How do we disrupt volunteering, pirate style?

This is a guest post from charity consultant Laura Elson (reposted from the original here)

On a cold, wet day in Manchester recently a scurvy crew of 5 AVM members got together over a coffee to discuss how volunteering could Be More Pirate. Inspired by the conversations sparked by Be More Pirate’s Alex Barker at AVM National Conference 2019 we wanted to think about what volunteering could look like if we re-wrote the rules. Volunteer Management can often be lonely and if you’re based outside of London it’s not always easy to meet up, get some peer support power and keep those discussions going. We invited AVM members from “the North” for a cuppa on Twitter and our group now has 11 members from Scotland to the East Midlands.

Be More Pirate is all about being rebellious and creating your own rules to make social change happen. As Volunteer Managers we love rules. We have rules for everything from exactly what a role description or journey should look like to exactly what volunteers can and can’t do in a role. They’re mostly there for good reason but are we missing the chance to build movements by forcing volunteering to fit our own tidy manageable systems?

Imogen Greatbatch from England Netball, Jack Puller from MACC, Alan Bennett from Scouts and Karen Lifford from British Cycling all had brilliant ideas and reflections. We talked about “being comfortable with being uncomfortable” in what is always a complex and political role in organisations. We talked about the challenges and rewards of pushing through radical change in large, complex and often very old organisations. How could we rethink volunteer management to focus on constantly nurturing motivation and building community, rather than popping people into predesigned boxes and wondering why things went wrong? How would we do things differently if we had a totally clean slate?

The conversation covered everything from what makes a strategy that works and that volunteers feel they own through to Extinction Rebellion’s ability to manage a huge movement minus all the trappings of systems and rules we Volunteer Manager’s cling to. If we were to re-write the rules and create a pirate code for volunteering what would those new rules be?

We want to keep the conversation going and run an informal open spaces or unconference day this year up North to explore these ideas and provide lots of time for peer support around special interest areas like strategy, sport, recruitment and culture in volunteering. if you’re a member of AVM or thinking of joining and you’d like to come to a meetup in the North of England please send me a DM, you’re very welcome aboard!