a diverse and unevenly resourced VCSE sector and the

syndrome of ‘usual suspects’ that sometimes characterises ESV.

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Another key capacity issue facing the VCSE sector is that the majority of local

organisations are small and medium size charities. Many of these smaller charities

don’t have the capacity to host ESV. This poses several challenges for engaging in

ESV;

it’s mostly smaller groups trying to do a lot of things and struggling to host

these big team days, it disrupts the work plan. There’s an internal issue of

making staff understand the bigger relationship and engagement.

Some have the will, but a lot of them don’t because when you try and identify

projects, it always comes back to funding. Longer-term perspective of building

relationships, coupled with the fact that there’s been local funding cuts, coupled

with a very strong competition between the sectors, means that charities are

unwilling to work with the businesses long-term (broker).

The issue of size and capacity also spans the private sector as many SMEs also

struggle with these very same issues. The predominance of SMEs and the very

small number of large employers in the area pose significant problems for brokers

seeking to engage corporate partners. While Oxfordshire has a number of successful

initiatives which engage SMEs, this was still a significant challenge for the regions

represented in this workshop and for the significant number of SME employers who

attended this event.

One participant summed up the challenges for SME owners and explained,

You are talking about a disproportionate amount of time for an SME than for a

large company. Owners of business need to feel like they’ll get value from

working with the charity. There’s a real need to either demonstrate the business

case, or to feel a connection to the charity because of what they do. There is a

need to hit on one of these things because otherwise the SME won’t see the

value in doing it. With engaging the employees, they need to feel that the work

the charity is doing is really important (employer).

The desire among SMEs to engage in this region is encouraging but ESV needs to

be approached differently so it can take account of the challenges SMEs face in

making the space for their employees to volunteer. For example, taster session were

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used, SMEs simply could not pay for brokers so support was on a voluntary non-paid

basis which in turn poses problems for the sustainability of brokerage.

SMEs only have a small budget, and if some of it is being creamed off to an

intermediary, you need to know that it will be absolutely essential (employer).

There’s the HR stuff, associated costs of managing a team of people, there’s a

will – but the smaller the company, the more difficult it is to enable that (broker).

Even large employers were struggling with their limited capacity to invest in ESV.

One city council discussed how they offer support to community associations within

the city and also implement their own employee volunteering scheme. They offer up

to 3 days, subject to head of service – ‘but nobody is taking it up, nobody

understands what it’s about’. The resources needed to realise the potential if this

ESV offer are significant and simply having a policy in place is not resulting in take

up. This participant also highlighted the need to think creatively about how to match

the council’s priorities with personal learning objectives of some of the communities

who need support.

Infrastructure gap

Since this gap forms a key part of the following sections the challenges to be

addressed here are limited to a few key issues. Participants spoke of three

challenges for the VCSE sector that brokerage can help address; there’s the

question of collaboration between small charities who need to make better use of

pooled resource. There’s a tendency of people in each sector to think that they

understand the other sector when they don’t - a lack of listening skills. And a lack of

thinking outside the box – the brokerage can help both sides to think outside of the

box. One broker explained how they had tried three times to set up brokerage

service using fixed-term funding but have found it hard to get it off the ground

because the majority of employers are SMEs who once the funding expires can’t

afford to pay for brokerage to continue.

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One larger scale national broker was also experiencing new challenges around

finding the charities to partner with their businesses.

The biggest issue is finding the charities, something that gets in the way is what

used to be Volunteer Bureaus …, acting as an umbrella organisation for the

charities in the area, now … either they charge and it’s a contribution to their

income, or because they’re doing it for free, they can’t provide [broker name]

with opportunities; it’s blocking the flow of information.

Building a Regional Picture of ESV Development in Oxfordshire

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?

The regions involved in this workshop reflected the uneven investment in ESV

across areas. Encouragingly though there was a good spread of brokerage

organisations and collaborative networks present in the different area. Oxfordshire

was unique in that it had collaborative networks as well as some brokerage systems.

Other areas such as Milton Keynes and Northamptonshire had more fledgling

brokerage systems beginning to develop. Participants agreed that the regions

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represented reflected a busy, but fragmented landscape of activity around ESV –

‘there is good practice but it’s not well networked, advertised or known’. Their

challenge though is that business don’t want to pay, because they feel they are

already giving with time and other resources. So they are looking at levels of support

that they can broker, whether it be level 1) a free service, a connection, some ideas

of organisations looking for help, and the business takes it from there. 2) an

enhanced service which would be charged, delivering the day, doing risk

assessments, visiting the sites, working on case studies, evaluations etc.

Some brokers have been successful in convincing businesses to pay. Community

Action Milton Keynes, for example, is one of the few voluntary sector organisations

that are being paid by businesses to deliver their brokerage service for ESV.

..it’s just covering someone’s time and costs – it’s not about making a profit.

You can’t help the voluntary sector as a broker without the costs being covered

(broker).

Some other brokers had also been successful in convincing a selection of business

of the value of paying for brokerage. Some interesting lessons can be learnt from

Surrey where participants talked of the competitive employee market pushing

businesses towards ESV to stand out. Brokers there had been successful in making

it easier for businesses to engage. CSR managers are tasked with increasing the

number of volunteers, and brokerage helps increase participation and provides

interesting opportunities to attract employees.

Each individual needs a customised service to get lots of people volunteering in

a large business; it’s making it easy for people to volunteer, serving it up on a

plate (broker).

Connect Reading is another good example where it is sustained by an annual

prescription based on size of organisations. Everyone pays – public sector and

charities.

An example of two-way dialogue leading to ESV developing shard value was the

new shopping build that’s happening in Oxford city, Land Securities who are

overseeing it have partnered with Oxfordshire Homeless Pathways. As a

consequence of this partnership the build will encompass

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a space where rough sleepers can go to be accommodated, in that partnership

they’re having a dialogue about rough sleeping, about how to support them and

train their staff and ultimately develop a strategy so that anyone who chooses

to go there can referred to the charity - so it’s a symbiotic relationship.

Oxfordshire also hosts two networks designed to enhance business-community

engagement. ROBIN and Reciprocate. While ROBIN was initially funded it has found

a way to continue based on the volunteer time of its original members. It’s been held

as a positive example at this and other networks but its members described it as a

‘very much a work in progress, it’s as good as it can be at the moment but it has real

potential to do more’. The business membership is almost entirely SMEs which holds

learning for other areas. However, this also means that it is free, run by volunteers

and can’t charge fees to extend its work. Reciprocate is hosted by the Oxfordshire

Community Foundation and runs on the basis of members making pledges to do

more, and helps organisations to make those connections. This is a new initiative but

potentially a model that could be used elsewhere. Another example of a network

model with longevity is Connect Dacorum - supported by the Chamber of Commerce

and CVS. This is a membership network hosting four meetings bringing the sectors

together. It has been going for 10 years and has built positive relationships. So

across the region there were strong examples of good practice around brokerage

and some successful cross collaborative networks.

What’s Needed?

Networking opportunities

While some networks already existed there was a consensus that forums like the

one created for this workshop are really helpful, ‘it’s South East wide and we should

do it more regularly’. They also saw the need for more localised networks which

brought businesses and charities together to talk about what both sides want, similar

to the model of ROBIN. Participants also felt that networking between the charities

added value since – ‘charities can offer something to charities’, in terms of learning

how to decipher what ESV can offer and how to pitch their ask. Those based in

Oxfordshire felt that since the ROBIN model brings all kinds of organisations

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together, it would work better to work with this existing network and not reinvent the

wheel. For example, ROBIN runs four core events per year; is it feasible to allocate

one of these to facilitated groups where they sit down with businesses and charities

and discuss some key areas, including ESV?

Brokerage development While some brokerage models were in existence some areas did not have any

brokerage in place. Also there was considered to be room for improvement and the

cross fertilisation of good practice across the region.

One area where more work was needed is in supporting charities to have a clearer

map of what their needs are and be more explicit in articulating a clearer ask. In

addition one group discussed how brokers should think about strategic ambitions of

the company. In general, brokers tend to become involved at a later stage, where

they’re thinking about how to get their staff on the way. This group felt there is a

mismatch because brokers should be looking at their business plan and their long

term view and reflecting that back to the business about what value they can get out

of the volunteering engagement - ‘it takes longer to do it this way, but it would be

more valuable’.

Participants recognised the need to find a business model that means that brokers

don’t have to rely on funding from government. However, this has to be a

combined income source as it seems unrealistic in most areas that businesses will

provide all the income. For example, despite some successes overall the majority

of broker were still struggling with getting businesses to pay for brokerage.

Is there enough appetite in the business world to be able to have some upfront

costs? … We have to build the business case. If the partners in that firm

wanted to decorate their reception, they would get a decorator in. If you have a

certain amount of money, you want that money to go directly to the need (not

the broker). It needs a good business case to get the appetite going.

There is the question about brokerage, who pays for it? From a business

perspective, if you have a pot of money, you don’t really want that money to go

towards someone that isn’t a charity. But at the same time, if you can’t organise

the facility then the whole thing is a waste (Employer).

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The interesting thing is, the amount of work involved in facilitating volunteering,

it’s a huge amount of time that needs paying for.

One broker had calculated that for a team of 20-30 people, it’s about 18 hours of

time for brokerage. It only works because they’re doing lots of teams at the same

time. Overall participants agreed that more work is needed on profiling the returns on

this investment and this business case for ESV is equally important to build amongst

the VCSE sector. The impact for charity is important, but you have to think about

the outcomes / impact for the individual too. These must be discussed together.

Important work also needs to be done mapping the landscape of brokerage so

businesses and charities know where to go and what’s on offer.

On the other hand one working group discussed the need for brokerage to actually

equip organisations to do it for themselves, rather than have them dependent on

something that they must pay for when the majority of SMEs and small charities

simply can’t pay. Also some employers were less keen on the notion of a third party

broker sitting between them and their community, which offers some lessons for how

to approach ESV in a manner that fits with SMEs preferences around community

engagement.

Brokerage/Charity collaboration

Wider issues of sustainability are embedded in the need for both broker collaboration

and charity to charity collaboration around ESV. For example one participant

summed up the challenge of collaboration as follows;

600+ charities in Oxfordshire, in competition with each other, how do they align,

the question is how to support them in the broader agenda of community

support.

Participants agreed that part of the problem is that charities will make connections

for themselves, but by and large, they’re reluctant to help their fellow charities make

the same connections because there is a perception that it’s a zero sum game.

That’s a really misguided perception, because we’re still at a stage where we

can grow the pie if we don’t all try to hang on to our own little bit of it (charity).

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You have this with the [organisation names] thing, they won’t share the names

of companies that support them, because they are in competition. What if we

had one pot of money coming in from businesses and you could get ESV about

of that. The same businesses in the area, if you’re going to them just to get

money for the charity and they need ESV, it would make sense to have it as

one package as an offer to the business (broker).

Other participants pointed out that there are some serious blockages to

collaboration;

It’s easy to see the route forward to collaborating with local authorities, but not

for collaborating with charities – because funds are so tight. In this environment

when most brokerage charities are having the rugs pulled from under them, it’s

hard to see how we can afford collaboration (public sector employer).

Broker Collaboration A warning:

most of the brokers here are non-profit making charities; there is a brokerage

market that is being fulfilled by private sector companies, … They are making

more money out of corporates by organising this than is possibly necessary.

These companies won’t share their best practice because it’s commercially

sensitive.

However this potential exist for some forms of collaboration across the VCSE sector.

As one participant pointed out, there’s always going to be competition, but by looking

strategically it is possible to identify where your value proposition is,

where do you make your money, and where can I pay someone else to make

money for me - and you can say to other organisations, ‘I do this for you, you

do this for me’, if you work on contractual weights, it’s easier to work with other

charities. There’s no point trying to get rid of competition, but to instead work

with it, look at it strategically. There’s not necessarily a problem with having

multiple organisations, so long as there’s no overlap. It’s working together, but

on different elements.

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Calls from other workshops are echoed here around the need for a cultural change

amongst the VCSE sector to enable more effective systems of support and

collaboration whether it be around brokerage or ESV savvy charities supporting

others to learn how to more effectively engage.

There are lots of skills in the third sector, do we need to thinK of how to enable

these organisations to collaborate more? It shouldn’t be a competition for

funds, we should think beyond that. If we work together, if we need to go for

funding we could do it together.

Charities DO collaborate, they have joint fundraising projects and they are quite

comfortable sharing best practice, they are in separate markets so they can

work together.

So there may be potential for greater collaboration around ESV. One participant

suggested how businesses could also encourage this kind of collaboration;

As a business if you’re offering something skills based to a charity, you could

say, ‘I want three charities to come’, and then you kill several birds with one

stone. It might be something useful, invite a charity and say perhaps if you can

find two other charities and come along and work together to tell us what you

want to achieve (charity).

Taking ESV forward

Opportunities for more two-way skills transference were discussed as an important

whay of taking ESV forward.

We’ve talked a lot about volunteer support from businesses, but we need to

think about how to offer the charity staff opportunities within businesses. There

could be a real improvement in understanding in how these two systems work.

Charity staff are very used to being resourceful and resilient, and they could

take these skills into businesses.

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Businesses could develop ways of extending the awareness and appeal of ESV.

Some considered that building ESV into Appraisals in a light touch way could

enhance participation recognition. Also when looking at personal development areas,

‘how could volunteering address some of those needs?’ This contains risks also

though as some employers pointed out;

‘It would put some employees off if it was part of their appraisal – it would

become another criteria. Appraisals aren’t fun anyway. It might become another

tick box’ (employer).

One participant pointed out that the key incentive for an employee who works full

time and has 2 kids and a busy schedule, that will encourage them to volunteer is if

the boss says

‘here is a great opportunity, you’ll have fun, you can do it in work time and

there’s no strings attached.’ That’s what is attractive. This is where early

collaboration becomes important, the charity sector are good at measuring the

outcomes, to engage with employee at the point and say these are the

differences that you will make (broker).

Another participant raised that Business in the Community set up the Business

Connector programme, setting up individual as brokers around country, not just to

support ESV, but also community engagement and skills sharing. We need to

support those organisations doing that, and see how we can build, rather than create

something new.

Localisation

In developing suggestions around network, portals and toolkits participants

emphasised the need for some elements of localisation.

Let’s ensure there’s a localisation, and it not just be a national initiative - a

national framework with a localised response. But who brings it local? The LEP

in Surrey and County Council don’t understand the charities. It needs to be

collaborative from the start. The organisation that takes the lead should be

connected to the charities.

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From the perspectives of some businesses localisation was important when

engaging their employees but they also saw the need for a national framework

where by

If you end up with a situation where there’s a charity in Scotland doing

something that an employee in Oxford could help with, maybe over the phone

or the computer, it doesn’t have to be in the community.

Online Portal / digital platform

The landscape is very chaotic, lots of charities, businesses and brokers, but no one

depository of how they talk to each other. Participant agreed that some clarity as to

what a collective market is, and who are the players was needed. What exists in

terms of support and opportunities could be mapped, cases and toolkits could be

made available but nothing like this currently exists. There are limits to online

systems;

It shouldn’t be the portal that does the brokerage but it tells you what’s there

and who the contact is that’s when the relationship starts.

In some respects creating such a portal and toolkit could ‘empower organisations to

do ESV for themselves’. Having that toolkit of what to do, how to set it up and

manage it hold value. The challenge is though in creating a single stop shop that can

provide these things in an accessible and up-to-date state. There are many imperfect

models out there. A further challenge is that people reinventing the wheel all across

the country with toolkits on volunteering, when what’s actually needed is people who

can communicate to organisations how to allocate the resources around ESV more

effectively and support them in implementing this. This points us to the continued

importance of human intervention in the brokerage process.

All best options need feet on the ground, be it volunteers or paid staff, the

website is available but people will invariably want to speak to someone to

broker it for them.

Undoubtedly what participants felt would be useful is a toolkit – for SMES preparing

for ESV, and one for charities, preparing to work with businesses. Starting at the

beginning of the process, to work through what skills do you want to give/what do

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you want to do. Then you’re in a position to do those introductions. Thus a tool which

is able to provide some early diagnostics which organisations can utilise to prepare

for ESV.

What’s Possible?

Potential partners

Involving the LEP was seen as key, it would be interested in ESV and they don’t

really have it in their portfolio at the moment.

The LEPs have a skills agenda, if you stress the concept that volunteering

helps to develop skills it’s win-win for everybody.

There is a role for local authorities as well. It was felt that the public sector is funding

ESV already to a certain extent, but struggling to protect this funding in the face of

increasing cuts to public services budgets. There’s ways to work with together

address these problems. Indeed it was felt that better teamwork is needed across all

three sectors and maybe also including some potential funders and the chambers of

commerce. Identifying potential leaders was seen as important;

If you have individuals to champion this, perhaps people from ROBIN, other

people to go out and sell the idea – ambassadors.

Mapping the field

One groups agreed that,

If there was one thing we need to start with, it’s to understand what’s here and what

do they do’. Not just in Oxfordshire but around in the South East area, just

understanding what is there and what the function is, in terms of brokerage.

Coming together to discuss the business model issue for brokerage

Participants felt they would like to begin collaboration by bringing some people with

expertise in different models of brokerage, to have a discussion about how that might

work and how to share best practices. While funders aren’t very responsive to

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infrastructure, they could be involved in this. A collaborative approach might be best,

government and funders. Once we have a prototype, maybe it could be piloted.

For further information about the research please contact

Dr. Jon Burchell email: J.Burchell@sheffield.ac.uk or

Dr. Joanne Cook email:Joanne.Cook@hull.ac.uk

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