Notes of a Speech by Professor Justin Davis Smith, Deputy Chief Executive, Volunteering England, at the Launch of the Commission on the Future of Volunteering
29 March 2006
The launch of the Commission could not be more timely.
Never has volunteering been as high on the political agenda.
The budget announces the formal setting up of the new youth volunteering charity to take forward the recommendations of the Russell Commission; David Cameron calls for a national volunteering service for school leavers; the England Volunteering Development Council launches a wide ranging Commission on the Future of Volunteering; the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games is hard at work on the development of a strategy to engage 70,000 volunteers for the 2012 Games; and the UN Secretary General identifies volunteering as key to the success of the Millennium Development Goals.
Volunteering can be seen as the embodiment of the Spirit of the Age – a spirit characterised, as the Power Commission reminds us, by increased public alienation from formal politics and a growing desire amongst individuals to take action themselves to deal with society’s ills.
News from the latest Home Office Citizenship survey suggests more people are volunteering than ever before. And yet challenges remain if volunteering is truly to fulfil its potential. There are at least five key tensions or paradoxes facing the volunteering movement.
First, how to embrace growing political support for volunteering without compromising on independence. How to ensure that alongside the very proper discussions about the role of volunteering in public service delivery, space is created for volunteering as an expression of campaigning, advocacy and ‘voice’.
Second, how to continue with the necessary improvements in volunteering management without over-professionalising the voluntary impulse. How to ensure that the spirit of volunteering – of informality and flexibility - is retained in the constant drive for efficiency and effectiveness.
Third, how to re-conceptualise what we mean by volunteering without undermining its intrinsic value. How to push the boundaries of volunteering to encompass new thinking on rewards and incentives without compromising on the fundamental principles of time freely given without financial reward.
Fourth, how to strike a better balance between risk management and risk taking. How to ensure that volunteers and clients are better protected from abuse but without throwing a shroud of risk averseness over what by definition is a risk-taking movement.
And fifth, how to find better ways of valuing volunteering without devaluing it. How to move beyond a ‘bottom line’ wage-replacement model of value to encompass the contribution volunteering makes to the building of human and social capital.
If we can find the right answers to these challenges then historians may well look back to the first half of the 21st Century as the Age of the Volunteer.
