Flexible working practices key to future, says academic

In a lecture on the ‘post-work world’, Dr Justin Davis-Smith of the Centre for Charity Effectiveness outlines four ways in which charities should respond to a future in which most people work fewer hours

Charities should introduce more flexible working practices and build better partnerships with the private sector to help society adjust to a world where people work significantly fewer hours, according to a fellow at Cass Business School.

Dr Justin Davis-Smith, senior research fellow at the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at Cass Business School, was giving a lecture on charities and the post-work world, a future in which some believe that greater automation could render as many as 50 per cent of jobs obsolete.

Davis-Smith said that for a more utopian vision of the effect of widespread job losses to come true, charities had four ways in which they could help.

First, he said, charities should model good workplace practices themselves and campaign for the private and public sectors to follow suit.

“I think we have a responsibility as charities and voluntary organisations to take a lead in terms of restructuring our workplaces,” he said.

“So that means offering more opportunities for flexible working, more opportunities for job sharing, and more ways in which people can blend their use of time in the paid labour market with hobbies, voluntary action and charitable activity.”

Second, Davis-Smith said, charities should be more creative in terms of engaging people in social action and volunteering, and in finding ways of blending that with their paid work and other activities.

He said this involved understanding the rise of episodic volunteering, “the desire to just dip in and out of volunteering and wrap it around their lives rather than engage in something for an extended period of time”.

Third, said Davis-Smith, the sector should note the “blurring of the boundaries” between the private and voluntary sectors, and build better relationships with ethical businesses.

“I think there’s a real opportunity for charities and community groups to make much more meaningful partnerships with for-profit groups to try to pick up on the appetite, particularly from the millennial generation, to work in organisations that are doing some social good,” he said.

“I think what we are seeing is that young people in particular are not that choosy about where they work and which sector they work in; they just want to do some good. It seems to me there is a real opportunity for our sector to build more meaningful partnerships with small businesses, social enterprises, B-Corps and some emerging hybrid organisations that are blending for-profit and not-for-profit motives.”

Finally, Davis-Smith said, charities should look at the “sharing economy”– Uber and AirBnB, for example – and how a more “social aspect” could be introduced to that concept.

But he also warned about the challenge to established charities of retaining relevance in a world where technology makes it easier for people to “self-organise”. He said charities should begin to better understand the ideas and values that cause people to interact in this way.

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Kevin Curley: How the sector can influence the future of the NHS

Our columnist finds out how charities are engaging with Sustainability and Transformation Plans

Sustainability and Transformation Plans are being produced by 44 partnerships all over England in response to the NHS Five Year Forward View, the 2014 document that set out a vision for the future of the health service. As someone who is sceptical about yet another health and social care “transformation project”, I thought it was time to find out what local voluntary sector leaders think about STPs and how they are engaging with them.

Neil Cleeveley, chief executive of Navca, the local infrastructure charity, tells me: “For NHS leaders, STPs are seen as the way to deliver the necessary transformation of services, so it’s crucial that local voluntary organisations are involved, helping people to have a say about their own local services. Areas such as Stockton and Northamptonshire show that good engagement with the voluntary sector is possible.”

David Pearson, director of adult social care, health and public protection at Nottinghamshire County Council and STP lead for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, said in his response to feedback on its five-year draft plan: “With a significant funding gap, we need to think carefully about how we organise ourselves to provide the right care in the right place to maximise value for the public money we spend on local services.”

Acknowledging that a “funding gap” is driving the need for a fundamental change in services is strikingly honest, but is bound to bring sceptical responses. I therefore sought the views of David Smith, chief executive of Hull and East Yorkshire Mind, who has described previous change projects as “doing little more than creating photo opportunities and jobs for the perennial transformation consultants”.

This time I find him taking a more positive approach. “For once we have been able to pretty much set our own agenda,” he says. “When I sit around a table with people from across the Humber Coast and Vale STP Mental Health Group, it’s obvious how much frustration there is with the status quo and how much energy there is for doing things differently.”

Smith believes there is an opportunity to escape the limitations of historic agreements and relationships that have been barriers to change.

Smith has at least got at seat at the table that matters in his area. Maria Ward, network officer at Nottingham CVS, says the voluntary sector secured only three places on the STP advisory group in February after holding commissioning events attended by more than 80 voluntary organisations. An opportunity to influence the STP has now been opened up.

In Derbyshire, a completely different approach has been taken by Kim Harper, chief executive of Community Action Derby, and Vita Snowden, chief executive of Creative Carers. In April they published a “shadow STP” called Local Communities: Joined Up Care, which they want to see “merged” with the official draft STP. Snowden says: “We want a fresh approach where people’s needs are at the heart of everything, rather than a futile reliance on system changes driven by officials.”

The authors describe “common sense” community and self-care solutions, which they claim can lead to savings. It’s a challenging read and a clear demonstration that the local voluntary sector can influence the content of STPs where there is a good leadership.

Kevin Curley is a voluntary sector adviser

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Most donors would not opt-in to future fundraising, research shows

Research by nfpSynergy found members of the public are suspicious of how charities use their data

Just 16 per cent of people would opt-in to being contacted about future appeals when donating to a charity, research by the consultancy nfpSynergy has revealed.

NfpSynergy conducted a set of focus groups in May this year to explore how the general public felt about the implications of the General Data Protection Regulation on charities and combined it with quantitative research from its quarterly public opinion tracking survey.

The GDPR is due to come into force in May 2018 and will require charities to prove that people have opted in to being contacted.

In a blog post published yesterday afternoon, Jo Fischl, head of public audiences research at nfpSynergy said the quantitative research had found that when people were asked to imagine they had just donated to their favourite charity and to fill out a consent form about the future use of the data.

Less than half (47 per cent) of respondents said they would opt in to hear more about what the charity did with their money, and only 16 per cent opted in to be asked to donate to future appeals.

Just 5 per cent said they would be willing to have their data shared with other, carefully chosen charities.

The research also found that in general the public believes that charities should be treated just as stringently as businesses if they break data-protection rules.

Fischl said the research shows the public unease about the use of data and demonstrated the vastness of the challenge of encouraging opt-in.

She said there was a tendency for people to feel that they are being taken for a ride by organisations over their data and that charities were not immune to such perceptions which creates “default position of suspicion when charities ask for personal data”.

She said that with donors reluctant to opt-in to contact, charities’ databases were likely to shrink and their incomes fall under GDPR.

Charities need to create a culture of transparency in order to navigate this, she said, in order to dispel the public’s suspicion and encourage them to donate.

The full report, GDPR – The Change That Charity Donors Want, is due to be made publically available in September.

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