Volunteering action plan

Creating an enabling environment

The Enabling Environment is our foundation for future action. It improves our ability to work effectively and collectively on the key challenges facing volunteering over 10 years.

There are six elements, namely:

• Leadership: Leaders will drive the Plan. There must be clear pathways to becoming a Leader in volunteering.
• Evidence and Voice: Evidence highlights gaps and tells us as much about what we 'don't know' as what we do. We must consider who and what can help us better understand our system. This involves hearing from those with lived experience.
• Learning: Learning is critical to achieving Volunteering For All but it will require us to organise and value learning differently.
• Capacity building: Creating an environment where volunteering thrives requires that we improve the infrastructure that enables volunteering.
• Resilience: While meeting current demands and sustaining current levels of activity we must organise and prepare for future shocks and capitalise on opportunities for change.
• Digital Volunteering: COVID-19 has highlighted the very important contribution that digital can confer, but VIOs, volunteers and beneficiaries will need support to maximise these benefits in the future, with equal access for all.

Leadership spans operational and 'system' leadership as well as the leadership provided through boards, as trustees. Leaders have a critical role in driving the 'plan'; both facilitating curiosity (enquiring and introducing different points of view) and providing clarity when needed. A Leader within volunteering is someone who:

• Advocates for volunteering and actively promotes and protects it (above all as a free choice, open to all and in no way viewed as a substitute for paid work).
• Leads change by inspiring others to achieve our shared vision of 'Volunteering for All'. They find optimistic ways of framing adversity and encourage resilient responses.
• Leads people through supporting, developing and empowering others. They value 'voice' (especially seldom heard voices) and the importance of learning.
• Builds a culture of collaboration which involves leading across organisational boundaries and focusing on win-win outcomes.

Leadership is learned behaviour and as such we need to develop Leadership capacities, knowledge, discipline, practices; understand system-wide barriers and enablers as Leaders through listening to different perspectives; and practice Leadership skills within 'safe spaces'.

We must ensure there are clear pathways to becoming a Leader in volunteering; barriers must be identified and addressed, with youth engagement and inclusion being important considerations.

Leadership Actions

10. Support for Volunteering Leaders through identifying leadership development opportunities (e.g. young leaders), assessing current leadership development activity and providing leadership support.

11. Create 'System Stewards' programme which is focused on taking participants through a process of making change within an area of volunteering through understanding underpinning systems and how to improve impact.

Evidence is available to volunteering stakeholders in the form of published reports, surveys, qualitative interviews, desk research, etc. Evidence also includes Voice which is the captured stories (lived experience) of those involved such as volunteers, non-volunteers, volunteer managers, etc. Evidence highlights gaps and tells us as much about what we 'don't know' as what we do. A healthy system must hear 'a diversity of voices and ask questions about who is included and who is not'.^[8]

TEXT TO FOLLOW

As a sector, we've a wealth of evidence which is our 'starting-point for learning'. In fact, evidence has been applied during this action planning process, to make sense of the challenges we face: scoping outcome areas, mapping the volunteering system and identifying and refining potential actions (see Appendices 5 and 6 for evidence sources used). Gathering evidence is vitally important in creating 'a shared understanding' of the issues and where to effect change.

As we move forward with the 'plan' we must consider who and what can help us better understand volunteering. This involves hearing from volunteers and others with lived experience. We 'can only understand a system by understanding the small, particular parts of day-to-day interactions'.^[9] It will also involve listening to 'pattern finders' (who gather experiences) and learning from our actions.

Evidence and Voice Actions

12. Build Voice capacity through embedding Voice (especially volunteers' voice) into key decision-making structures and building 'voice gathering' capacity (developing skills, educating and providing guides for individuals and organisations).

13. Build Evidence capacity which includes exploring the feasibility of a Volunteering Research Centre; engaging other sector research specialists; agreeing Volunteering Research protocols for wider research sharing; and supporting organisations to increase their volunteering research capability.

Learning is essential to developing ourselves, our organisations, our local communities and the issues we care most about. Learning together and learning with one another helps build deeper, more trusting relationships.

As a sector, we already invest time in learning and applying good (and even best) practice around volunteering. However, volunteering can be complex; there are many factors that interact to make volunteering a more or less inclusive activity.

In essence, cause and effect is not always obvious and what works in one place or context may not work in another. Actions help us to make sense of the challenges we face and are also opportunities for learning. Throughout this 'plan' actions are framed as 'test and learn experiments' where we observe, assess, adapt, improve, and even stop.

While learning is a mutually reinforcing activity it can also be a luxury - we're often too busy 'delivering' to invest appropriate time and 'space' to learn. The creation of a National Learning Community could help provide the necessary time, space and support to learn together, effectively. Learning is critical to achieving Volunteering For All.

Learning Actions

14. The Volunteering For All: National Learning Community is a 'shared space' through which to (a) review voice and evidence inputs (b) understand / articulate the system at the highest level (c) generate or help prioritise proposed actions nationally and (d) review and help support, refine or exit from existing actions.

Capacity building is critical for both infrastructure organisations and the Volunteer Involving Organisations (VIOs) they support. Volunteering thrives through strong VIOs with good governance, supportive people and quality processes and standards.

VIOs come in all shapes and sizes, and span the third, public and private sectors. While volunteering will look different for a small volunteer-led community group compared to a large national volunteering organisation, every organisation can increase their capacity with appropriate support. Capacity building encompasses:

• Volunteers' learning and development - including progression within and between roles, recognition schemes and a focus upon volunteers' wellbeing.
• Development of volunteer practitioners (managers and coordinators) - providing learning and development opportunities; and supporting practitioner progression, voice and leadership.
• Development of organisations - enhancing policies, governance and organisational 'health'.
• Volunteer accreditation schemes - including widening the uptake and impact of schemes such as 'Investing in Volunteers' and the 'Volunteer Friendly Award'.

The pandemic has highlighted the power of informal voluntary action, often in unconstituted groups formed over social media. With support from Third Sector Interfaces and other support bodies, and only where appropriate, some groups have taken steps to become constituted; applying for charity status, arranging insurance and putting in place safety procedures. Local and national support organisations currently collaborate on the design and delivery of capacity building opportunities and infrastructure, such as Saltire Awards,^[10] Volunteer Friendly Award^[11] and MILO.^[12]

Capacity Building Actions

15. Enhancing volunteering practice through developing standardised training, an accredited train-the-trainer model and developing career pathways for volunteer practitioners (managers and coordinators).

16. New capacity building initiatives through enabling the scoping and potential pilots for future large-scale initiatives, such as a Volunteer Passport Scheme.^[13]

Volunteers have a key role to play in building the resilience of Scotland's communities, both in responding to emergencies and in building a sustainable future.

Analysis of volunteer and community involvement in responding to the pandemic demonstrated good communication, coordination of partners, effective partnership working and shared learning.^{[15],[16],[17]} Volunteering must be understood as a critical resource that complements, and is supported by, regional and national resilience partners and stakeholders.

Building the required links and capacity can't happen overnight; we need to provide sustainable foundations to strengthen volunteering's contribution to whole-society resilience. This involves first embedding the voluntary and community sector more effectively into resilience planning and in local resilience partnerships.^[18]

By further strengthening mutual knowledge and collaboration we can ensure that volunteers are an important part of the strong partnerships (nationally and locally) that are 'ready' to respond to future challenges and opportunities.

Resilience Actions

17. Wider, more informed local resilience partnerships through appropriate third sector engagement with the Resilience Partnership Infrastructure; and greater access to learning & development on emergency resilience topics.

18. Improve resilience processes and guidance to reflect the contribution made by communities; promoting good safeguarding practice in respect of vulnerable people; and updating guidance on informal volunteering.

Many more organisations are now using digital tools (e.g. Teams, Zoom, WhatsApp) to deliver or part-deliver their volunteering: for example, during the pandemic face-to-face befriending moved to remote (telephone and online) delivery, sometimes in the space of a few hours. While these tools can seldom improve on the experience provided by face-to-face contact, they can offer benefits to Volunteer Involving Organisations (VIOs), such as improved reach with volunteers and service users, especially for rural areas; improved communication and team-working; more flexible volunteering; and (as the pandemic showed) more resilient services.

However, greater demand for digital brings challenges. In 'The Road to Recovery' report, staff and volunteers from VIOs highlighted the need for appropriate access to 'IT equipment and accessible digital training', which is especially important for smaller organisations lacking digital skills, often with no paid staff.^[19] The potential of digital to transform organisations, and the pace of technological change, also requires that organisations think strategically in this area.

'Digital volunteering' can offer another way to participate for disabled people (but only) where organisations' use of digital tools (and related content) meet accessibility standards. Digital can also exclude those less likely to have the skills and confidence to use digital tools, such as older people or those in poverty (who cannot afford the equipment).

COVID-19 has highlighted the very important contribution that digital can confer but VIOs, volunteers and beneficiaries will need support to maximise these benefits, with equal access for all. Guidance already exists through SCVO's 'Digital Inclusion Support' to the Third Sector, and they can also help voluntary organisations to think about their use of IT and digital more generally.^[20]

Digital Volunteering Actions

19. Supporting Digital practice and Digital access in volunteering by helping organisations to apply digital tools and share best practice; which includes signposting to existing support (from SCVO and others) that increases use of digital generally; and providing guidance to create accessible content around a volunteering programme.