Hot
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November
2004
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Australian
Observations: An interview with Linda Graff
by
Linda Graff
with Andy Fryar
For
this month's Hot Topic column we thought we would
do something just a little bit different.
Earlier
this year (April 2004), we were treated to a series
of advanced level volunteer management workshops conducted
by leading Canadian volunteerism author, trainer and
consultant Linda Graff. Linda along with her colleague,
Anna Allevato, travelled to Australia at the invitation
of Volunteering SA, and presented workshops in SA,
Victoria, NSW, Queensland and the ACT.
Having
given Linda time to catch her breath and contemplate
her visit, we thought it was time we asked Linda to
share her thoughts and observations on the volunteer
movement in Australia.
OzVPM:
How did you enjoy your trip to Australia?
LG: I don't mind admitting to you
that spending a month on the road on the other side
of the world and flying into an itinerary devised
by people largely unknown to us was a daunting prospect.
However, as it turned out, my Australian hosts, now
friends, thought of everything. The trip was marvellous.
Having never been to Australia, the country existed
for me only as a collage of stereotypes. I started
looking for kangaroos immediately (that means on approach
to the Sydney airport) , I knew about vast open spaces
(I am from Canada, after all) but had no idea about
the shortage of water in your country, and I had really
no conception of the extent or beauty of your beaches
(yes, I did know that Australia is an island!) . That's
the travelogue part of my response.
The
work part was equally stunning. All arrangements were
impeccably made. All work travel went off exactly
as planned. All events were superbly organized. All
sponsors were infinitely attentive to our needs and
comfort. After fifteen years of extensive international
workshop delivery I can say that this is not always
the case.
While
my colleague Anna and I only worked in the south east
corner of Australia, including sessions delivered
in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Mt. Gambier, Clare,
Maitland, Brisbane and Canberra, we had the privilege
of connecting with peak bodies in several states,
and delivering sessions to hundreds of participants
along the way.
As
an overall observation I would offer that Australian
audiences are marvellous to work with. As a trainer
one really knows they're there! Lots of participation;
intelligent, respectful but nonetheless lively debate;
genuine interest in how things are and are done in
other parts of the world; all combined with a sincere
welcome and warm hospitality.
In
short, the Australian adventure was marvellous, both
from the perspective of a visitor and a trainer and
I can't say enough to thank all of our sponsors: Rosemary
Sage at Volunteering SA (who took the lead role in
making the whole tour happen) , yourself, Andy, at
OzVPM, Martin Cowling at People First -Total Solutions,
Di Morgan at Volunteering Queensland, Mary Porter
at Volunteering ACT, and Marie Fox at Volunteering
NSW.
OzVPM: What were your
general impressions of the Australian volunteerism
scene?
LG: The best way for me to answer
that question is to draw comparisons with other parts
of the world. I'll do that in reference to Canada,
the United States, and the United Kingdom for three
reasons. The first is that they are countries that
are probably the most similar to Australia in social,
political, and economic terms (Western, developed,
democratic, etc.) . Second, volunteering at the front
line level looks quite similar in all four of these
countries. Third, I have worked more or less extensively
in all four and feel I have a somewhat informed basis
for comparisons.
I
think the first thing to say in response to that question
is that I was impressed at how advanced the thinking
is in the Australian volunteerism scene. And I mean
that at three levels.
First,
volunteer management there is quite sophisticated.
Sure it varies by location, size of organization,
and experience of the professional manager involved,
but the field, as a whole, is, I think, ahead of that
in many parts of the world (we need to remind ourselves
that organized volunteering as we know it does not
exist in large portions of the world and that in some
places volunteering is a hugely foreign concept) ,
and in most respects, quite in parallel with where
it is at in other similar countries such as Canada,
the United States, and the UK.
Volunteer
program management is a relatively new profession,
still finding its way and struggling for recognition
as it is in my part of the world. Managers of volunteers
are expected to undertake complex work in organizations
and communities that are in the midst of fundamental
change. It would appear that, like here, they too
rarely have sufficient resources to accomplish what
they are asked to take on and often work miracles
to achieve the success they do, given the support
they (don't) receive and the complexities of the environment
in which they work.
Managers
of volunteers in Australia are buffeted by many factors
similar to those which influence volunteering in North
America: liability, changing demographics of the volunteer
labour pool, increasing demands for accountability
in the voluntary sector, and increasing expectations
that volunteers will supplement other service delivery
mechanisms. A wide variety of wider social trends
are also influencing the shape of volunteering, including,
for example, technology, demographic shifts, economic
shifts, changes in government spending and the downloading
by governments of essential services into the voluntary
sector.
Second,
there is a well developed system of volunteer resource
centres in Australia which is beyond what we have
in North America or the UK as far as I know. Each
Australian state (and the ACT) has a peak body charged
with the overall responsibility to attend to volunteerism,
and Volunteer Australia is in the pivotal role as
the national peak body. While there are local and
state/provincial parallels in the United States, Canada
and the UK, they are not consistently present in every
state/province, are typically smaller and less well-supported,
and generally do not have the same kind of strategic
or political mandate as I observed in their Australian
counterparts. I hasten to add that there is room for
expansion, additional resources, and broader recognition
of these bodies in Australia as well, but by comparison,
I think you are generally further along than we are
in this structural sense.
Australian
peak bodies are relatively well organized among themselves
through a supportive network at the national and state
levels which are, in turn, hooked into a fairly well
developed system of local centres throughout the country.
Importantly, peak bodies understand and have assumed
for themselves a strategic role, not only in relation
to the practice of volunteer program management (which
seems to be the main, and I would suggest too-narrow
focus here), but also in relation to volunteerism,
the volunteer movement, and the place of both in Australian
society. They have all established important relationships
with their respective governments, and all have received
recognition (although uneven from state to state)
from their respective governments regarding their
expertise in relation to volunteerism.
The
third point follows directly on from the previous
one. There seems, from my short exposure during this
trip, to be a fairly high degree of political consciousness
about volunteering in Australia. What I mean by this
is that at both the state and national level, governments
have recognized that:
a)
volunteering exists and
b)
that it is an important variable in building a civil
society, preserving the integrity of the human service
delivery system, and in the promotion of social inclusion.
Governments
there have engaged in conversations with the sector,
have been consulting with (or at least receiving briefs
from) state peak bodies, and in many locations, entered
into compacts which speak not only to the relationship
between the public and the nonprofit sector, but actually
acknowledge voluntary participation as a key component
of a healthy nonprofit sector. Australia is not unique
in this regard, in that the UK also has a compact,
and in that various state governments along with the
federal government in the United States have certainly
noticed volunteerism and are using it in a range of
ways to meet political, economic, and social objectives
(e.g., the Corporation for National and Community
Service, Homeland Security, AmeriCorps, etc.). Canada
seems to be the exception. While there is an initiative
recently in place to work though private, public,
and nonprofit relationships, and while there are some
resources now being allocated for the support and
study of volunteering in Canada, our peak body network
is spotty, peak bodies are either not funded or poorly
funded, and for the most part, we lack a strategic
vision, limited further by the absence of a political
consciousness about how to marshal volunteering into
the future.
OzVPM: Are there specific
areas that you think require more development?
LG: It is a bit tricky to answer
this question for any response other than "no" could
be construed as criticism! With the proviso that is
not what I intend with this response, a couple of
observations come to mind. For your OzVPM readers
who are familiar with your hot topic discussion of
several months ago regarding the potential manipulation
of the volunteer movement by government agendas this
will not be a new caution. (See http://www.ozvpm.com/pasthottopics/sept03.htm
and the 'Linda's musings' section of http://www.lindagraff.ca/
)
We
are at a relatively new place in volunteering right
now. For decades in your country and in mine and in
others, advocates for volunteering and the volunteer
movement have been pushing for more public acknowledgement
of volunteering and its contributions to individuals,
communities and society as a whole. This is my twenty-fifth
year in "the business of volunteering" and I personally
have spent huge amounts of effort to effect change
in that direction. In the "be careful what you ask
for vein" we are now seeing attention being given
to the volunteer movement and this raises new issues
for us to attend to.
Regarding
Australia, I worry a bit about your government's "mutual
obligation" philosophy and the way that it is being
played out through your peak bodies. Like in the United
States, volunteerism peak bodies are not only delivering
state programs that more or less compel community
involvement under the guise of "volunteering" but
may be hitching their future fiscal health and long
term survival to these programs. I have argued elsewhere
that "mandatory volunteering" is an oxymoron and that
the movement needs to be very cautious about government
agendas. When the peak body, which I think we mean
to be a primary centre for advocacy and health-promotion
for the volunteer movement, receives money to deliver
a program which may over the long run alter the very
essence of volunteering, I worry about the erosion
of our future independence and our capacity to advocate
for change in the future.
For
example, and this happens in other countries as well,
including Canada, so don't take this as a criticism
of Australian trends specifically, when the criminal
justice department of a state or national government
uses community service as an alternative form of sentencing,
I think we run a risk of, over time, shifting people's
concepts of what volunteering and community service
are really about. To illustrate, if you say to an
offender, "jail or community service, which punishment
would you prefer today?" are we not colouring community
service as a punitive measure rather than as the truly
voluntary and richly rewarding opportunity it ought
to be? When people who are unemployed or receiving
other social benefits are "compelled to give back",
the service may be a good option for the receiver
of benefits as well as the community service that
receives his or her labour "for free", but to suggest
that this is volunteering may, I worry, lead to a
new and potentially problematic social construction
of the concept.
With
respect, I would suggest that Australian governments,
like those in other countries, have attached some
strings to the relatively new attention they are paying
to volunteering, and some of the programs and funding
pots currently on offer may come back to bite us at
a later point.
OzVPM:
As risk management is one of your key specialty areas,
I'm interested to know what observations were you
able to make about how these issues are being dealt
within Australia?
LG:
Ah, well, this too is an interesting matter in Australia.
As I noted previously, volunteering at the ground
level, is very similar among the four countries I
have referenced. What I mean is that if you were to
walk into a hospital in any of these four countries,
you would find volunteers doing essentially the same
kind of work. Girl Guides/Scouts exist in all four
countries and volunteer Guiders in each are doing
essentially the same work with youth. Disease oriented
groups such as cancer societies, institutes for/of
the blind, and so on engage huge numbers of volunteers
in similar work, delivering services and raising funds
for research. Volunteer firefighters and rescue workers
risk their lives in crisis response work every day
in all four countries. Observe volunteers working
in any of these countries and most of the time you'd
be hard pressed to distinguish where the work is actually
taking place.
However,
how we think about the risks related to volunteer
work, and the extent to which we need to account for
liabilities that can attach to the work of volunteers
does vary. This question could, on its own, be substance
for a stand alone article, so I will be brief in my
comment here. What is most interesting to me in this
regard is the impact of your volunteer protection
legislation on the capacity of non-profit organizations
to engage volunteers. Perhaps as an illustration of
that "be careful what you ask for" notion, the attempt
to extend protection against liability to individual
volunteers has had at least two unexpected consequences.
The
first is that the focus on liability has largely drawn
attention from where, in my opinion, it really ought
to be focussed which, simply stated, is on keeping
the darned hazards and perils from materializing in
the first place. We are so fearful of, and over attentive
to, potential law suits, that we are not devoting
sufficient attention to risk management. The knee
jerk reaction is to run off seeking insurance. In
this narrow response we fail to recognize that insurance
is the financial band-aid we apply after the harm
has taken place. We miss the critical point that if
we spent half as much time and resources on preventing
the harm in the first place, we'd need a whole lot
less insurance, and people wouldn't have gotten hurt
or suffered losses in the interim!
This
over concentration on liability and its associated
inattention to prevention through risk management
is not uniquely Australian. It finds a parallel in
the United States, and to a lesser (but, unfortunately
growing) extent in Canada, and most recently, now
in the United Kingdom.
The
second unintended consequence of the volunteer protection
legislation, as near as I can tell, is that insurance
companies are reaping riches from the relatively poor
and struggling non-profit sector. Not only is far
too little being done to keep people safe, but important
events and services are being curtailed or cancelled
because of the prohibitive and apparently ever-escalating
insurance costs. I have even heard anecdotes of agencies
that have been driven out of business because their
insurance rates have doubled and doubled again and
doubled again. And, again, as near as I can tell,
insurance rates have gone up not because of huge numbers
of claims, but rather as a result of the (largely
misplaced?) fear of potential claims. It's a false
economy as near as I can tell, and the non-profit
sector and its clients suffer the consequences.
OzVPM:
So do you have any suggestions for a solution?
LG:
The solution? Tough question. I'd offer only a couple
of thoughts on this.
First,
advocacy. Peak bodies for volunteering and the non-profit
sector (and these, I think are different bodies but
clear allies on this matter) need to scream long and
loud about the negative consequences of the legislation
and the need to act immediately to remedy the situation.
Second,
research. Someone at state and/or national levels
needs to launch an empirical inquiry into the number
of actual suits, their final results, and their actual
costs in payouts. This data then needs to be compared
against escalating insurance premiums. If the payouts
have become huge, then legislative capping may be
in order. If it is a false economy driven by fear
and gouging, then regulations may need to be levied
on the insurance industry, and/or the non-profit sector
might consider cessation of business with the insurance
industry altogether and pursue non-profit sector pools
and self insurance schemes such as those that are
beginning to spring up elsewhere.
OzVPM: Are there any
other thoughts you'd like to share?
LG: The more I work in other countries, the
more parallels I see. At the big picture level, what
I observe is that we are all dealing with quite similar
issues but we are at various points along the range
of continua of how each issue evolves and plays out.
The lesson is that there is a vast potential to learn
from one another about how advocates and peak bodies
for volunteering might act and respond to bring about
desired outcomes, and prevent the pitfalls experienced
elsewhere. Technology makes global communication possible
and we need to be really careful not to reinvent wheels
where communication among us could bring about more
desirable results faster, and at a lower cost in terms
of both resources and anguish.
Maybe
it's a reflection of my so many years in the field
that sharpens my awareness of repeating issues. Or
perhaps it is my sense of increasing impatience at
the lack of strategic vision and political will within
our movement (as I said to Susan Ellis ten years ago,
so many in this field continue to act like Lady Bountifuls
with white gloves on!). Whatever the source, I am
more and more focussing my own interests in areas
where advocacy and activism are needed.
So
my final comments are of that nature:
Let
us all support the efforts of national and state/provincial
peak bodies for volunteerism (not for the voluntary
sector, but for volunteerism specifically) from Australia,
NZ, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom
to continue to work together on an activist agenda.
While one meeting of this nature has already taken
place, we all in the movement need to support and
encourage our state and national advocates to think
big and act on behalf of the movement. I believe that
only when these pivotal representatives roll up their
sleeves together, identify common concerns, share
stories of successes and failures to date, and build
a unified, strategic, and political agenda around
shared concerns will anything really change in volunteering.
The
second front for action is with senior agency executives
and funders. We in volunteering have spent many years
and expended great effort to advance the professionalism
and the profession of volunteer program management.
Peak bodies (and local associations of managers of
volunteers) have invested hugely in training managers
of volunteers to be better at what they do. The problem
is that we have been ignoring the folks who really
need to be convinced of the value of volunteering,
and these are the very people who are in a position
to effect change in how volunteering and its management
play out in real time: funders, agency managers, and
boards. I threw this same challenge a year and a half
ago to Volunteer Canada at a national institute here
and I will repeat it to peak bodies elsewhere as well:
if we all over the next five years spent as much effort
communicating to funders, agency managers and boards
about the value of volunteering and the infrastructure
volunteering needs to be effective as we have spent
in the last five years trying to upgrade the skills
of volunteer program managers, we would generate more
change in the next five years than we have seen in
volunteerism in the last 25 years.
The
communication campaign needs to be planned, strategic
and coordinated. It needs to be effectively lead by
peak bodies and would accomplish so much more if it
were at a multi-national level. We are good at complaining
and whining in our field. I am hoping that we can
get beyond the "poor us" mentality and move together
towards a more healthy, more vigorous, and appropriately
recognized and resourced volunteer movement in the
near future.
OzVPM:
Now it's your turn!
Do
you think Linda's musings are accurate?
Take
some time to share your thoughts on Linda's observations
on the Australian volunteerism sector or if you were
lucky enough to have caught one of Linda or Anna's
Australian workshops why not share your seminar experience
with other site visitors?
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