Andrew Leigh

Teaming up with other NFPs

• Need more ‘mentoring’ relationships to sustain meaningful work
• Competition between service providers and organisations does not create collaboration –  there is a substantial fear for survival
• Charities need to work better with for-profit sector:
  • Better communication
  • Staff engagement
  • Communicate to corporates the demonstrable benefits of their investment
  • Encouraging partnerships and merging of organisations is necessary to reduce the number of players doing the same thing
  • Creating events and spaces for people to share their passion – an important factor in knowledge sharing and avoiding burnout

Volunteers and human capital

• A major issue is a loss of face-to-face social engagement with the rise of digital dependency
• Local context is everything. Understanding and drawing from the assets, people and unique factors of local area make a big difference to efficacy and impact
• Important to facilitate grassroots decision making
• How roles are defined is important
  • Individuals should be encouraged and empowered to ‘self-select’ how they add value
  • Acting as ‘connectors’ between a community and organisation – volunteers can act as brand ambassadors
  • Inclusive – providing opportunities for those who find it difficult to engage
  • Skills required from volunteers should be clearly defined and expectations actively managed
    • This includes management of organisational and volunteer limits
    • Volunteers used on project-based work to demonstrate tangible achievement for having contributed
    • Focus on giving opportunities for volunteers to up-skill to create long term incentive to contribute their time and energy
    • Need to look for ways to increase active membership and buy-in
    • Volunteer grants program to pay for some of the costs e.g. petrol
    • Peer-to-peer models have found to be very valuable e.g. youth groups add value to individuals who in turn promote (referral pathway)

Service models

• Innovation and effective work happens at the local scale
• Previously, the community had common responsibility for services and needs. Now the recipient has a personal responsibility for ‘buying’ a service and to have a need met. Organisational approach to work should be geared toward this reality.
• Discussions of rebuilding social capital at local level must be with people, not for people.
• Innovation is problematic as there is also an expectation that initiatives be evidence-based –experimentation needs separate investment to provide security in testing ideas without core functions and funding being affected
• Need more think tanks at a community level with capacity to speak for the needs of a particular community

Some of the participants are pictured below, contacts for all of the organisations who registered an interest in this project can be found here.