What does Power mean to you?
Written by Sarah Tranter, Learning and Storytelling Officer with the Vision for Volunteering
On Thursday 13 June 2024, we held an open session run by Association of Volunteer Managers Chair Ruth Leonard, to have a lunchtime discussion about the theme of POWER. Power is one of the five key themes of the Vision for Volunteering, and often one that causes a lot of discussion, so we wanted to dive a little deeper into what this means for volunteers and those that work with them.
Volunteering is an individual choice: deciding what to volunteer for and how, and what difference to make. Volunteer involvement is increasingly moving away from volunteers being the unquestioning recipients of instruction, and instead moving towards recognising that they have choice in the decisions about their volunteering and are active partners in relationships. The individual volunteer’s choice shapes the community in which they want to live. But to what extent do people feel that they have the power and resources to make that choice?
Being able to think flexibly about roles and what volunteers can offer is a struggle for many organisations – especially those that may operate with a more traditional model, or that have other restrictions on the way that they operate. There is tension between volunteers wants and needs, and considerations like consistency, fairness and safeguarding. As a group, we explored some of the barriers that get in the way of genuine co-production with volunteers, and how we can move away from a ‘professionalised’ workplace model. We talked about the importance of building trust and psychological safety through the language we use, managing expectations, listening actively and building relationships slowly and steadily.
So, how do we manage that balance? We discussed a few ways to do this, including ensuring volunteer management is distinct from HR, that we work in a way that recognises volunteer agency (for example, some people will want to shape their whole experience and some will want to be directed and told what to do), and that we let volunteers participate in our accountability and scrutiny activities. This could be through something as simple as a survey, allowing volunteers to participate in annual meetings, or something more creative like workshops, networks or phone calls with decision-makers.
All of the Vision for Volunteering themes have similarities, but there is a strong overlap between the theme of Power and the theme of Equity and Inclusion. Power is not real power unless its open to and inclusive of all. Volunteering is at its most powerful when it contains a diversity of people with different perspectives who can challenge and feed back with courage. We discussed how to build this diversity of thought into our volunteering framework from the ground up through collaboration and intentional inclusion. One participant said “we don't have all the answers, but we can try to make small changes" - diversity is a journey not a destination and we need to keep working and building on our practice to make sure all voices are welcome and included.
Finally, we discussed the challenges of power sharing, and how this can often feel scary and risky to organisations or individuals who haven’t done it before. This is a trap that anyone can fall into – although it may be harder for more traditional organisation who have been operating the same way for a long time. Either way, there is plenty of space to learn and share across different forms of volunteering and groups that involve them. So our final discussion was about how these groups can learn from each other – which feeds into another of the Vision for Volunteering themes of Collaboration. We talked about open and honest relationship-building between organisations, breaking down competition and networking. There are loads of great networks out there already, such as those run by local volunteer centres and CVSs – and it’s important to make sure these are safe spaces where we can ask questions, admit failures and provide support to others.
There are loads of ways to get to grips with the concept of power within your own work with volunteers. Why not work through some of the questions in this blog yourself? Or watch back our conference about the theme of Power, with brilliant guest speakers from ResourceVol and #iwill. If you want something more in-depth, you could download the Vision for Volunteering toolkit to start a discussion locally about the future of volunteering and how to start thinking about all the Vision for Volunteering themes in your local context.
More of all, keep exploring, challenging and sharing!