Small Voluntary Organisations Research Articles

The role of small voluntary sector organisations in tackling complex social challenges: lessons from a charity serving asylum seekers and refugees

There is a growing body of research on small Voluntary Sector Organisations’ (VSOs) contribution to tackling complex social challenges. It focuses on how small VSOs work to address these challenges, as opposed to what the measurable impact of that work is. This article adds to that body of work by providing a new analytical account of how a small VSO works; in this case what shapes that work is the extent to which it is collaborative, responsive and collective, and voluntarily driven in nature. This article also takes the research to a new setting; that of small VSOs working to better the welfare of Asylum Seekers and Refugees (ASRs).

Gifted Children, Youth Culture, and Popular Individualism in 1970s and 1980s Britain

AbstractThis article examines a niche space: youth clubs created by small voluntary organizations for ‘gifted children’ in 1970s and 1980s Britain. It asks how individualism shaped everyday life and demonstrates how youth culture was much broader than just the permissiveness that dominates the literature. Gifted children are currently missing from accounts of modern Britain, which focus on mainstream educational categories. Yet, including them in our analysis provides new insights into the diversity of youth cultures that existed in these decades. Drawing on new uncatalogued archives, and centrally poetry, letters, and stories from young people themselves, the article shows that conservative and radical visions co-existed. Young people shaped their own culture, subverting and challenging ideas of themselves as distinctive future leaders.

Beyond the professionalized nongovernmental organization: Life‐history narratives of grassroots philanthropic leaders in Africa

AbstractThis research examines everyday people as grassroots philanthropic leaders in development aid in Africa. The article balances two objectives. First is to provide a counter narrative to the broad frames that traditionally drive research on nonprofit organizations and development aid, which have tended to center more on the professionalized nongovernmental organization and traditional North–South aid models. Second, I situate grassroots philanthropic leaders within the broader landscape of people engaging in development aid. I use life‐history narratives of leaders to illuminate the diminishing barriers to being a philanthropist, capture motivating and relational dimensions in grassroots philanthropic leadership, as well as provide evidence of African philanthropy and further engagement of diaspora through small voluntary organizations. The findings espouse the everyday, relational practices of grassroots philanthropic leaders in development aid but do not entirely divorce these leaders and their initiatives from the overarching goals of development.

Beyond words and rhetoric – small voluntary organisations and effective refugee integration in the communities

PurposeIntegration is a complex, contested and multidimensional concept. This paper aims to examine the impact of small voluntary agencies (SVA) in the integration of refugees into social, economic and citizenship structures in the UK.Design/methodology/approachThis study is rooted in in-depth interviews with 20 participants and a case study (ethnography research) that focuses on a refugee-assisting organisation in Southeast England.FindingsThe findings reveal cases of exemplary leadership in actions and social solidarity exhibited by SVA through innovative actions aimed at helping individuals and communities which may be particularly disadvantaged. It revealed the mixed embeddedness that these agencies create that enable refugees to pursue a new life, employment and citizenship.Research limitations/implicationsOne of the limitations of the study is the focus on one case study. However, this provided an opportunity to conduct in-depth interviews and examination of the research objectives.Practical implicationsWith the ever-decreasing government revenues, there is evidence of the tremendous achievement of the voluntary sector in many endeavours in the community. This provides an opportunity for a more strategic partnership between public and private actors.Social implicationsThe activities of the SVA are the catalyst to refugees’ integration as policies that enable regaining self-esteem, seeking employment or starting a business.Originality/valueThis study provides the opportunity to explore the relatively under-research and under-publicized role of SVA in the migrants and refugee literature.

From Resettled Refugees to Humanitarian Actors: Refugee Diaspora Organizations and Everyday Humanitarianism

ABSTRACTThis article describes the everyday humanitarianism of refugees resettled in Australia who form small voluntary organizations to help “their people” displaced elsewhere in the world. The people involved in refugee diaspora organizations (RDOs) are animated by forces that reflect their distinct history, positionality, and relationship to the “suffering others” they help. What the everyday humanitarianism of RDOs suggests is that we live in a world of many-humanitarianisms, where there are different possibilities to care and connect to strangers in need. While “humanitarianism” has become synonymous with a set of dominant practices and actors, there is need for other actors – including refugee diaspora humanitarians – to be given space within both humanitarianism discourse and practice.

Pauline McGovern (2017) Small voluntary organisations in the 'age of austerity': funding challenges and opportunities

Pauline McGovern (2017) Small voluntary organisations in the 'age of austerity': funding challenges and opportunities

Sustainable Livelihoods Analysis as a Response to the Crisis in the Community and Voluntary Sector

The aim of this article is to recognize the crisis currently experienced by the voluntary and community sector (VCS) and to consider a creative response to this crisis utilizing VCS assets. The article uses a creative assets based response to the VCS crisis, utilizing sustainable livelihoods’ analysis (SLA) as a means of identifying VCS assets. SLA, traditionally used to explore vulnerabilities and assets at a household level, will be expanded and utilized to analyze the effects of austerity on small voluntary organizations. We use SLA as a theoretical lens through which to analyze our data, we propose that small VCS organizations can consider their position using SLA as a tool. The VCS can use SLA to consider its assets and vulnerabilities in the context of austerity; in engaging in this process, the VCS can recognize opportunities. The small VCS organization typically has high-quality community-based social capital, and it has a human capital and community knowledge. This integrated grassroots social capital expertise and strong community-based human capital is unique to the VCS. In mobilizing its assets, the VCS as a sector can seek to overcome the funding crisis that it is experiencing and develop creative solutions to austerity.

User Centred Methods for Measuring the Value of Open Data

A project to identify metrics for assessing the quality of open data based on the needs of small voluntary sector organisations in the UK and India. We used small structured workshops to identify users’ key problems and then worked from those problems to understand how open data can help address them and what the key attributes must be for successful use.  We then piloted different metrics that could be used to measure the presence of those attributes. This user-centred approach to open data research highlighted some fundamental issues with expanding the use of open data from its enthusiast base.

Putting Life in Years (PLINY): a randomised controlled trial and mixed-methods process evaluation of a telephone friendship intervention to improve mental well-being in independently living older people

BackgroundSocial isolation in older adults is associated with morbidity. Evaluating interventions to promote social engagement is a research priority.MethodsA parallel-group randomised controlled trial was planned to evaluate whether telephone friendship (TF) improves the well-being of independently living older people. An internal pilot aimed to recruit 68 participants by 30 September 2012, with 80% retained at 6 months. Randomisation was web based and only analysts were blind to allocation. A service provider was contracted to train 10 volunteer facilitators by 1 April 2012 and 10 more by 1 September 2012. Participants were aged > 74 years with good cognitive function and living independently in an urban community. The intervention arm of the trial consisted of manualised TF with standardised training: (1) one-to-one befriending (10- to 20-minute calls once per week for up to 6 weeks made by volunteer facilitators) followed by (2) TF groups of six participants (1-hour teleconferences once per week for 12 weeks facilitated by the same volunteer). Friendship groups aimed to enhance social support and increase opportunities for social interaction to maintain well-being. This was compared with usual health and social care provision. The primary clinical outcome was the Short Form questionnaire-36 items (SF-36) mental health dimension score at 6 months post randomisation. Qualitative research assessing intervention acceptability (participants) and implementation issues (facilitators) and an intervention fidelity assessment were also carried out. Intervention implementation was documented through e-mails, meeting minutes and field notes. Acceptability was assessed through framework analysis of semistructured interviews. Two researchers coded audio recordings of telephone discussions for fidelity using a specially designed checklist.ResultsIn total, 157 people were randomised to the TF group (n = 78) or the control group (n = 79). Pilot recruitment and retention targets were met. Ten volunteers were trained by 1 September 2012; after volunteer attrition, three out of the 10 volunteers delivered the group intervention. In total, 50 out of the 78 TF participants did not receive the intervention and the trial was closed early. A total of 56 people contributed primary outcome data from the TF (n = 26) and control (n = 30) arms. The mean difference in SF-36 mental health score was 9.5 (95% confidence interval 4.5 to 14.5) after adjusting for age, sex and baseline score. Participants who were interviewed (n = 19) generally declared that the intervention was acceptable. Participant dissatisfaction with closure of the groups was reported (n = 4). Dissatisfaction focused on lack of face-to-face contact and shared interests or attitudes. Larger groups experienced better cohesion. Interviewed volunteers (n = 3) expressed a lack of clarity about procedures, anxieties about managing group dynamics and a lack of confidence in the training and in their management and found scheduling calls challenging. Training was 91–95% adherent with the checklist (39 items; three groups). Intervention fidelity ranged from 30.2% to 52.1% (28–41 items; three groups, three time points), indicating that groups were not facilitated in line with training, namely with regard to the setting of ground rules, the maintenance of confidentiality and facilitating contact between participants.ConclusionsAlthough the trial was unsuccessful for a range of logistical reasons, the experience gained is of value for the design and conduct of future trials. Participant recruitment and retention were feasible. Small voluntary sector organisations may be unable to recruit, train and retain adequate numbers of volunteers to implement new services at scale over a short time scale. Such risks might be mitigated by multicentre trials using multiple providers and specialists to recruit and manage volunteers.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN28645428.FundingThis project was funded by the NIHR Public Health Research programme and will be published in full inPublic Health Research; Vol. 2, No. 7. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

Cross-sector partnerships with small voluntary organisations: some reflections from a case study of a mutual support group

This article explores two partnerships that members of a small mutual support group for people with heart disease made with representatives of other organisations in order to gain funding and other resources. With a theoretical framework suggested by Pierre Bourdieu, the partnership process is examined in terms of the relationships between organisational representatives and the resources or potential resources available to the voluntary group. The substantive finding from this case study is that the mutual support group achieved collaborative advantage by gaining professional, therapeutic services while remaining largely true to its core mission. The Bourdieusian approach made it possible both to examine the dynamics of power relations within the voluntary organisation and also to look at the interaction and structural constraints in cross-sector partnerships. It proved to be a flexible, wide-ranging framework for research on the voluntary sector.

Building Community and Organisational Capacity to Enable Social Participation for Ageing Australian Rural Populations: A Resource-Based Perspective

In the context of neoliberal approaches to rural service delivery, the role of community organisations in creating social opportunities for ageing populations has long been acknowledged. However, there is little evidence concerning which types of resources diverse rural community stakeholders require to deliver these supports, and how these are accessed in contexts of population growth and ageing. From the Australian perspective, this research identifies how non-declining rural communities are responding to challenges that influence their capacity to enable social participation for older residents. Drawing on interviews with 26 community stakeholders across two rural communities, it explores the interconnectivity among resources that build organisational capacity to deliver social supports in the rural context, and the role and scope of bridging social capital in mobilising these resources. Findings indicate that bridging capital allows diverse rural community groups to access key physical, financial, human or organisational resources, particularly in the context of demand resulting from population ageing and growth. However, there are differences between public sector, large and small voluntary organisations in terms of the types of resources they require, and the contributions made to community bridging capital.

Small Voluntary Organisations in Britain’s ‘Big Society’: A Bourdieusian Approach

This article discusses some potentially harmful consequences of the Big Society agenda for small voluntary organisations, using a theoretical framework suggested by the later work of Pierre Bourdieu. I explore the way in which a voluntary self-help group for people with heart disease evolved, as a result of the pursuit of external funding. This paper focuses on the rapid rise of specific kinds of leaders—members with a professional background, relevant skills and an orientation to the group that enabled them to pursue funding opportunities and to gain increasing control despite the opposition of the long-standing volunteers and the founders of the group. I conclude that government policy to enhance the role of the voluntary sector in the delivery of welfare services may encourage certain kinds of leaders to become powerful in small voluntary organisations. This may adversely affect their organisational structure and lead members to feel dispossessed.

Experimental Publics: Activist Culture and Political Intelligibility of Climate Change Action in the Hunter Valley, Southeast Australia

ABSTRACTThe ethnographic study of Western environmental activism opens up the prospect of studying subjectivities formed in opposition to dominant Western ideas and values, and yet encapsulated within Western societies and democratic polities. One of the directions in which it points the anthropologist, which is pursued in this article, is towards the study of the political lifeworlds of activists, their self‐identity as citizens and their embeddedness in the wider society. Environmental politics can be an emergent activity in citizens' lives, as expressed in John Dewey's concept of ‘the public’ as citizens who organise themselves to address the adverse consequences of situations that they experience in common (Dewey 1991[1927]). This paper focuses on a middle ground of social action between habitual daily practice, and the domain of institutional politics: groups of people in small voluntary organisations in the heavily coal‐mined Hunter Valley, Southeast Australia, who are moved to collective action to address the threatening aspects of anthropogenic climate change. Action group members variously articulate their reflexive understandings of the structural contradictions of environmentalism in corporate capitalist societies where values of consumerism and processes of individualization corrode collective concerns of citizenship‐based politics. These understandings inform activists' personal motivations, values and ideals for a ‘climate movement’, diverse modes of political action and striving for wider political intelligibility.

Challenges of governance for small voluntary organisations

The academic and practitioner literature pays little attention to the distinctive issues of governance found in small voluntary organisations. There are three key factors in developing more effective boards – board assessment, governance development and the relationship between the senior staff member and the members of the board. Board effectiveness is also constrained by regulation – by the Charity Commission, Companies House and wider legislation. More evidence is needed to enable small organisations to address these challenges.

The relationship between members' perceptions of their neighborhood organization and their involvement and perceived benefits from participation

AbstractA major resource of small voluntary neighborhood organizations is their members, who give their time and energy to the organization to improve their community. In recent years, there has been a revitalization of strategies that focus on engaging residents to volunteer for neighborhood‐based organizations. The current study was guided by organizational empowerment theory and explored the relationship between resident members' perceptions of their neighborhood organization and their level of involvement and perceived personal and collective benefits from participation. The results demonstrated that members' perceptions of their neighborhood organizations' characteristics and effectiveness were more related to their perceived benefits from involvement than their level of participation. Members' perceptions of their neighborhood organizations' effectiveness, particularly the ability to make tangible community improvements, were the most related to their perceived benefits, including their ability to influence government policies, knowledge and skills in neighborhood and community development, and sense of community. Implications for research and practice are also discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Finding the way

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe the Images for All digitisation project at the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and lessons learned from it.Design/methodology/approachThis paper describes the background to the project and collections held. It focuses on the development of the project web site, the digitisation of 100 images from the collection and the nature of project management in a small‐scale project.FindingsThere are many potential challenges faced by project managers working in small voluntary organisations, but these can be overcome.Originality/valueThis paper gives a direct insight into some of the challenges facing smaller organisations with limited full‐time staff and so reliant on volunteers, which are often overlooked.

Appreciating Impact: Evaluating Small Voluntary Organizations in the United Kingdom

Within the mixed economy of care in the United Kingdom there are debates about the ways in which impact can be evaluated, in order to shape funding and policy decisions. One of the tensions evident in this debate is whether the evaluation approach should reflect the perspectives and goals of the voluntary organizations and their members, or whether evaluation should reflect the wider goals of the whole system of provision. The former runs the risk of being insular and self-congratulatory, while the latter may be inappropriate and dismissive of achievements. This paper explores this tension by reporting on a study that used Appreciative Inquiry to evaluate 10 small-scale not-for-profit schemes for older people. The data indicated some unexpected and long-term impacts that demonstrated the distinctiveness of the sector. Subsequently the findings were mapped on to the “impact grid” developed by Wilding and Lacey (2003). While this was straightforward at the levels of individuals and interorganizationally, it was more difficult at the sector/community level, suggesting that more work needs to be done to bring these two perspectives together.

A model of electronic commerce adoption by small voluntary organizations

The study discussed in this paper uses case studies of six small voluntary organizations to determine the primary factors that influence electronic commerce (EC) adoption. The findings indicate that perceived benefits, including efficiency, information sharing, marketing and increased donations have a strong influence on EC adoption. The results also indicate that organizational readiness, including ability to attract volunteers and/or in-kind donations, ability to raise funds, and strategic readiness had a positive influence on EC adoption. Consistent with prior research on EC adoption in the commercial sector, strong support was found for the influence of perceived pressure, including pressure from both internal and external stakeholders. The study also concluded that perceived social risks associated with the loss of human contact and the perception of dollars being diverted from client programs to finance the EC investment had a strong influence on EC adoption. Implications for EC adoption and future research on EC adoption in the voluntary sector are discussed.

Partnerships with health and private voluntary organizations: what are the issues for health authorities and boards?

Background. The number of voluntary organizations active in health care is considerable. There have been recent calls for a new closer working relationship between voluntary bodies and the National Health Service. The relationship between the two healthcare sectors needs to be efficient and harmonious in the interests of patient care; however, little is known about the nature and problems in the current relationship. The present study was undertaken to examine aspects of this relationship from the point of view of health board personnel. Objective. To identify the practices and views of Scottish health board staff concerning the funding, role and responsibility of voluntary organizations in the health sector. Methods. A qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with health board officials in all 15 Scottish health boards. Results. Policies for financial and other relationships with the voluntary sector were often not explicit. The levels and method of funding voluntary health organizations varied across boards, as did the tenure of awards (from 1 to 3 years). Demand for funding far exceeded monies available. Some health boards ensured accountability through audited accounts, annual reports and site visits; however, others thought this inappropriate for small organizations. Health boards recognized the problems of the precariousness of funding and the administrative burden of the monitoring process and the ritual of applying for funding. Conclusion. The uncertainties of long-term funding may impede the contribution of voluntary organizations. There is a tension between the requirements of clinical governance and the ability of small voluntary organizations to provide the necessary documentation. One proposed solution, to reduce the number of organizations, might not appeal to the voluntary sector. Future initiatives could address the problem of tailoring funding and accounting to the resources of voluntary organizations.

Fundng issues as part of the developmental strategy of small non-statutory organisations

This paper addresses an increasingly important issue for many small voluntary organisations, one that can go to their very survival, the issue of funding. As a result the ability to successfully compete for financial support is becoming a necessary skill for many individuals in such organisations in addition to their more traditional roles. For researchers this is also the case, requiring the development of new skills and strategies to meet the new challenge of funding their work. This paper reflects the experience of both authors, in the light of the development of the Child Care in Practice Group highlighting the importance of such a strategy and specific issues that require due attention within such a framework.