Author archive
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Cuts threaten Americorps
Two years ago, the Serve America Act was passed with much fanfare. It established a goal of expanding from 75,000 government-supported volunteers to 250,000, and aimed to increase education funding and establish a summer volunteer program for students, paying $500 (which would be applied to college costs) to high-school and middle-school student who participate. The world’s voluntary organisations looked on with envy.
What a difference a couple of years can make. With pressure to slash budgets, the Republicans are now proposing to abolish the Corporation for National and Community Service which funds the likes of Americorps and Learn and Serve America.
I think this seems like a false economy for the US, and a real blow for the young people affected. After all, the Americorps version of “national service” is voluntary, not compulsory, and participants receive living expenses and modest college expenses (not a bad option in a time of record youth unemployment rates). It supports innovative projects like Teach for America, which fills hard-to-fill teaching positions with America’s top college graduates, City Year, which has been shown to dramatically reduce teenage drop-out rates in schools, and numerous other voluntary organisations, large and small. (For more, see ICP’s collection of 52 of the most innovative Americorps programmes.)
As Shirley Sagwa writes in the Huffington Post: “Volunteers aren’t free — somebody needs to recruit them and manage them — and charities often struggle for resources, especially during down economies. AmeriCorps members, by recruiting and supervising community volunteers, make it possible for millions of people to make a real difference. As a result, the charitable sector is stronger and volunteers more effective, thereby lessening the need for greater government spending.”
Service Nation, Stand for Americorps and many others are campaigning against the cuts.
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Digital things that will rock your charity’s world in 2011
I’ve been catching up on various predictions for the charity sector in 2011 and thought I’d add a few of my own – all free to use, of course, in line with the current need for austerity, but genuinely valuable to organisations big and small.
1. Skype mobile video calling
As a former web content manager, I know that I would’ve cut off my own arm with a pen-knife to get hold of some decent video content from “the field” within a week of something happening. Now, Skype’s iphone app means that people can call your desk-top for free from anywhere in the world – and you can record the call and publish it to YouTube (or your site, or somewhere else) almost instantly.To me, this is so exciting that I felt a bit sick when I heard about it, and not just due to Christmas over-indulgence. It has the potential to open up a new world of virtual field-trips, video messages for donors, video blogs, instant vox-pops, citizen journalism… and it’s cheap.
Though there are some interesting projects going on in schools, I reckon the true potential of Skype to facilitate low-commitment, high-impact volunteering opportunities has yet to be fully explored and this app opens up even more possibilities.
2. Posterous
Do you know how to send an email? Yes? Then you can have a blog. For free. Without having to learn anything. Result!Posterous is the computerphobe’s dream. You literally send it an email, with a subject line and (if you like) a photo attached. You don’t need to remember a password to post by email – it will recognise your email address and do all of the hard work for you.
3. Simple CRB
This is still in development, but if they can pull it off (and I think they will), this might be a real, not-just-talk-but-action step forward in the quest to cut paperwork, free up time and still keep people safe. Imagine!
Simple CRB aims to develop a cheaper, quicker and more effective CRB service for charities and voluntary organisations. It will be run on a not-for-profit basis.
Sounds too good to be true? Help to make it happen by giving your views about how much the current system costs you in time and money and how you’d like to see it improved by filling in a short survey (guaranteed to be simpler than filling in a CRB form).
4. Ecomodo
Need stuff or a venue but got no money? Borrow it instead. I think 2011 will be the year when we all realise how much stuff there is festering in cupboards that could be put to good use. Apparently, electric drills only get used for 12-15 minutes in their lifetime, but 50% of homes have them – by pooling our resources, we can all reduce waste and make money go further.Ecomodo helps you to lend out the stuff you don’t want, and borrow the stuff you do. You can also set up private lending circles so, for example, your volunteers could share equipment or your supporters could share fundraising resources – I mean, how many sets of bingo balls can the world possibly need? Best of all, it’s a chance to meet new people and help them out – and anyone who volunteers knows how good that feels.
5. Monitoring & evaluation 2.0: quick, long-term and mobile
OK, so this doesn’t exactly exist yet, but surely it must be on its way, and if not, I’ll have to make it myself. Surely 2011 is the year when use digital technology to get rid of boring things like monitoring paperwork.Here is the story so far. In 2010, Mappiness proved how mobile phones can be used to map individual’s well-being over time, and new thinking about the promotion of national well-being inspired everyone from our friends Justin and Paul to the Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, research published by v, NatCen and Birkbeck made the case for more research on the long-term impact of volunteering, and v tested the effectiveness of sending surveys directly to participants, rather than expecting project workers to collect and compile data.
It seems to me that if you mashed all of these ideas together, you could cut paperwork and get better, more interesting and more relevant data about the impact of volunteering programmes – not just at the end of a project but over time. And if participants could see value from providing this data too, like they do in the Mappiness app or the million Facebook quizzes my niece spams me with on a regular basis, you’d be onto a winner. In fact, if I get a minute, I think I’ll make this my project of 2011.
Over to you
So there you have it – my tips for 2011, and I didn’t even use it as an excuse to plug vinspired (which, since you ask, is free to use and here to stay). Now it’s your turn – tell me what I missed!
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Time to “blow the bloody doors off” youth civic service
Thanks to the lovely folk at IANYS, I’ve learnt a lot about youth national service of late, which is mighty handy as it seems everyone who’s anyone is getting in on this particular act at the moment. (And when I say everyone, I mean everyone, from Hilary Clinton to Sir Michael Caine.)Of course, this year, 12 National Citizens Service pilots will test David Cameron’s big idea on 11,000 16-year-olds in the UK. These 7-8 week summer projects aim to “help young people develop the skills and attitude to get involved in the community and become active and responsible citizens.”
Meanwhile, as Noel Hatch recently reminded me, France got their national youth service up and running last year, when the French National Assembly voted to invest heavily in Service Civique (Civic Service). They ask for a significant commitment of 6-12 months full-time service, with “missions” available in nine areas of interest at home and abroad. (My favourite example from their site is: Health education: for example, explaining binge-drinking consequences to primary school children – I guess they don’t have the Daily Mail in France.) In 2010, Service Civique had over 10,000 young volunteers, and it aims to mobilize 75,000 young people by 2015.
French volunteers are also compensated for their time, receiving 440€ per month directly from the government, and an extra 100€ expenses in cash, vouchers or in kind from their host organisation to cover food, accommodation or transportation expenses. Disadvantaged young people could qualify for an additional 100€ per month, and all volunteers get their social welfare fully financed by the government.
This stipend obviously makes a big difference to those involved, as this quote from Hassan, a participant, shows:
“Entering into society, earning my living honestly, having a paycheck, and apartment, a family. Everything that I’ve refused until now, is now my role.”
Bermuda also got in on the act in 2010, announcing a voluntary national service programme for 24-30 year olds. This time, participants will serve for 16 hours each month for two years, earning incentives including free public transport, low interest bank loans, discounts at shops, and ongoing support from organization and alumni networks. And the Ivory Coast has been piloting its own version of civic service, focussing on peace building and preparing young people for employment, and plans to develop a national strategy based on the results of this pilot.
There are so many approaches to national youth service, and so many difficult questions to consider, that I’ve resolved to find out more, so this month I’ll mostly be reading Service Without Guns – I mean, you can’t quibble with a title like that, can you?
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Is it time for charities to forget advertising and provide useful services instead?
I recently sat on a panel alongside Scott Burnett of LoveLife, South Africa’s largest HIV initiative for young people. We were there to talk about digital innovation in international youth service programmes, and I found myself in the surprising position of being massively impressed by a WAP site called MYMsta.OK, stay with me here… WAP is the ideal way to reach young people in South Africa, where only around 10% of the population has access to the internet, but 75% of young people have a cell phone. What’s more, instant messaging via a mobile-based social network can massively undercut the cost of text messaging, giving it instant appeal for the youth market.
MYMsta (“Make-Your-Move-sta” – named by the youth so you’re not supposed to get it) is a mobile social network with a difference, seeking to connect the youth to their peers, but also to deliver positive health messages to its users. In short, why pay to advertise on other people’s communication channels if you can deliver a service yourself, and in doing so win the loyalty of your target audience by saving them money? And what better place to offer sexual health advice on demand than on a mobile phone, where dates are arranged and hearts broken?
Here in the UK, the popularity of Blyk shows that many young people are prepared to accept advertising messages on their mobile in exchange for a free mobile contract, but while there are a few apps using the “provide useful unrelated service in order to deliver important messages” logic (MacMillan’s find a coffee shop app, for example), I’m not aware of charities embracing the concept in a big way. (If you are, I’d love to hear about it.)
I’m hugely excited by the prospect of a social network service, which genuinely benefits the target audience, run by a charity whose mission is to help ensure a generation of complete, creative and connected youth who have the tools to stay HIV free. So I’ll be watching their progress with interest, and just a little bit of jealousy.
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Orange bids to bring mobile volunteering to the UK
Since vinspired.com 2.0 was a mere glint in an eye, the digital team at v has been keen to bring the service direct to mobiles. Already, around 2% of our traffic comes from mobiles, and recent IAB research shows that 44% of 16-24 year olds have checked their social media profiles through their phones. As most volunteering still happens in the real world, rather than online, it makes sense to give young people the chance to record their volunteering while they’re doing it, to inspire others and to get recognition for what they do. I recently registered as an iPhone developer, and plans for our first app are well underway.
We’ve also explored the concept of micro-volunteering as a way to encourage people to take their first steps towards giving their time, inspired by campaigning communities such as Oxfam’s Protect the Human, which promotes actions according to time taken. vinspired’s Festive Favours Advent Calendar featured quick and easy ways to show a bit of festive spirit, and we’ve been excitedly watching the evolution of The Extraordinaries micro-volunteering network, especially during the Haiti crisis.
The future’s mobile…
So, when Orange launched a mobile volunteering community, we jumped straight in. The company caused waves in the UK when they teamed up with Rockcorps to launch incentives for volunteers, a controversial move which has successfully delivered volunteering messages to large audiences through high-profile ad campaigns.
The problem with Orange Rockcorps, of course, is that it has limited scale – you can only fit so many people into one venue, and without “owning” further volunteering programmes, or a menu of opportunities, its expensive and difficult to extend the volunteering offer. So (in addition to the obvious product placement) it makes sense for them to create a mobile app to inspire their community of customers to work together to do good. Together with T-Mobile, they say they’ll have more customers than there are people in Canada – so it’s fair to say that a little time from just a percentage of them could go a long way.
The Orange mobile volunteering site
So what’s in it for charities?
Well, Orange is promising to add the best 10 ideas for mobile volunteering to its app, and to market this to its customers. So if you’ve got a task that could be light work with many hands, submit your idea on their community.
The question for me has been: are charities geared up to crowd-source exciting projects? While Orange have the marketing power to take the idea to a large number of people, it will be the tasks themselves which define its stickiness. Thankfully, initial signs are positive, and community members are rising to the challenge of pitching ideas to the public vote. Popular ideas already on the community include donating photos for charities to use on their websites (we’re sure lots of organisations using vinspired would love that service), mapping homeless people’s locations so that charities can offer help, and identifying sites in need of Guerilla Gardening makeovers.
Orange don’t currently seem keen to use mobiles to promote real-world volunteering in their own app, but they are also promising to promote 10 “apps for good” created by charities or social entrepreneurs. So if you’ve got an app that deserves some attention, let them know – or just get involved by voting for your favourite ideas on the Orange Mobile Volunteering site.
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Big shame for big society – behind the scenes of the vschools website
This weekend, reports in the national press mentioned the vschools website being shelved in a “big blow to big society”, so I thought it would be useful to give an insight into what the vschools site is.
The vschools site already exists, has been tested with pupils and schools, and hundreds of schools are ready to sign up. It’s just been sitting on a development server, waiting for a decision for the Department for Education – and sadly, they have decided to scrap the Youth Community Action programme, of which vschools was a part.
Here’s the story so far…
Back in December last year, we were asked to look at how we could build on the success of vinspired.com and the vinspired awards to create a safe, secure and engaging volunteering platform for 14-16 year olds in every maintained school in England.
Luckily we had a solid platform to (literally) build on: vinspired.com, a social platform connecting volunteers aged 16-25 with voluntary organisations who need their help. Building on top of this platform meant:
a) younger volunteers could move their accounts to vinspired at age 16, taking with them a record of their volunteering history
b) voluntary organisations could offer opportunities to the younger audience without doubling up on work
c) making the most of functionality we already had, and importantly
d) we could actually deliver an awesome website in a very short timescale without cancelling Christmas. (Just.)
Creating private spaces for schools & students
Using rapid, Agile development, we extended the vinspired platform, and designed and built private “walled gardens” for schools. This would ensure that pupils could share their photos, comments and achievements with others in their school, without sharing personal details or plans with the wider internet community. Schools could publish their own opportunities, and keep a record of the achievements of pupils at their school in one, easy to use dashboard. Pupils could view opportunities within the school and others in their local communities, offered by approved providers recruited by the vschools advisers.
Image: Logged in view of a school's profile. Please note this is only example content on a test server and does not reflect any relationship with the school, or real volunteering opportunities.
Schools were also given public web pages, where they could showcase their achievements (without identifying individual pupils) and share best practice.
Awards for all
Next up, we extended the age range for vinspired awards, so that pupils could get recognition for their efforts. To do this, we integrated the awards system into both vinspired and vschools user profiles, making it easy for young people to record the skills they learned and the impact they had on their communities. Both sites benefited from this one piece of work.
Image: Early designs for the vinspired awards integration
The next challenge was to work out how to create accounts for hundreds of thousands of pupils without creating loads of admin for staff. Synchronising with existing databases proved controversial in terms of data ownership. Allowing unchecked registrations provoked security concerns, and worries about how the right pupils would end up in the right walled garden. We eventually settled on a token system – school staff could generate unique codes allowing pupils to sign up within a limited time-frame. Each code linked them to the correct school.
Image: vschools service map
Buy-in from pupils, teachers and local authorities
We had, given the time-scales, planned to conduct user testing on the live site, as we had complete control over who could access each secure area, and a team of vschools advisers with contacts in schools who were keen to get involved. However, we were then required to conduct user testing prior to launching the site, so I visited Salford and Milton Keynes to run user testing sessions with pupils and teachers. The feedback was hugely encouraging, helping us to spot bugs but also confirming that the site could work for young people, and I’m grateful to all those who helped with this process.
Since then, a team of over 90 vschools staff have been showing the test site to schools and local authorities, whilst waiting for the green light to launch the site. Figures to end of June (July’s figures come later this week) show 1278 interested schools, with over 500 ready to sign up. Anecdotal evidence from vschools advisers suggest many schools committed to the project prior to the end of term.
So, for now the vschools site remains left on the shelf, but I am hopeful that we may yet find a like minded sponsor to help us realise the potential and share the vision.
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Volunteers can make a difference to digital exclusion
Today saw the launch of Race Online’s Manifesto for a Networked Nation, which recognises that the 10 million UK adults who have never used the internet are missing out in all areas of life. Several of the recommendations are aimed at the voluntary sector, as these are nicely summarised on the NCVO blog, so I won’t go into it here.
Instead, I’m going to tell you about a bloke called Darren who I met at Sidekick Studios recently. Darren runs EcoComputer Systems, a South London-based Social Enterprise that recycles computers and uses them to do good – whether it’s helping socially isolated elderly people to get online, or selling them and using the money to fund training courses for unemployed people and low-income families.
There are lots of reasons to like the EcoComputers model – it’s recycling, it does good and it makes sense for businesses or charities who would otherwise have to pay someone to take their old stuff away. But what really chimed for me was the attitude towards their volunteers. They see the value in investing in volunteers’ skills & personal development – for example, giving them a refurbished PC to use at home, so they can develop skills which they can then share with the elderly, or supporting their volunteers in setting up a community radio station broadcasting from the shop.
There’s something really nice about this “pass it on” approach to sharing skills, whether it’s training volunteers from scratch, or teaming up skilled digital media volunteers with voluntary organisations in need of help, as the Media Trust has done through the Community Voices project. I’m sure there are hundreds of examples out there, and many more in development – I’d love to hear more about them.
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Infocow: a site for young people made by young people
This morning, I went along to the ICA for the launch of Infocow, a really social site connecting young people (aged 14-19) to useful and reliable information and services on line.
Infocow came out of a three-year Futurelabs project called Greater Expectations, which was funded by BECTA. The project aimed to use digital technology to equip young people with the information and contacts they need to take control of their lives.
I was really excited to see that it doesn’t shy away from integrating with social networks and encouraging young people to make informed decisions about their privacy – refreshing as so many opt for the “pretend the rest of the internet isn’t happening” approach when it comes to under 16s. We all know that young people’s engagement online is hugely influenced by recommendations and online sharing, so features like Facebook Connect make sense for this audience.
The other thing that really stood out was the involvement of young volunteers, as well as teachers and other stakeholders, throughout the development – a process which is outlined in the research report. The brand, the name (love the logic), the social features and the simple, easy sign-up all seem to have been built with the end user in mind, rather than predetermined objectives or monitoring requirements.
From what I’ve seen and heard today, it seems that this site is an example of how genuinely involving the target audience right the way through can deliver great results – not to mention offer the opportunity to film a Windows 7 spoof, which I’m hoping to see on YouTube soon…
Decide for yourself at www.infocow.org.uk.
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Is it time we started sharing our cock-ups?
When charities or voluntary organisations get together at events, it’s usually the successes you get to hear about. So hurrah for Sidekick Studios’ latest (beta) innovation: Cocktails and Cock-Ups, an evening of confessional presentations from charities and social enterprises about the disasters you never got to hear about – and, most importantly, what they did to fix them.
Dan Jones from Amnesty International UK, Andrew Dick from Envision, and Darren Taylor from EcoComputer Systems were impressively candid about the mistakes they’d made and the lessons they’d learnt. What struck me was how sharing failure led to frank discussions and a sense of shared experience which is often missing from the usual “look what I achieved”-style presentations.
I was surprised to notice how rarely – if ever – I’ve seen someone deliver a PowerPoint presentation which actually highlighted the things that went wrong. Reviewing mistakes is something we do a lot in Agile web development; at the end of each two-week section of work, the whole team comes together to talk about what went right, what went wrong, and what we could change to make the next iteration more productive. But sharing that learning with other organisations? I don’t do that much.
So what did I take from the event?
- In the third sector, we’re so used to reporting to funders, trustees and bosses on what went well, that we’re in danger of forgetting that the lessons we learn from failure are valuable – not just to us, but to others, too.
- Talking about failure, rather than pretending we can prevent failure, can help us to expect and manage it. It’s also fun, and quite cathartic, once you get past the initial fear.
- “Failing fast” – building prototypes, running pilots, get feedback early on, not trying to plan everything up front in immense detail and instead being willing to embrace negative feedback and change – can actually help to avoid more catastrophic mistakes on a bigger scale.
- Sometimes a perceived failure actually leads to something better.
- It’s easier to admit mistakes with a cocktail in your hand.
So if you’re looking for valuable lessons, I reckon you’d learn more from inviting others like you to share their cock-up tales over drinks than from any of the usual seminars or conferences. Find out more about Cock-Up Cocktails on the Sidekick Studios blog.
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Radio 1 Local Heroes campaign highlights short-term volunteering
A survey of 1,000 young people showed that over 50% said they didn’t have time to get involved in the causes they cared about. Now BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra are planning to inspire their listeners to get involved in volunteering opportunities which don’t involve a big time commitment.
Local Heroes week will run across both channels from Sunday 18 to Sunday 25 April. DJ Tim Westwood will become a “Local Hero” for the week, trying out a different taster volunteering challenge each day.
Anna Bowman, Executive Producer, Radio 1 and 1Xtra Campaigns, says: “Our research suggests that many young people are interested in volunteering but don’t have the time.
“We want to show that volunteering can be fun, rewarding and doesn’t have to be a long-term commitment.
“We hope that Tim’s volunteering antics will inspire some of our listeners to become a Local Hero in their own community.”
Some people might think Westwood is an unlikely volunteer, but I know he gives up his time for causes he cares about. I’ve seen him play for free at a Christmas party for young people affected by HIV – and they got so into it that the wall had to be replastered… Fact!
Westwood’s not the only Radio 1 DJ to volunteer… Nihal, Annie Mac, and Mary Anne Hobbs have all played for free at the vinspired Lake of Stars festival in Malawi and loved it. Plus, DJs from both stations were involved in the Bullyproof and Body Image campaigns.
If you’re inspired to get involved, find an opportunity near you on vinspired.com. You could even get into a festival for free in exchange for giving up a bit of your time!
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