It’s not just Big, it’s the new improved, Bigger Society

By Sarah Hayward / @sarah_hayward

And so as May followed April, it came to pass that the Big Society was relaunched. By my calculations, for the fifth time. It may be the sixth or even seventh, it’s possible I’ve just lost count.

The speech was so “we’ve heard it all before” that neither Sky or the BBC, with 24 hours of rolling news to fill and struggling to find new ways not to name he who cannot be named (Ryan Giggs), could be bothered to stay with it. Even though, if you look at the speech on Number 10’s website, this wasn’t just the big society.

This was the Bigger Society.

This Bigger Society was better than all the other Big Societies that had gone before it. As I read it, I heard Nanette Newman’s voice, not David Cameron’s.

A friend once pointed out to me, that the Big Society is “there’s no such thing as society” with better PR. At the time he had a point. Now not even a team of top class spinners can get a speech on it covered by an editor with 24 hours to play with.

So why am I writing about such a dull speech?

Well each time Cameron talks about the Big Society he belies a new ignorance about the voluntary sector and volunteering. It really is staggering, and, while not wanting to provide helpful advice to the Tories, he really should get an adviser that has some knowledge of the sector other than “it exists”.

Today’s nugget was that everyone in government, the whole cabinet no less, will do a full day of volunteering each year. And yes you did read that right, every member of the cabinet, and let’s throw in every civil servant as an after-thought (Cameron did), is going to do a whole day’s volunteering. That’s 1/365th of their time. Alright for civil servants, it’s 1/220th. But all this cabinet of millionaires can find to give is just one measly little day in every 365 (366 in leap years).

For the cabinet that just looks stingy, given what most volunteers give up in time. For the civil servants why not just pay one in every 220 to work in the voluntary sector full time. Send them on secondment. It would have a higher impact.

Cameron’s ignorance is breathtaking. One day, one measly day a year isn’t that helpful to most voluntary organisations. OK, it’s true you could paint a lot of community centres or school buildings with that many staff hours. You could rattle a lot of collecting tins with the other chuggers on Tottenham Court Road. But that’s about it.

You can’t even volunteer sporadically for a seasonal organisation like Crisis with a single day a year. They require a minimum of four days. And they do it for a reason.

Organisations that rely on volunteers need continuity and commitment. It could be as little as two hours a month to supervise a football match. But most organisations need some sort of regular commitment. And for the pedants, yes I mean more than once a year.

As a school governor I give up about four – six hours a term for meetings and a couple more for reading papers. I can’t do it in a day. I can’t even do it in a full working day spread over a year, and that’s a pretty light volunteering commitment.

Organisations like community centres or Citizens Advice Bureaux need regular commitment to be able to open their doors. Because their clients rely on their services being provided consistently.

The organisations themselves invest in training volunteers to be able to provide specific services to their communities. What’s the point in investing this time if you know it’s going to be another year before the volunteer shows again?

Meanwhile voluntary organisations all over the country are struggling with the slew of cuts in public sector funding they’re facing. In a new round of grant applications, I’ve just received bids worth £3.4million for a pot of funding with a £1m value. And my council, Camden, is the highest grant funder of the voluntary sector in London. We expect the other funding pots to be similarly oversubscribed.

The public sector should be working much more closely with the voluntary sector. These organisations have knowledge and expertise that the public sector can’t replicate. Some are trusted in their communities in a way a local council never will be. And often they can deliver better services, cheaper. In Camden we’re exploring many different ways to work more with the sector.

Despite our efforts and our continued high level of voluntary sector funding I’m sure some organisations are doomed to fail by the sheer scale of the government cuts.

And as long as Cameron continues to display his utter ignorance about the voluntary sector any so called vision he has for a “Big Society” is similarly doomed to failure.