Volunteering magazine, October 2005, Issue 113
www.volunteering.org.uk/magazine
Despite our best efforts in promoting diversity, the volunteering demographic has changed very little in the UK over the years.
Formal volunteering remains a largely white, middle class activity. Training consultant Adam May identifies the ingredients of promoting diversity and sets out a recipe for widening participation.
Tim Duckmanton, Volunteer Officer at The Wildlife Trusts, provides some practical examples for the organisation's 'Unlocking Potential' Project.
Volunteering opportunities that promote diversity have these ingredients:
- Relevant and meaningful
- Easy to find out about
- Convenient time and duration
- Involve social contact
- Physically accessible
- Enjoyable
A recent volunteer survey of 10 local Wildlife Trusts, by the Institute for Volunteering Research, showed that almost all Wildlife Trust volunteers are white, a high proportion are aged over 45 years old, and nearly half are retired.
The Heritage Lottery Fund has supported the 'Unlocking the Potential' Project, which has enabled a diverse range of new volunteers to take part in exciting projects over the last two-and-a-half years. Working with key partner organisations, the project has reached out in communitiies across the UK to engage under-represented groups in volunteering.
Relevant and meaningful
If you are going to make a real impact then your focus needs to be less on how potential volunteers think of you, and more on how you think about them.
The act of giving time for no material gain has different meanings depending on your class, social and ethnic background, and whether your general life experience has been primarily as a giver or receiver of services. If you are going to provide volunteering opportunities that will be relevant and meaningful to others you need to step outside your habitual worldview. People will want to volunteer for something with which they have a sense of ownership.
Sheffield Wildlife Trust involved local black and ethnic communities developing relevant roles that people could get involved with in their own local greenspaces. This gave people an opportunity to come together and help wildlife in their own locality instead of having to go to the Trust's wildlife reserves and take up the traditional volunteering role.
Bear in mind that formal management structures may turn some people off. Young people in particular tend to be at a transitional point in their lives. They may be between school and work or college so they may not have the time to engage in projects with a long lead-in time.
Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust successfully offered a wide variety of volunteering activities to accommodate the needs of young people by involving staff from partner organisations, to be on hand to offer support to the young volunteers.
Bear in mind too that the notion of a "good cause" is very culturally specific. The British style of formal welfare provision is the product of an urban, industrial heritage. It may not make much sense to someone who has grown up in a non-western, rural, economy where family meets social needs not strangers. Similarly ideas of heritage and conservation are culturally determined. The notion of preserving ancient buildings and the landscape is a recent one.
Getting the recipe wrong:
- Expecting people to come to your territory, to your offices, centre, or site.
- Choosing formal modes of communication, which suit you, such as a letter of telephone, and formal methods of decision-making such as committee meetings.
Easy to find out about
When people are asked whey they don't volunteer, they typically say that they weren't asked. The invitation to volunteer works best when it is targeted at specific groups or, better still, made face to face.
Warwickshire Wildlife Trust successfully established a group of volunteers after targeting their recruitment at long-term unemployed people. They went to meet with potential volunteesr to explain what would be involved in being a volunteer with the Trust and to give them a tour of some of the sites.
You need to include information that will encourage people e.g. mention that expenses are reimbursed and that transport is provided if you know lack of money or transport are likely barriers to volunteering for your target group. Consult with individuals in your target group to find out what language will make sense to their peers.
Getting the recipe wrong:
- Designing recruitment messages, which address your priorities, in your language rather than thinking how people will receive what you say.
- Putting information about what you do in a restricted range of places - places which people similar to you frequent
Convenient time and duration
When and how much time people have to donate depends very much on their lifestyle. The parents of young children may want to volunteer while their children are at school. Teenagers may want to volunteer in the evenings and at weekends. Employed people may be relatively time poor and only want to volunteer for a couple of hours each week whereas time may weigh heavy for asylum seekers who might welcome the chance to volunteer for several hours at a time.
Getting the recipe wrong:
- Designing your volunteer roles for certain times and duration when tasks need to be time specific.
Involve social contact
Most people like company. The reason that Kate, a volunteer at Devon Wildlife Trust, stayed volunteering, was because she had met people she could work with and as a result volunteered with the Trust for much longer than she had intended.
The opportunity to chat can make boring tasks fun. Create situations where boring tasks can be done by people in groups.
Getting the recipe wrong:
- Recruiting a token volunteer who is from a different background to your others and expecting them to fit in.
- Giving people activities with minimal social contact without providing other more social activities as well.
Physically accessible
Develop creative solutions to transport problems. You could encourage volunteers to give each other lifts; buy Tube and bus passes for your volunteers; make partnerships with community transport organisations; or raise funds to buy a minibus. Make sure that potential volunteers know that you can help them with transport.
Gwent Wildlife Trust's Green Key project hired a minibus to collect volunteers from Newport to take them to Magor Marsh, a Wildlife Trust nature reserve.
Even a conservation project which is based at a particular site in the countryside can do outreach work in urban spaces. Making the link between the wildlife on people's doorstep, and in the countryside can begin to make conservation culturally accessible too; by linking it to lifestyle choices and enabling people to explore what is around them using photographs or art activities.
Working in partnership, Brecon Advocacy Project, part of Brecknock Wildlife Trust, successfully engaged people with learning disabilities. They put on slide shows and recreated woodland sounds with musical instruments. This inspired a new group of volunteers to mount a display of their artwork about wildlife in the local library.
Getting the recipe wrong:
- Relying upon feedback from existing volunteers. If transport presented any problems for them they wouldn't be volunteers already!
- Not reimbursing travel costs or being willing to give people the money in advance, if necessary.
Enjoyable
Everyone wants fun and enjoyment! You need to tailor your fun to suit different volunteers. An evening at the pub may not be such a good option for Muslims, and energetic team sports might not appeal to older people. For some people "fun" is learning about plants or local history, and for others it's the opportunity to take part in street theatre.
Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust teams up with the local Army Cadet Force twice a year to involve young people on various projects on the Trust's farm at Bourton-on-the-Water. Fun is the order of the weekend, which includes camping on site, playing football and rounders, birdwatching, paddling in the river and a barbecue on the Saturday evening.
Getting the recipe wrong:
- Thinking that fun is a distraction from the business at hand and not including fun activities.
- Expecting volunteers' commitment to the cause, to be enough.
- Choosing a narrow range of fun activities which don't appeal to everyone.
If you want to recruit more volunteers from a wider range of backgrounds then you need to develop volunteering opportunities, which take account of your potential volunteers' priorities. Taking account of volunteer concerns may lead you to question the whole basis upon which you do what you do. That's the real challenge in diversity.
