Radical Resilience

A different response when cultures and structures are under pressure

The Context

So, everyone knows times are tough. In the voluntary and community sector (VCS), in the public sector, and in the private sector people and organisations are wrestling with challenges of survival and resilience in a context where money is limited, budgets are frozen, contracts revoked, costs are climbing, and services are cut.

These extreme pressures can reveal a moment for change. There are choices everywhere. How will we navigate these challenges in ways that will make us stronger, kinder, better in the future? What can we do to use this experience as a way to reforge and refine how we see the world, and how we work together? What approaches will take us backwards, which could move us forward?

Responses to hardship

Within the narratives that emerge in this context, tradition exerts a strong influence. Particularly within the VCS, where substantial funding comes from external commissioning or grants, there are many examples of people asserting their “right” to receive support, insisting on a moral obligation for current funding models to continue, and for the protection of the status quo. This is often externalised as a, “you should fix it” challenge to funding providers and (ultimately) the State.

Those that have sufficient organisational heft often turn up the heat on their finance and fundraising teams, and task them to increase their competitive impact and advantage over others. This includes reframing and reshaping their services to encompass more areas, reach more people, and promise more benefits, even encroaching into areas of work that might already be well served by others. Bigger is better in this world with this approach.

This is a tempting development for commissioners and grant-givers too. Working with fewer larger organisations, who “do more”, reduces admin and governance overheads when compared to working with a more complex multiplicity of smaller providers. Many commissioning frameworks and bid assessment scoring schedules seem to favour this approach. It often manifests under the banner of “additional value”.

Conditioned competitiveness

This kind of competitive behaviour is one that some people and organisations in the VCS have been conditioned to exhibit. Most contracts are issued through a competitive tender process, or competitive grant application process.

It leads people to look inwards first and see anything outside as a potentially hostile competitive threat. Even if that isn’t the first instinct, the final processes inevitably set people against one another in a race to the winner’s line.

If you have been involved with partnership applications and alliances as part of these processes, you will probably have a collection of scars and stories in which the competition can also become internal among the partners too. The risks from one organisation’s survival being dependent on another’s actions can create incredibly difficult working relationships.

Expansion and contraction

So, when the money is running out, not only is there an increasing internal focus, pulling away from collaboration and wider VCS connection for fear of competition, but there is also a drive to diversify which sometimes pushes organisations beyond their primary legal mandate or values and vision.

The effect of this is to make a difficult and collapsing system more fragmented and more toxic, and accelerate its demise, not just from the outside (financial) factors, but from these inside (psychological and management) factors too. This destroys wider sectoral resilience and interdependence and ultimately results in negative impacts on the people who need to use their services.

Size matters

The VCS encompasses multimillion pound specialist service providers as well as tiny groups of people in communities who just get together to do things, with no agenda, no Terms of Reference, no performance indicators.

There are points along this spectrum from small to large at which various operational burdens start to accrue in the form of a variety of overheads.

To start with, this might include practical resources to carry out the work. e.g. having forks and secateurs to run a community allotment. But, as the organisations grow larger, there are other resources required which relate to the business of running a business too. Bank accounts and finances are joined by insurance and workforce, employment and tax, national insurance and training, premises and IT, comms and marketing, reporting and contract management, governance and so on.

It’s our problem, our responsibility

In the vast majority of cases, these challenges are taken on independently by the groups or organisations. Each one generates its own overhead of operation and seeks to solve this independently, as an island, autonomous and self-reliant.

Looking from the outside (and the inside), over many years, I see this is as an extravagant approach to these issues. The sheer number of people and processes and systems used to manage these needs is incredible.

Creative resourcing to meet requirements

Sometimes the VCS can flex its “V” (voluntary) muscles and attract “free” resources to join the organisation to do this work. Volunteers not only do the good works but also become trustees, finance directors, bookkeepers, website managers, etc.

This approach is often “required” as the organisation can’t compete as a complete entity without all these business components being covered in house. Autonomy is required, or privileged, and interdependence can be seen as a risk factor or negative externality that reduces competitive advantage. Looking in the detail of the compliance sections of contracts shows all kinds of places where this is expected, including issues like staff welfare, net zero, safeguarding, training, auditing, financial accounting, etc. These are all important, but not all of them apply in all cases, and they could be addressed collaboratively.

Thinking differently

But what happens if... we think about VCS organisations and operations differently? What if we break down the elements of what we do and start again from the beginning? What priorities emerge? What is the business of business? What is the critical transforming activity, service, or action?

What if... we start to look at identifying things that only we can do, and are not easily done by others? What if we unpack our expectations about what must be done and what could be done and what can actually be ignored?

A false sense of security

Staying with the status quo appears to be safe. It makes many VCS organisations into a mini-me; a mini NHS, a mini Local Authority Department. Tidy. Neat. Familiar. No surprises.

However, in doing this, we inherit the intrinsic fragility and restrictions of the public sector - external dependence on the public purse, rigidity and inflexible structures, slow adaptation timescales, complex governance and control dependencies, an expectation of infinite resource and service delivery, and so on.

Could we avoid some of these vulnerabilities in the VCS if we take a different path? Could we even help the public sector navigate to a different paradigm too?

Deconstruct and rebuild

In my work over many years, I have been quietly approaching an observation about the potential for VCS organisations to deconstruct and rebuild their foundations, not in the image of commercial organisations, nor as a miniature public sector facsimile, but as something entirely different.

Much of my thinking has developed through peeling away the things found in the public and private sector paradigms that don’t seem to fit. Some things also spring fresh and vibrant as positive and authentic and uniquely VCS.

Some big and chewy themes have emerged in these reflections.

The lure of growth

The extensive recognition that capitalism is founded on continuous growth and expansionism is not a comfortable fit with third sector experience. Even the concept of creative destruction, building anew on previous phases of growth, is founded in a model of acquisition and inflationary development that demands perpetual expansion.

Current thinkers recognise the danger of this rampant growth principle, arguing that it is fundamentally unsustainable, unethical, and critically flawed.

The continuous growth imperative is rarely found in the grassroots of the VCS.

The vast majority of third sector activities arise, thrive, and die. At the most grassroot level, they appear like mayflies, growing hidden among the riverbed pebbles and plants, flowing with the currents, then emerging briefly for a purpose, fulfilling the purpose, and quietly fading back into the context from which they emerged.

Any wish to live for longer rests within a generous desire to offer continuous service where it is needed – from week to week, year to year, generation to generation.

Risky business

Many commentators have observed that within our western culture we have developed a risk-based society or culture of fear. It is often founded in constitutional or governmental principles – increasingly this is framed in loaded terms such as protection, defence, preservation, or security. The engines of the state are suffused with risk identification and risk control mechanisms which are complemented by political and social narratives.

The results can be seen in the explosion over the last generation of the insurance industry, hedge funds, and efforts to de-risk aspects of life through extensive regulation or standardisation.

Frequently this risk assessment is lacking in context or relativity. Risks are often reduced to an absolute, binary definition with a similarly narrow frame of mitigation. “This is risky. This is not. Mitigate the risk by doing this.” There are few areas for public debate on this, and fewer still when encountering novel or nuanced situations. The dominant risk model dominates.

Relative riskiness

The VCS is in an interesting space here. Its risk appetite is hugely variable. Its risk assessment is not based on a “common solution” or “collective framework” which may be quite abstract, but arises in the immediacy of the here and now, you and me, in this particular context. It is often unconscious or instinctive. It is rooted in personal values and capacity. It arises from an intuitive grasp of my engagement in a moment in time.

So, people dive into rivers to save people from drowning. People intervene to protect people from assault. People knock on neighbours’ doors to check they’re OK. People stand in front of diggers to prevent damage to the countryside. The calculation of risk is in the context of the scale of the need, or the importance of the value.

Response envy

This position is uncomfortable, but often envied when looked at from the public or private sector. Official sanctioning of risk levels and mitigations are incompatible with this dynamic risk model, and unpredictable approach to relative value.

The VCS approach enables incredible access, connection, and creativity in response to issues and needs. It can be a quiet, joyous anarchy or challenging subversion that allows things to happen where they need to happen, rather than waiting until the risk profiles are defined and their mitigations permit.

The inevitability of structure

Growing from this risk mitigation and governance profile is organisational structure. Accumulated power rises incrementally to the top of the organisation and then vanishes into the realms of process, policy, and procedure. Operational autonomy is reserved for higher echelons, but even then, is tempered by contracts and organisational discipline.

The structure’s design is built partially on a matching of rank with expertise, but at some points the expertise is less about the qualities of the service provision, and more about the expertise in running the organisation.

The crystallisation of assumptions

These structures are often a proxy for thought. They embody assumptions that certain ways of working are intrinsically better than others, and that other people have worked that out already and locked it into some kind of process and system design. The “working out” is crystallised at a moment in time and becomes one of a raft of assumptions that then govern further structural development and design.

These structures include finance, skills and training, human resources, operational methods, reporting, and so on.

Chaos and informality

Within the grassroots of the VCS, structure is informal, often unpredictable, and dynamic. Roles emerge and develop around the action-response that is also developing around the emergent understanding of the need or issue.

Some of the VCS groups begin to find useful structures that serve a purpose for a time. Committees and working groups with nominal leadership or expertise-based contributions do develop. Many develop in a very tight “needs must” context of minimal structure to make something work. Grassroots groups usually have little capacity to waste on unnecessary structural concerns.

Consequently, decision-making and leadership can be incredibly varied. It can appear unreliable or inconsistent from the outside. But often its internal consistency is completely clear and understandable. It has arisen from these particular people in this particular place and time. They have this shared vision and endeavour and these shared resources. If any of these things change (which they inevitably do) then the form of the VCS group or organisation will change too.

Rewarding activities

Within the public and private sector there is a clear economic model of effort and reward, action and reaction, which is usually expressed over very short timescales. Very few businesses would survive if they weren’t paid within 30 days. Very few public sector organisations work to timescales that stretch beyond a couple of years at most.

There is an expectation of quick feedback from any given action. This includes payment for services or payment by results.

Economic metamorphosis

These reward systems work at the macro (organisational) level as well as the micro (personal / worker) level. You do something and will be paid to do it. A specified unit of effort or service is assigned a value and that is shared by the company / organisation and the worker. Quid pro quo. And in almost every case, in the public and private sector that “quid pro quo” is framed as a financial transaction at one end or the other.

Debasing value

This is a fundamentally externalised reward model. The value attached to the activity is externalised to a financial sum, regardless of any other values that may be associated with the “work”. For the purposes of the private and public sectors, money is used as a vector for transferring value.

At a human level it is well known that intrinsic motivations are far more resilient and long lasting than extrinsic motivations. This is the difference between doing something for love and doing it for payment (or sometimes things like glory and admiration). Although one model may be dominant, of course both can exist together.

Intrinsic motivations

Within the VCS almost all responses and activities arise first from an internal source. The source can be described as values, or culture, or beliefs, or creativity. The feedback loop from acting from these sources is nurtured and reinforced in a variety of ways.

People can describe this as giving their life meaning, doing the right thing, feeling good about themselves and experiencing things like deeper relationships, increased wellbeing, satisfaction from doing something good or well.

These feedback loops are private, precious, and powerful. The quid pro quo is often deeply felt, highly relational, and impossible to describe.

Interrupting virtue

Evidence shows that applying an extrinsic reward to something that has deep intrinsic value can interrupt and destroy the natural virtuous circle that is at the core of intrinsic rewards. It pulls out some of the fundamental essence of the “now”, the “you”, the “me” and “myself” and replaces it with a frame of reference defined by others.

As soon as this natural feedback loop is interrupted, the motivation is compromised, and the impetus to continue becomes weakened. Reflecting on the experience of completing forms for attendance allowance benefits, an “unpaid carer” told me in distress, “How can I put a financial value on my love for my husband?”.

Inexorable control

The combination of these factors; growth, risk, structure, reward, combine into a highly controlling and highly controlled system. When public and private sectors seek to connect to the VCS, the gravitational forces of control start to change the nature of the VCS.

This can happen in simple terms. Meetings are called that are held in offices during “work” hours. The language used in conversations is peppered with acronyms and “framework” language that speaks to the systems’ design and operation, and less to lived and human experience.

Parallel lives

Lines of contact are matched to hierarchies, and decision-making is drawn out of the VCS under the auspices of governance and located within the public or private sector system.

Occasionally these structural beliefs show through. The words “professional” or “specialist” are reserved for public and private sector employees while the word “volunteer” is stripped of any association with expertise. And of course that sets the power relationship too.

Conformity

Adoption of the systems’ control frameworks is a prerequisite of formal work arrangements and contracting for the VCS.

This can have the effect of diminishing a service to a few “important” parts, usually the measurable bits. This means that what is measurable is what is done. And contracts and agreements between the VCS and other sectors are usually stacked with measurement.

Measurable and ineffable impacts

The messy benefit and impact of VCS activity, from impacting feelings and self-esteem, to saving and changing lives, to improving long term relationships, is hard to capture. These are often reduced to numbers; the number of people supported, the number of sessions run, the duration of interventions, the number of resources deployed, the number of areas covered, and so on.

The prioritisation of these control measures, which are often a central part of a legal contract, inevitably changes the more holistic approaches that typify the VCS, especially at the smaller end of the organisational scale. The VCS has to put in place formal structures to manage, monitor, and report on them, on top of providing their services.

Common culture

Within the VCS, while there are examples of these control systems, the primary guide for action and collaboration is culture. These shared beliefs, understandings, history, and values create culture and provide a direction for action, or decision-making, or approach. They provide a why, a reason and narrative framework for relationships and activity.

The culture informs the assessment of the importance of issues, the methods for responding, the modes of operations, the energy, the decisions, the involvement, and objectives. It suffuses the who, the where, the when, the what, and the how. It is the principle that orders all these things, through influence and inspiration rather than control.

The culture is the origin of the inspiration that mobilises the VCS.

Principles and shared direction

The orientating principles that develop from the culture are then enacted in the moment, through the immediate context and with the people that are around. The actions are not prescribed, but like iron filings on a magnet, have a pattern and consistency around those shared values. The actions have an alignment and direction that is shared in common.

This creates a dynamic, context-sensitive, relational way of working and being. It allows a diversity of engagement and action, that can change rapidly or slowly over time. It can evolve to tackle additional things that emerge in the relationship and engagement. It can also focus down and become distilled to specific issues.

Transport is a good example of this. Many VCS activities happen in places that people may need to travel to. Getting them there (to help on an ecological project or run a food project) may be a barrier to involvement. The group running the work will usually find ways to tackle this, sharing lifts, changing locations, and so on. The transport challenge is absorbed as part of their activity. Other groups who have had a transport challenge may evolve into a new form which is just about providing community transport. They become specialists.

Mismatched models

This culturally rooted work is often hard to match up with the control models and systems.

As with most of life, these two models are not completely binary - either-or - experiences or mutually exclusive. You will find a bit of control in the cultural model and cultural qualities in the control models. People in highly regulated systems talk about bending the rules to reflect the points at which their cultural motivations are in conflict with the controlling expectations. Conversely people in the VCS will use formal structures to help express their cultural values, like requiring DBS checks for those working with specific groups of people.

In fact, the clash of culture and control in both settings can often be a highly energetic and difficult experience. Institutional or structural racism, inequity, and bias shows this clearly in the more controlled systems. Similarly creating a team to deliver a VCS project can create huge tensions over priority-setting and process design, which may require some formality and structure.

Cultural emergence

Often in the structured systems found in the public sector, the cultural approach comes through within the personal and relational aspects of the organisation. It emerges strongly within periods of change. These change processes can become highly charged and deeply personal. Depending on the clarity and honesty in the process, people can feel misled or betrayed when they felt something new, that they had proposed from their cultural perspective, was possible, but in fact the status quo was really being reinforced.

Cultural connections emerge in direct relationships too. A shared goodwill can suffuse these relationships as trust develops. People share their motivations for their actions and choices, they talk about the wider context of their work, they share the personal impact that working with people has upon them. They also share the tensions they find between meeting targets and making a difference.

Shoring up the systems

In these places of hardship and stress, and when the structural aspects of our society are weakened or overstretched, the cry goes up to demand or invite more support for the systems. Pay rises, increased resources, more commitment from government, greater investment to shore up the status quo are put on the table as requests or demands. And usually, these requests and expressions of need are framed within a cultural wrapper of the common good; we need these things to make lives better or even save lives.

Another feature that emerges is to look to communities, usually the VCS, to fill in gaps, provide services at little or no cost, and to enable the structured systems to function, albeit in a more restricted way. The VCS becomes a buffer between community need and structural support. Sometimes it takes on the mantle of front-line provision where structured services no longer have the capacity to do so.

The bones begin to show

At this point, the challenges mentioned earlier take on a sharp and urgent quality. Questions arise. How can the structured systems find ways that meet their internal obligations while being dependent on the VCS for a wider cultural responsibility? And as the VCS is drawn closer, these issues of conformity become highly charged. How much can the public and private sector demand alignment when they are supplicants rather than commissioners?

Some uneasy tensions arise. The extensive and independent grassroots VCS are needed and are often already in the right place, providing some of the right services, to the right people. However, the larger VCS providers, who have learned the ways of the structured systems are often approached as they are considered to be safer, or less difficult to work with.

Instead of tackling the challenge of working in a more inclusive and diverse way directly with the grassroots, the public and private sector systems sometimes hand that challenge over to larger VCS organisations that find this almost as difficult to achieve as they do. Passing on to a mini-me doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of the challenge, as the larger VCS organisations have developed to mirror the structured systems and therefore can find working outside of the lines as difficult as the structured systems do.

So, can we begin somewhere different?

Conversation first

In both systems there are narratives. There are also experiences. There are people. There are insights.

Conversations and reflections on life and services and needs and communities happen all the time. There are similarities and differences in the way these happen in the structured and cultural approaches.

In both settings these tend to develop out of public sight. The community needs are discussed in the supermarket queue, over coffee, on a walk, in the street, at the school gate, in the healthcare waiting room. They are also discussed on the ward, with clients or carers, during the coffee break, out of hours, on the way home, in grievances, through whistleblowing.

Curating narratives

People share their observations and feelings. They test for patterns and common experiences. They find common narratives. Sometimes the narrative inspires common action.

These conversations happen in the language and conceptual frameworks that are shared by those having the conversation. This often means the conversations and narratives become fixed within these terms of reference. If there is no way of talking about something, it is not spoken about. If we’re talking within a healthcare setting, then sometimes areas of life (like poverty, gender, racial culture, or religion) are simply absent from the discussions. They are out of scope. This happens in reverse within some community conversations too, where people are unaware of the levers of power, or the technical processes and systems that govern our common life and society.

Sharing thoughts

As the narrative strengthens and more people begin to recognise the framing of the issue, it can then begin to emerge. The narrative might appear in a Board paper within a public or private sector system, reflecting on changing trends, risks, behaviours, or opportunities. It can often be framed as the discovery of weakness and risk to the current system.

Inequity is a good example of this. The motivation for achieving equity in service delivery can arise as much from fear of non-compliance or litigation under equality laws (a structural motivation framed as risk) as they do from a progressive social justice position (a cultural position based on rights and values).

Wider public debate

Sometimes that narrative development continues to be an internal process, and sometimes it tips into a more public domain. For various reasons, the observations and the stories may gain common currency, with discussions and impacts being shared in more public forums.

This can happen when the press gets hold of a story, but it can also happen in some of our local political systems, like town and parish councils, right up to national and international governmental bodies.

In some cases, these narratives can find a home with intermediaries whose role is to provide points of connection and discovery and ultimately public debate. Healthwatch and other independent researchers and advocates hold positions of shared exploration and dialogue where people from different contexts can share the narratives, and the underlying observations and evidence for them.

Silenced and stolen stories

When these narratives break out of their initial boundaries, there is a moment of risk that arises. There is a risk that the narrative will be rejected or ignored, unrecognised and unacknowledged. There is a risk that others will “miss the point” and take the ideas away for another purpose that leaves the reason for the narrative unaddressed. There is a risk that the protagonists or narrative-generators will be discarded in a “we’ll take it from here” moment which leaves them out of further discussion or action.

These abruptions in the flow of the narrative and its motivations and the consequent movement towards action and change happen all the time. The narrative vanishes again, sometimes into some invisible internal process (e.g. disciplinary actions) or into “specialist” environments where others who are “better qualified” or “better positioned” can sort things out. The originators are left at the door.

Mavericks and renegades

There can also be a repelling force that develops if the narrative isn’t understood or appreciated. It relates to a break down in trust. It can lead to a, “let’s do it anyway”, response which generates a defensive or offensive relationship to others who are then defined as part of the problem and are treated as threatening or irrelevant outsiders.

This kind of raiding party approach is sometimes associated with upping the ante, turning up the heat within the narrative, increasing rhetoric, which can sometimes tear the connection between the narrative and the underlying experiences and issues. The banner that people march behind can become over simplified, hostile or challenging, a “deny or defy” statement that makes the activists’ issues highly specific and often potentially unattainable.

Dangerous simplifications

The over-simplified narratives can turn into single-issue political positions that are then able to be snagged into populist politics far more easily than more nuanced narratives.

Being concerned about immigration and the huge range of responses to people wishing to live in a country, for a whole wealth of complicated reasons, becomes distilled into “stop the boats” which is an easy step to nationalist political framing. Concerns over the treatment of people, political and social justice, human rights, economics, workforce, integration, and so on are all lost in the reframing around the single-issue expression.

Trailblazers and heroes

Sometimes these fierce advocates of a particular story are needed to break open wider debates. These are particularly important in political debate about the nature of our society and culture. Many of the improvements in justice and fairness are driven by these distilled narratives – race equality, gender equality, disability rights, and so on are all marked out by these kinds of cut through narratives.

Equitable exploration

In the interface between structured systems and the cultural systems there are many other ways to bring people together to explore the narratives. Some of these can be very informal and unstructured, like conversations with people we know who work in a particular related structural system or who support people described by the narrative in an informal community setting. The dialogue is simple and two-way.

Sometimes the interface can be highly structured, like a public enquiry, or a legal testimony. There are also hugely different creative approaches that can enable us to engage in these narrative explorations that permeate across the boundaries. Art and drama, music or poetry, People’s Assemblies or conferences, or public meetings, can all host the kinds of common exploratory sharing around these narratives.

Liminal open spaces

When these work well there is space to share evidence and insight, as well as interpretation and narrative. There is also a place for diverse perspectives and opinions.

In this kind of space, there is a reflection on the tools we might use to respond to the issues, but also a chance to set them down to ask ourselves whether the tools we use have shaped our understanding and narrative. This is our opportunity to overcome the, “When I hold a hammer, everything becomes a nail.” bias.

Let’s start from somewhere else

We also have a chance to alter our starting point, or our direction of travel. Should the outcomes be fewer hip fractures, or reduced obesity, or should they be happier communities, or better work conditions and rates of pay?

Poverty is associated with poor diet. Having more money to buy good food will have a positive impact on reducing obesity.

Living more connected lives is associated with increased physical activity. This increased physical resilience slows mobility deterioration and reduces the risks of harm from falls.

What this reveals is questions about the locus of change. Are we looking at a technical intervention at a granular or personal level (e.g. reducing obesity) or are we looking at cultural and social changes that have wider positive impacts on whole populations?

Involving others

If we take this bigger picture view, it opens up the range of people that become part of the vision. It also takes us back to the start in considering how we inspire, mobilise, and connect our collective action.

In this approach we don’t have to do everything together. This is important. Trust is key.

We don’t have to interfere with things that are aligned and working within these complementary spaces and doing things that contribute to the greater good. We don’t need to task them with instructions to do things; they’re already doing good things. This is the cultural approach, rather than a structural approach, where action is joined in value rather than control.

Narrative renewal

Continuing the dialogue and exploration of the narrative together helps with keeping true to the course and identifying changing conditions or emergent issues. The dialogues can also help with refreshing and renewing the common values and revealing the shifts in power or narrative interpretation among those involved.

It also makes space to think differently about resources, which brings us back to the different models of VCS and public or private sector operation.

Collectivism and collaboration

If we start from this shared open space, pooling our collective tools, a wider appreciation of our collective resources begins to emerge.

Instead of VCS organisations or services or groups needing to become mini-commercial businesses or public sector departments, with atomised and individualised operating models, we can see the potential for shared use, and a collective relationship building in relation to our common resources.

I may have some audio-visual equipment but use it rarely. Others can use it if they need it. I have a meeting room that is often empty. Can it be used by others? I have had some professional training that helps me support my colleagues’ mental health. Could it be useful to you and your colleagues too? We have a communications and marketing team, can we provide some expertise or direct support to you?

It’s not me, it’s us

Taking the above the approach reduces the need for everyone to set up their own versions of everything. The overheads of doing things in the VCS are reduced. The expected model of delivery is changed from being an internal one, to being a dispersed one. Independence becomes interdependence.

As the overheads reduce then the financial costs for running the service, group, or organisation diminish.

A new set of building blocks

This becomes an opportunity to completely re-imagine commissioning relationships between the public / private sector and the VCS, and for the VCS to reposition its offer too.

What if… the VCS didn’t have to look like a business to work with other sector partners?

What if… the VCS didn’t have to invest in self-sufficiency?

What if… the VCS didn’t have to focus on organisational continuity and survival?

What if… the VCS didn’t have to conform to external performance measures?

A radical tipping point

In moments of crisis and hardship, we can radically explore the nature of the VCS, and its activities at all scales and in all contexts.

Simple, honest questions

Do you need to be a business to run a walking group? Arguably not. Do you need to publicise the walking group? Possibly yes. Do you need to do a risk assessment? Probably yes. Do you need to ask people what they’d like to do? Definitely yes.

Do you need a local place to meet for your knit and natter group? Yes. Do you need to pay for it? Maybe not. Does it need to be accessible to people with a variety of mobility needs? Yes, definitely. Can the venues provide this? Maybe not all of them.

Different answers

These very simple examples show a number of places where specific resources may be required. Traditional approaches would rely on the groups themselves solving their own issues. Taking a broader view may show up other ways of tackling them.

What if you could tap into another local service to help with your publicity – what about the parish magazine, local noticeboard, community Facebook? What if a poster could be designed by a comms person working in another organisation?

What if the venue owner could upgrade the accessibility of their premises? What if the venue had discretion to offer bursaries or free access for certain kinds of groups?

Reducing aggregation of overheads

Taking these approaches removes large burdens from hyperlocal VCS groups and organisations, which would otherwise require funding, and therefore fundraising, and thus governance, business and operational oversight, and so on and on. The simple snowball of need precipitates an avalanche of additional overheads as it rolls down the mountain.

A low-pressure, or low demand, model of operation, with a light touch control and obligation overhead nurtures a highly resilient, capable, creative, and dynamic VCS grassroots ecosystem.

Purposeful side-effects

The points of collaboration around resource-sharing become points of connection and shared endeavour.

The opportunity to develop multiple micro-resource connections reduces high level barriers to operation (e.g. needing to have a board and finance director), as well as reducing single points of failure in resource supply (e.g. having only one grant-funding source). Relying on 100 micro funders is a more resilient model than relying on one single major funder.

The net effect of this approach is to protect and increase the scope for small VCS groups and organisations to spend more time “doing the work” rather than “running the business”. It reduces barriers to starting new projects or flexing existing projects to meet new emerging needs.

It also creates a dispersed support ecosystem for the VCS that not only suffuses the VCS, and particularly helps with encouraging support closer to home, but also connects and pervades the public and private sectors too.

Unshackling centralisation

Reducing the VCS’ reliance on traditional centralised models of support provision, often provided through infrastructure support organisations, enables a more dynamic and dispersed supporting network within the VCS that recognises and nurtures the diverse resources and expertise that exists across the whole of the sector.

Some conventional infrastructure support has largely become a training ground for the creation of the kinds of mini-me enterprises mentioned earlier, “helping” VCS organisations conform to business and governance models that will improve their fit for commissioners. This can lead to them holding a powerful position as gateway and gatekeeper and arbiter of success or survival.

A thousand flowers bloom

This radical reframing creates a far greater range of support and collaboration opportunities, from enabling simple conversations and discussions mentioned above, to exploring local service models, collective working, ideas, and connections. It releases agency and control and empowers and enables a much greater capacity for response and involvement.

Interestingly it can make for a more safe and careful working model.

Care among us

Most national regulatory bodies only offer inspections on an annual basis, sometimes far less frequently. Auditing, reviews, and so on are once and done, a spot check in time. The doors onto the service are opened and evidence is presented to satisfy the regulator. Then the report is shared as the doors are closed again.

In this more connected model, with greater peer-to-peer contact, and greater community visibility and inclusion, the number of instances where people can see what is happening and comment and discuss concerns is greatly increased, not just in number, but also over time.

Many hands

Reflections on things like safety or safeguarding, risk and harm, are increased in quantity and in breadth through the number of connections and interdependencies that wrap around the VCS organisations or group’s activities. Contextual safeguarding principles are easily applied, and the vastly increased “contextual” dimension increases the extent and influence of the safeguarding objectives.

A basket of by-products

The direction of travel revealed in the cultural approach of the VCS to the issues that arise, brings a wealth of additional qualities and side effects that enrich and amplify the positive activities that are undertaken.

Increasing opportunities for inclusion in the process of creating narratives, framing issues, and listening to experience, all build trust and recentre power back with the community. This is not simply a replacement of one centralised model with another, but the development of a model that balances power and responsibility, service and control, and frames it within open public debate. People become empowered to take personal responsibility and grow in confidence in getting involved.

The authentic experience of the grassroots VCS is energised and supported by the growth in personal and political engagement. It is made more resilient through the increase in collaboration and through increased personal and organisational relationships.

The VCS becomes more flexible, strong, and capable, embracing and tackling the global, national, social, and personal challenges that arise, working together with greater interdependence.

Awakening

Through natural, human connections, with all their messiness and chaos, our social contracts are explored, and debates about shared services, public sector scale and scope, and private sector involvement all churn together in our attempts to nurture the conditions for everyone to have good lives.

Instead of reinforcing conformity and the giving up of the capacity for personal involvement and contribution, personal agency is released, encouraged, and supported and collective agency is strengthened. Choice and diversity and the fullness of human life is given space to be explored, discussed, and shared.

Compassion and collaboration

In the midst of this period of enormous challenge, where systems are in turbulent change, and people are stressed, angry, and frightened, reflecting on the value, culture, and relationships we share, creating our own stories, finding our collective narratives, offers a way forward. It draws us together. It deepens our understanding and compassion for one another and weaves us together in relationships of empathy and sympathy.

And there is a chance to find space at the eye of the storm. To draw together and prepare a way forward that springs from our beliefs, our hopes, our values, our faith, our history, and ourselves.