Ticking our Boxes - Our Issues: Ticking Whose Box?

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Viv Regan has worked in the youth and community field for just over 15 years and has set up and managed various volunteering projects. She is now the Assistant Director at WORLDwrite and supports volunteers and the Volunteer Coordinators at this youth education charity. Here she provides a view from the ground on the increasing formalisation of volunteering:

"The history of volunteering is peppered with the good deeds of everyday people effecting change within society. The plethora of research and surveys on volunteering show that the majority of people still count their number one reason for volunteering as altruistic. Yet we are now being sold volunteering as an activity to tick the boxes of multiple politicians' and policymakers' agendas. They believe that volunteering may solve many social ills, and that this can best be achieved by heaping paperwork and regulations upon us."

Read the full article here.

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Aled

Posted 457 days ago

I think that instead of worrying so much about how many people from which social group you have volunteering with you shouldn't voluntary organisations be getting on with the work that they set out to do whatever it may be? It seems ridiculous to be wasting all this time on paper work when the whole point of the charity has nothing to do with it. Bureaucracy is a waste of time.

Chris Cavanaugh

Posted 595 days ago

I very much enjoyed the article and comments. At my workplace we are going through similar diversity and exclusion issues with staff, beneficiaries, and volunteers. The issue of diversity and exclusion in volunteers is one with which we continue to struggle. For example, we attempt to monitor our governance volunteers (trustees) for sexual orientation, but have found that while some donors like this, our Board members feel it is not pertinent informaiton as they are engaged based upon their professional qualifications. A fine line to walk for an organization that pledges diversity, but has no way to track or monitor it. I'd be interested to hear what others think about the social exclusion issue and how that interacts with volunteering based on Viv's paper.

Tom Everton - Community Centre Manager

Posted 631 days ago

How ironic that through 'promoting community cohesion' this obsession with formalising our actions actually diminishes how we feel about ourselves and others within the community! It's so true that through keeping a watchful eye on each other we exist on suspician rather than basicaly interacting as individuals. It's so important to consider these aspects of our social interaction before boxing ourselves in becomes the norm to the detriment of what we're actually trying to do - communicate and work together.

tony

Posted 637 days ago

I only fill monitoring forms when I am asking for something and never when I am offering. Like many others I want my charitable contributions to remain anonymous because I am only driven by a desire to help. Many charitable institutions are chasing away potential volunteers by indulging in such practices.

Sarah Pritchard

Posted 640 days ago

I think the artical is very good and the key thing is trusting people but it could also be about control and government feeling the need to regulate and control and have a purpose in this regard. I don't think regulatory procedures which destroy spontaneity and good practice mean the same thing but they have come to mean the same thing and good practice or best practice needs to involve a rigorous defence of spontaneous acts of volunteering-solidarity and to refuse the interfering and mind numbing "reporting".

aisha

Posted 641 days ago

so often Ill blindly fill in a mandatory equal ops form, never really sure how it displays a commitment to equal opportunities, i just know that my "ethnicity" is being counted...yea,great. Always seems a bit tokenistic and condescending. As a volunteer, you should be free from all that kind of bureacracy and just be able to help freely and informally to an organisation that sits well with your own passions and beliefs.

Carol

Posted 645 days ago

Too much bureaucracy is going to scare people away and not encourage them to volunteer, including me. A good, if not long article. A few times I thought "I didn't think of it like that before".

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