The Volunteer Role Matrix

In this article, I want to tap into the knowledge, insight, and experience of all of you wonderful Volunteer Engagement Professionals who read this blog. You see, I have an idea, and I’d like your feedback on it.

Back in 2023 I did an online course in Exploratory Writing. Led by Alison Jones — who wrote a book with the same title — one aspect of the course encouraged me to develop my own visual model to convey a concept.

What I came up with was the Volunteer Role Matrix. And I’ve sat on it ever since, nervous about sharing it with anyone in case it isn’t any good, or of any help to people. The Volunteer Role Matrix has never left the safe confines of my hard drive. Until today.

I want to put this visual model out there for you to look at, think about, and give me feedback on.

I think it could be helpful for us in conceptualising and communicating the different volunteer roles we engage with in our organisations and communities. This could help us to see where we may have gaps, where we might develop our volunteer journey, and how we might influence colleagues around support for volunteer engagement.

So, with all that in mind, here it is.

Rob Jackson’s Volunteer Role Matrix

Hopefully, it’s pretty simple and self-explanatory; otherwise it isn’t doing its job.

It’s a four-by-four matrix, split vertically between formal and informal volunteering (top and bottom), and horizontally by occasional and regular volunteering (left and right). That create four quadrants:

Formal regular volunteering — top right
Informal regular volunteering — bottom right
Informal occasional volunteering — bottom left
Formal occasional volunteering — top left

NB. When I use the terms formal and informal I am using them in the typical research sense, where formal volunteering is that done through a group or organisation, and informal is more, well, informal.

In each quadrant, I have included some examples of the kinds of volunteering that could sit within that category. So, volunteers with the Samaritans might be formal regular volunteers, whilst those cheering runners at the London marathon would be formal occasional volunteers. Similarly, lockdown mutual aid groups might be considered informal regular volunteers, and helping the proverbial older person across the road would be informal occasional volunteering.

This role mapping could also be made more sophisticated by locating different volunteer roles in different parts of each quadrant to illustrate their formality or regularity within the relevant section of the matrix.

Over to you

What do you think of the Volunteer Role Matrix?

Is it helpful?

Is it useless?

Have you seen this before somewhere (there is every chance my subconscious has inadvertently copied this and sold it to me as a new idea!)?

Could you see value in applying it in your work?

What examples would you add to each quadrant?

How could it be improved?

Please let me know what you think and, together, let’s potentially build a visual model to help us all in our work.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Volunteering in the public sector

Things are pretty gloomy in the UK economy right now. Whoever wins the next election is going to face a huge challenge, getting the public finances back in order. Currently, that looks like we will see more cuts coming to our already over-stretched public services, which will, inevitably, lead to debate about the role of volunteers in these organisations.

In this article, I want to look briefly at some of the issues and encourage us to get ready for these debates so we can engage in an informed way.

Volunteers are essential to the public sector

Before we get into the why’s and wherefores of volunteering in the public sector, let’s get an important point out of the way first.

There is absolutely a role for volunteers in our public services.

William Beveridge, the architect of the British welfare state, in his 1948 report, “Voluntary Action: A Report on methods of Social Advance”, wrote that:

“Vigour and abundance of Voluntary Action outside one’s home, individually and in association with other citizens, for bettering one’s own life and that of one’s fellows, are the distinguishing marks of a free society.”

Beveridge didn’t see any contradiction between civil society and the welfare state. Whilst post-World War II he believed that “the State must in future do more things than it has attempted in the past,” he also believed that “room, opportunity, and encouragement must be kept for Voluntary Action.”

For almost eighty years, volunteers have played a vital role in our public services, supporting paid staff and bringing the unique benefits of volunteering to bear on a wide range of services.

Volunteers support schools, hospitals, the criminal justice system, the emergency services, coastguard, social work, the wider NHS and much more.

Volunteers are also fundamental to services that many people mistakenly think are publicly funded, like mountain rescue and lifeboats. All these things are fundamental aspects of our national life, and volunteers are at the heart. Put simply, if volunteers stopped, so would many of the public institutions we take for granted every day.

The debate, then, is not whether volunteers have a role in public services when cuts are made, but what that role is.

Making cuts and engaging volunteers has to be handled intelligently

In all my years as a Volunteer Engagement Professional, I’ve seen many instances of public service cuts and the impact on volunteering (austerity and The Big Society, anyone?). Usually, these cuts lead to accusations of volunteers stealing jobs from hardworking employees, casting volunteers in a negative light.

Let me be clear — I have never met a volunteer whose motivation is to put someone out of a job. In fact, most often, volunteers have been among the first to defend job cuts, to advocate for paid staff to be retained when financial belts get tightened. And I’m not just talking about union reps who, let’s not forget, are themselves volunteers.

Volunteers in our public services are often right at the front line of service delivery and see the impact of cuts clearly. They know that cuts mean someone somewhere — typically in senior management or central government — thinks that volunteers will pick up the slack, something they are often unwilling and unable to do. So, these same volunteers work hard to try to minimise the cuts and their impact, for of those they serve.

This mindset is important. If we go into a future where cuts are being made with a view that volunteers are the bad guys out to take people’s jobs, then we will never have an intelligent and informed conversation about the role that they can play in future when funding is reduced.

With all that said, how do we handle these issues in practice?

When the Covid-19 global pandemic came along in 2020, I wrote a series of articles on this blog to help Volunteer Engagement Professionals explore how they might handle discussions with volunteers and paid staff about the impact of potential cuts on services. These were compiled into an eBook, ”Cuts and change”, which is available for free on my website.

I hope that this free resource will help you to think through the issues involved in your organisation and wider society if and when more cuts come along, and help you to have informed and sensible discussions with others about the future role of volunteers in your organisation, whatever sector you are in.

Knowing where we start from

Let’s take stock for a moment.

If we accept that:

volunteers are essential to the work of our public services;
the debate when cuts are being made is what the appropriate role is for volunteers, not whether they should be involved at all, or that they are out to take people’s jobs…

…then we need to understand the volunteer experience in the public sector volunteering as we prepare for funding cuts.

Thankfully, NCVO can help with their Time Well Spent: Volunteering In The Public Sector (2020)research. Here are some of the top findings that jumped out at me:

”Public sector volunteers report lower levels of satisfaction compared with civil society volunteers and have less positive views about specific parts of their volunteer journey. Key challenges vary, but volunteers commonly felt the effect of funding cuts on their volunteer experience over time.”

”Public sector volunteers tend to be managed by paid staff and through more formalised processes, and they are more likely to feel (volunteering) is too formalised and structured.”

”The value of volunteers could be enhanced further, especially in relation to making better use of their skills, further training and resources, and encouraging greater understanding among paid staff of the role and value of volunteers.”

So, if cuts come along, how do we make sure investment in volunteer management continues so that today’s more flexible volunteers can be engaged in appropriate ways that meet their needs and those of the public sector bodies they give time to? How can we make best use of their skills? And how can we give them a smoother volunteer journey?

If we understand the experience of public sector volunteers, and we can have intelligent conversations about the role of volunteers in those services going forward, then we can come to some informed decisions about what needs to change, what resourcing is needed, and how best we can deliver a great volunteer experience across the public sector.

It’s on all of us to act

I hope this article has given you some food for thought. I hope it’s helped you to see that the debate is about the role of volunteers in public services when cuts are being made, not whether they should be involved at all. And I hope it’s given you some practice pointers for thinking all this through via the ”Cuts and change” eBook.

Whether you are currently a Volunteer Manager working in our public services, or you’re in a civil society agency that works alongside public services, or you’re simply a Volunteer Engagement Professional who cares about the role, value, and importance of volunteering in our society, we must be prepared for difficult conversations that may lie ahead about the role of volunteers in our public services.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

We’ve got the power

Long-term readers will know I am a fan of Seth Godin, writer, marketer and inspirational thought leader. In the past, I have riffed off Seth’s writing for this blog (see “Belief And Knowledge” and “What Is Excellence?” for example) and I’m doing that again here, thanks to an article published on his blog back in January 2024, simply titled, “Unaware”. Here it is:

”If you don’t realize that you have power, you might not be able to exercise it. The power to speak up, to participate, to invent, to lead, to encourage, to vote, to connect, to organize, to march, to write, to say ‘no’ or to say ‘yes’. It’s tempting to imagine we have less power than we do. It lets us off the hook. For now.”

Very often that’s us, isn’t it?

We Volunteer Engagement Professionals either don’t realise we have power — or don’t believe we do — and so we don’t exercise it. We may not speak up, invest, lead etc. We buy into the belief that because we don’t have a seat at the table, we have little or no power, little or no agency.

If that’s part of our self-belief and self-talk, then we have two responses.

Response one

Listen to it and believe it. We’re in an isolating profession. We’re the only one who does what we do at our organisation. We can’t affect change. Nobody would understand.

We maybe take comfort in our powerless narrative so we don’t have to face up to the bigger challenges of our role — sitting back in our comfort zone rather than trying to change the status quo. We just need to keep our heads down and do the best we can for our volunteers.

At its worst, we adopt a victim mentality — that all the issues we face, problems we encounter, and challenges that obstruct us, are someone else’s fault, and we are powerless to address and overcome them.

Response two

We hear the voice telling us we have no power, no influence, and we choose to ignore that voice and do something about it.

We look for ‘teachable moments’ to educate others about the power and potential of volunteering.

We challenge stereotypes and prejudice that cast volunteers in a negative light.

We tell stories and share meaningful data that demonstrates the multiple impacts of volunteers.

We keep going because we know that volunteering has the potential to change the world.

I know I have been firmly in the first response category, especially early on in my career. I’ve played the victim card. I’ve kept my head down. I’ve even left jobs because of that mindset, hoping that the grass is indeed greener in different pastures. Honestly, it’s sometimes the easier option.

Now I’m more often in the second response category. That doesn’t mean I’m never frustrated, or annoyed, or demotivated by events. But it does mean I choose my reactions to those events, and focus on the power, the influence, and the agency I do have, to try to make change happen.

So today, no long lectures or philosophical navel-gazing about our profession. I’m keeping this simple.

Ask yourself, which response category do you sit in today? Number One or number two.

If it’s response category one, then what can you do to realise and seize the power you have, to become aware of it and take action? What support might you need in making a change? Who can you reach out to for that support? If you’re stuck, please let me know.

If you’re in response category two, then I have three simple asks of you.

Find another Volunteer Manager in response category one and offer to mentor them.
Write about your journey from response category one to response category two. Share how you’ve seized and exercised the power you realised you have, and what change you’ve enabled as a result.
Publish what you write. Share it on LinkedIn. Send it to me as a guest post for this blog. Write it up for Engage. Those of us who are aware of our power and use it to try to make change happen, have a responsibility to help those who don’t to act.

So, come on. Don’t delay. Before today is over, decide which category you are in and set yourself a goal to act accordingly.

Let’s work together to acknowledge our power, and exercise it effectively to realise our vision for volunteering.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Across the divide

Now, more than ever, volunteering can play a crucial role in connecting us across our increasingly divided societies.

In almost every study I read about why people get involved in volunteering, one of the strongest motivations is around meeting people, connecting with others and making new friends.

We’re perhaps all familiar with the stereotype of the 1950s ‘ladies who lunch’ — women who came together, often with a purpose to fundraise for a good cause, but whose gatherings were as much about social connection for the participants as they were for the causes they supported.

Then there are the protestors, campaigners, and advocates for change, who unite together in a wide array of organisations to help change our world. Importantly, these associations are also about building and strengthening connections between people with shared values and beliefs.

And there are today’s young people who, according to the 2019 Time Well Spent study, value volunteering as a way of combating the social isolation they experience.

I could go on, but I won’t.

The point is that the act of volunteering, whether formally or informally, has always had a strong element of human connection, a sense of belonging, and an association with being part of something bigger than oneself.

Today’s world can be a scary place. We are more divided than ever. We delve into our devices for solace and escape, often reinforcing the division by entering our online echo chambers. We keep our heads down and our mouths shut, retreating into a safe space we feel comfortable in. And, not that long ago, we were required to stay apart, compounding that sense of isolation and helplessness that many feel.

As one commentator recently put it:

”We are become a decentralised human race. And that’s a scary thing. While we may be closer together with the technologies that bring us close, we are further apart than ever before.” — Rahim Hirji, ‘The Blur Of Society’

This sense of disconnection, of divide, of difference seems to dominate so much of what we read, hear and see in the modern world.

But I think volunteering can offer small, green shoots of hope.

I’m seeing a theme in some of what I read and hear, a theme that centres volunteering as a powerful antidote to this fracturing of our world and our relationships.

Of people setting aside their differences to unite behind a particular cause or movement.

Of people coming together to dialogue, to share and to build connections that fly under the radar of a mainstream media that seems intent on stoking division for gain.

How can we, Volunteer Engagement Professionals, embrace this?

How can we fan these flames of connection?

How can we be the antidote to division in our world?

These are big questions, but there are three things I think we can all do in our work:

Let’s look at how we can bring our volunteers together in ways that deliberately foster connection, especially across divides. With National Volunteer Week season almost upon us, let’s explore ways to connect people at the events we have planned. Mix people up rather than allowing them to cluster in cliques. Use icebreakers that get people to share something about themselves that isn’t related to their volunteering. Get people talking and engaging.
We need to step out of our comfort zones as Volunteer Engagement Professionals. That could be as simple as speaking to someone different next time we are at an event. It could be about going beyond the audiences are comfortable connecting with and engaging with new groups of potential volunteers. It could be about changing our ways of work to intentionally connect people through volunteering.
Let’s explore the potential for intergenerational volunteering. So much of the division we see in our world is being stoked between the young and the old. Yet rarely do we see how much the generations have in common. The baby boomers changed the world in the 1960s (think civil rights, sexual equality, Vietnam War protests etc.), similarly to how young people are striving to change the world today (think climate crisis, LGBTQ+ rights, anti-war protests etc.). Let’s find ways to bring these different ages together, to share and learn from each other.

What would you add to that short list?

What are you doing to build connections between people through volunteering?

Leave a comment below and let’s share ideas and approaches to put volunteering at the heart of the struggle against a divided society.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

We still need to talk about volunteer teams

This is the third article of an occasional series on my blog where I dive back into the archives and surface some older content that, I think, is valuable for Volunteer Engagement Professionals today.

I’ve been writing for this blog for almost thirteen years and everything I’ve written is available, for free, online. I hope you find this ever-growing library of content valuable, and please do share it with others.

For this next journey into the archives, we’re going back to something I published on the 16th February five years ago, the article, “We need to talk about volunteer teams”.

The original piece came hot on the heels of the first Time Well-Spent study, and juxtaposed this with insights from Wharton Business School Professor, Adam Grant. In it, I tried to help us rethink our approach to recruiting and retaining great volunteer teams.

That was, of course, in the days before Covid-19, and so working with teams has changed. Lockdowns required us to embrace more flexible and hybrid approaches to working with volunteers.

Given these new dynamics, it is my hope that this article from the archives will help us re-think how we can adapt in a changed landscape.

As I said five years ago:

Shifting to group recruitment and retention strategies will present come challenges. We’ll have to try new approaches. Which means risk and the possibility of failure. Yet from such failure will come new ideas and approaches that will work better and better until we get it right.

Please give this article from 2019 a read and leave a comment either on the original post, or on this post, to share your thoughts, reflection, and ideas.

I look forward to reading what you have to say.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Schrödinger’s profession

”Imagine you’re at a party, and you ask the person next to you what they do, and they reply: “I’m a professional doctor.”

LOL!!!

Here’s the thing…

….No doctor (or lawyer or accountant or architect or civil engineer or a dozen others) would ever qualify their profession as “professional” because it is inherently obvious that they’re a professional.

So why do photographers (and models and musicians and actors and writers and others) do it?”

Great question!

Why do we do it?

That opening to this article came from a daily email by somebody I follow called Jonathan Stark. He’s not a volunteer management person (he helps business owners), but his email really resonated with me as someone who works in the field.

For as long as I can remember, Volunteer Managers have debated whether we are a profession, whether we are professionals, and what that might actually mean.

We’ve also engaged in debates about amateurs vs. professionals when it comes to the roles and work done by volunteers, exploring definitions and their relevance to what we all do.

Many people have explored these themes through blog and journal articles over the years, including me. Here are just a few of the articles from this blog that I have written on these themes:

During my working life, the language around what we are and do has evolved as well.

Whilst terms vary around the globe, broadly speaking, we have gone from volunteer administrators, to volunteer co-ordinators, to volunteer managers, to volunteer programme managers, to volunteer resources managers, to leaders of volunteer engagement, to the current spirit of the times title of Volunteer Engagement Professionals.

Perhaps we have often gone along with these changes without really thinking them through. I know I have. That’s why Jonathan Stark’s article made me pause for thought — it prompted me to consider why have we now included the word ‘professional’ so explicitly when we talk about our roles?

Is it because we are so tired of arguing for legitimacy, of attaining the mythical seat-at-the-table, that by saying up-front that we are professionals, we think it’ll get us fast tracked to the status we believe we deserve?

If it was for that reason, then I’m not sure if it worked. I’m not aware of anyone who has started calling themselves as a Volunteer Engagement Professional and then magically got included in strategic planning, along with a commensurate pay rise and plaudits from their peers.

In fact, Jonathan Stark’s email suggests that if we have to state up front that we are Volunteer Engagement Professionals, then we actually undermine our desire to be considered a professional.

Instead, he implies that we should strive for it to be inherently obvious to anyone that we are professionals, in the same way that lawyers or accountants or architects or civil engineers are understood by the public to be professionals.

That circles us back to questions I posed almost ten years ago about what we want to gain from being considered professionals:

Do we want more money?
Do we want more credibility? If so, who with? HR? CEOs? Boards? Managers? Staff? Volunteers? The public?
Do we want to be held in higher regard? By whom?
Do we want to be better understood? By whom?
Do we want something else? What? Why?

Or is it all of the above? Or something else?

These are questions I don’t think we have ever collectively answered, nor have we collectively agreed on how we might achieve some (or all) of these goals.

Is it through credentialing? Or setting entry requirements to join the ‘profession’? Or lobbying for better pay? (which might make us a Union rather than a profession!).

Are these debates themselves unhelpful. Should we just believe and act as if we are professionals? Is that enough? Is that why we started calling ourselves Volunteer Engagement Professionals?

There are no simple answers to these questions. It is a debate as old as our field. And perhaps that’s my point. For almost thirty years, I’ve been involved in these discussions as we strive for some sort of higher status in the organisations and sectors within which we work.

If we are honest, all of this debate, discussion, and writing hasn’t really got us anywhere. Sure, it’s a fun conversation for volunteering nerds like me, but it hasn’t had any tangible impact on our status our the effectiveness of what we do, which is help others to make a difference through giving their time to causes they are passionate about.

Perhaps 2024 is the year we need to retire this whole debate about our professional status, and just focus on doing the best job we possibly can.

Maybe that will get us the status we deserve, whatever that looks like individually and collectively?

Perhaps volunteer management is, to use an analogy from quantum physics, Schrödinger’s profession? We are both a profession and not a profession at the same time. It is only when others observe us in the sense of the outcome and impact we have that one status or the other is bestowed upon us?

What do you think?

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

The top productivity tech I use in my work

Happy new year.

I know, it’s the 19th January, but it’s my first article of 2024, so I think I can get away with a HNY almost three weeks into the year.

Have you made new year resolutions? Have you stuck to them so far?

Often people use this time of year to resolve to be better in the next twelve months, and in a work context that can often focus in on their productivity. You know the kind of thing:

This year I’ll manage my diary better.
This year I’ll get more done.
This year I’ll balance work and home more effectively.

In my work, I have to be organised and effective whilst balancing multiple competing demands on my time from various clients. Like many of us now, I also have to watch those home / work boundaries, as my office is in the house where I live.

I use various tech tools to help with keep me productive and to support my learning and development, so I thought I’d share some of them with you in case they help you in any striving towards more workplace effectiveness this year.

Here goes…

reMarkable

Taking notes is vital in my work and for that task I use a reMarkable. It’s a device about the same size as a standard iPad, but with an e-ink display similar to that on a Kindle that can be written on. And it’s a natural writing experience, unlike using a stylus on a slippery glass screen of an iPad or other tablet.

The device has plenty of capacity to store thousands of pages—and so replaces the need for paper—which can be formatted according to a range of pre-set templates (lined, blank, dotted, organiser layouts etc.), filed into folders, synced with my other devices (via an app) and emailed to others. It also has the neat trick of converting handwritten text into typed text, a pretty handy feature that can save time when taking notes at a meeting for distribution later on.

Dropbox

Dropbox keeps all my files synchronised between my devices. If I require a file whilst I’m walking the dog or on the train, then I can access it on my phone just as easily as I can on my computer in the office.

Yes, the same is true of Google Drive, and I do use that as well, but in a much more limited way. I’m nervous about storing client documents with Google as maintaining confidentially and privacy is important to me, so Dropbox (whilst not perfect) wins out.

Dropbox also gives me the peace of mind that if any of my devices get lost, damaged or stolen, the files are all still there and can be accessed as soon as I get a replacement, or login via another machine. This has happened, and Dropbox was a godsend!

Fantastical

As an Apple user, the native calendar app is pretty good, but Fantastical is a step above. It’s highly customisable, so I can make it work with my personal set up, and is vital to me in managing my time and workload.

Fantastical has a feature called ‘Openings’ that enables people to view my availability and request time in my diary. I can set this up to meet my needs whilst also using it to save time, avoiding the endless bouncing of emails between people to find a slot that works.

Things

Things is the app I use to keep track of all my projects, actions, and to-do lists. It is always in sync on every device and keeps me on top of everything I need to do. Adding new actions is effortless and can even be done simply and accurately using Siri.

I’d be lost without Things.

Evernote

Evernote is my digital second brain. Whether it’s a webpage, a typed note, handwritten meeting notes exported from my reMarkable, a photo, a quotation, notes from Readwise (see below) or an audio file, it all goes into Evernote.

Like Dropbox, I can access all of this on any device at any time as the material is stored and synced in the cloud.

Everything in Evernote is tag-able and searchable, even handwritten text. The addition of AI features recently makes finding and summarising things easier than ever.

Like Things, without Evernote I’d be lost.

Readwise

My discovery of 2023. The productivity expert Tiago Forte made me aware of Readwise about a year ago as part of his Building A Second Brain work, and it’s caused a revolution in my reading and learning.

Readwise has two elements to it.

The first is the Readwise reader app. Anything I want to read gets saved here, by email, from RSS feeds I subscribe to, or by clipping articles from the web. When I read this content (which syncs between my devices) I can highlight the most important or interesting bits, and then only those highlights get sent to Evernote (automatically). I can still access the full article or email if I’d like to, but primarily I’m only going to engage with the key information I need in my second brain, not wade through long articles, or PDF documents and reports, from the past to get to the essential content within.

The second element is that Readwise surfaces some of these essential snippets from my library to me daily, via email and an app. I can then review the things I’ve saved in a way that helps me retain the key information in my memory. A bit like digital flashcards, but so much more because this process is highly customisable.

Add in the ability to add content to the Readwise app from automatic synchronisation with Kindle book highlights, or even manually scanning text from a physical document with my phone, and I have a growing library of insights I can revisit, learn from, share and apply in my work.

Snpid

My second discovery of 2023, Snipd, is a podcast player with some neat tricks up its sleeve.

First, Snpid can produce handy AI summaries of podcast episodes. So if I really don’t have time to get through a ninety-minute listen, I can ask Snipd to summarise it, and then I can listen to the key points in under five minutes. If I want to go deeper I can, either listening to the full episode, or relevant sections (which Snipd’s AI identified), or reading a transcript.

Second, as I’m listening to a podcast episode, if I hear something interesting or insightful, I can click a button, and it’ll save that as Snip, in both audio and text formats. I can even Snip by a double press on my AirPods stems if I’m listening on the go. These snips can then be edited to get to the essential content I want to keep, and are automatically exported to Evernote (via a connection to Readwise) for me to review and access later.

Genius!

Otter.Ai

I attend plenty of meetings and can spend a considerable amount of time interviewing people in the consultancy work I do. Otter.AI is my essential assistant in this work. It sits in the background of in-person and online meetings, recording the conversation and creating a transcript of the discussion. This can be tagged to identify the speakers, searched, summarised via AI tools, and exported into various formats. If I wanted to, I can even send Otter.Ai to meetings I can’t attend so it can take notes for me!

Ulysses

Every single blog post and two-hundred-word-Tuesday article starts in Ulysses, my writing app of choice. It’s all stored, synchronised and accessible for me to revisit if I need to. I can export to various formats and, crucially, publish direct from Ulysses to my blog at a click of a couple of buttons. For distraction free, focused writing, Ulysses is essential to my work.

Well, that’s my top productivity tech.

What about yours?

What tech tools could you not live without?

Leave a comment below and let’s learn from each other.

For those of you waiting on the answer too the question I posed in my 8 December article, “Which of the articles published on this blog during 2023 were written by ChatGPT (with some editing from me)?”, here it is.

The two articles were:

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

The best of 2023

I’m trying something different for my last blog post of 2023.

Instead of my usual ‘annual round up’ approach looking at big issues in the volunteering world, I thought I’d share some of the articles and podcasts that from 2023 and that I have found to be particularly helpful and insightful.

Most are firmly focused on volunteer engagement, but some are a little broader in scope, focusing on subjects like productivity and leadership.

I usually have such a list of helpful resources in every issue of my newsletter, so I thought it might be a nice way to end the year to highlight some of my favourites.

Oh, and I also have a fun question for you, but more of that in a minute.

Here is my list:

Now, to that question I promised.

2023 has been the year of Artificial Intelligence, with AI tools like ChatGPT becoming more common in how many of us work.

In light of that I want you to tell me:

Which of the articles published on this blog during 2023 were written by ChatGPT (with some editing from me)?

Hint: There are two.

Post your answers in the comments below. No prize, it’s just for fun.

The answer will be included in my first article of 2024.

Now, back to my list of resources.

What would you add to the list? Which articles and blog posts have you found valuable? What have I missed?

Leave a comment below and share the resources you’ve found helpful this year so others can benefit.

This is the last article on the Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd blog for 2023.

The first article of 2024 will be published on Friday 19th January.

Have a great break over the holidays and see you in the new year.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Net Zero Heroes: Pioneering Sustainable Volunteering

Regular readers of this blog will already be familiar with previous guest articles written by Martin J Cowling. Today, Martin returns to share his thoughts on volunteering net zero.

Our main objective when involving volunteers is to inspire their enthusiasm and commitment towards any cause, event, or mission. However, issues such as climate change, pollution, and sustainability are increasingly taking precedence as we unite to achieve a global commitment to slash greenhouse emissions by 50% by 2030.

Yet eight out of ten charities have yet to commit to any sort of net-zero goal.

I hold no interest in debating people’s beliefs on climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long concluded that human activity unequivocally contributes to climate change and impending ecological collapse. It’s imperative that we steer towards net zero by 2050.

This article illustrates practical pathways for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to implement sustainable practices and drastically reduce their volunteer programs’ carbon footprint. While charities have a notably lower carbon footprint compared to fossil fuel-reliant sectors, I firmly believe that we bear a significant responsibility in effecting change, shaping policies, raising widespread awareness, and advocating sustainable practices.

Our aim is to create and encourage opportunities for volunteers to better our lives without harming the planet in the long run.

Commencing the Journey

The initial step is deciding if we want to make a commitment to effect change.

Assuming we do, then we need to understand our volunteer program’s environmental impact. This involves calculating the annual trash and carbon output produced by our volunteer activities. There are two potential methods.

1. Conduct an audit of the key activities in a volunteer program on a typical day or week. Some organisations have enlisted the help of high school or secondary students to perform this audit. The activities considered include:

Travel Undertaken: such as by car, train, bus, or plane. For instance, a typical aged care visitation program in the UK found that volunteers drove a total of 836 km in a week, producing 286 kilograms of carbon a week. Factoring in holidays, the charity concluded that their volunteers produced 13 tonnes of carbon in a year.
Our Buildings: Emissions from project sites and buildings account for a significant portion of an average NGO’s total. The lighting, heating, and cooling of our buildings incur an environmental cost. Unfortunately, because we often have to choose inexpensive buildings, many of them come with poor energy efficiency, leading to higher energy bills and increased emissions.
Trash Produced: Every kilogram of rubbish placed in a landfill produces 3.5 kilograms of carbon. A charity discovered that their annual fun run fundraiser was producing five tonnes of carbon from just the trash collected through the event.

2. The other method involves basing the carbon calculations solely on the number of volunteers and multiplying that by an average carbon output. For example, a charity has an average of fifty office volunteers. Official data for that country suggests that the average volunteer working with a charity produces 200 kilograms of carbon per volunteer per year. In total, their volunteer program can be estimated to be producing 10 tonnes of carbon.

Setting Targets

The subsequent stage is establishing measurable reduction objectives, such as reducing activities by 7% each year to achieve a 50% reduction in seven years. For example, reducing carbon emissions from ten tonnes per year to five tonnes by 2030 would require an annual decrease of 1.3 tonnes.

Enlist a dedicated group of volunteers to drive the campaign towards net zero, inspiring individuals from the community who are passionate about the cause. Keep volunteers, stakeholders, and sponsors informed about the progress and challenges faced. Moral and legal issues can be effectively addressed through the direct involvement of volunteers and funders.

Implement Specific Actions

Here are some other areas to consider and focus on:

Transport:

Volunteering events conveniently located near public transport hubs have a far smaller carbon footprint than those situated further away.
Providing bike parking spaces and showers for volunteers sends a positive message.
Many organisations reimburse volunteer car travel costs to get to their facilities but not public transport costs. Consider reversing that.
Encourage carpooling and offer charging points for electric vehicles.

Buildings:

Research available grants and programs that finance retrofits.
Shift to renewable energy
Use energy-efficient appliances and lighting
Provide paid staff and volunteers with training on energy conservation.

Trash Produced:

Eliminate single-use items
Encourage using water bottles and keep cups.
Better buying decisions can have a smaller environmental impact if waste reduction, recycling, and the full lifespan of items are actively promoted.
Work with suppliers that have similar sustainability aims and conduct supplier evaluations based on environmental commitments.

Collaboration:

Form coalitions between volunteer managers, environmentally conscious corporations, government organisations, and community groups.
Sharing even the smallest achievements of our NGO may motivate and encourage others to do the same.

Through the implementation of a sustainable volunteering policy, NGOs show their dedication to a sustainable and resilient future. Together, we contribute to the global endeavour of combating climate change while creating a positive impact in the communities we serve. Each step we take propels us closer to a Net Zero world, shaping a sustainable and eco-conscious tomorrow.

Let’s champion Net Zero – together!

What are you doing to reach net zero in your volunteer engagement work?

What obstacles have you overcome, and how?

What is stopping you from acting?

Share your thoughts and experiences via a comment below.

Martin J Cowling is highly aware of his carbon footprint particularity as he travels extensively. In 2004, he moved his principle home to fully carbon neutral incorporating solar, composting and a waste water system. He has not owned a car for decades and his clients will attest to the fact that he catches trains, subways or walks as much as he can. In fact, he averages 10km (6 miles) a day of walking through a typical year! Martin chooses trains before planes and double offsets his flights. He supports the development of hydrogen and electric aeroplane engines and has consistently donated to an environmental land charity in Australia for 25 years.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Rethinking retention

This is the second article of a new occasional series for this blog where I will dive back into the archives, and surface some previous content that I think is valuable for Volunteer Engagement Professionals today.

As I said last time, I’ve been writing for this blog for more than twelve and a half years and everything I’ve written is available, for free, online from the blog site. I hope you find this ever-growing library of content valuable.

For this second foray into the archives, we’re going back a little over ten years to September 2013 and the article, ”It’s time to ditch the word retention”.

We all know that volunteers today want flexibility when they give their time. They want shorter commitments (at least initially) that fit around their availability, not volunteer roles that they have to organise the rest of their lives around.

This shift has become more prominent since the Covid-19 lockdowns but, like many volunteer engagement issues, the move in this direction has been happening for years. What the pandemic did was speed them up.

Crucially, as volunteers adapt their approach to volunteering, so we have to change our approach to how we keep them. Back in 2013, that’s what I was trying to articulate in my article, ”It’s time to ditch the word retention”.

Please give it a read and leave a comment either on the original post, or this post, to share your thoughts, reflection, and ideas. Oh, and check out the comments on the original post from ten years ago, because not everyone agreed with me.

I look forward to reading what you have to say.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Rob Jackson’s Volunteer Role Matrix

Over to you

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Volunteers are essential to the public sector

Making cuts and engaging volunteers has to be handled intelligently

Knowing where we start from

It’s on all of us to act

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Response one

Response two

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reMarkable

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Commencing the Journey

Setting Targets

Implement Specific Actions

Transport:

Buildings:

Trash Produced:

Collaboration:

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