Got the T-shirt? Invite the community into your community group and spread the work load!

Got the T-shirt?  Does too many jobs sound familiar?

This blog is primarily intended for community groups who manage or own a community centre or social centre but it applies equally to any community or wide membership based co-operative or social enterprise.

I've worked with many community based organisations over the years, some small unconstituted charities, some of them established as social enterprises, some on the road to trading, and many more considering trading as a means to increase their income.  Some have even been constituted as, shock horror, co-operatives.  Regardless of legal form or trading status, one common issue I have come across in very community focused organisations is a lack of capacity.  How can a mass membership organisation have so few people involved?

The work of, say, managing the community centre bookings, is carried out by a volunteer (yes, usually one!).  The Management Committee are all volunteers, and they don't just meet occasionally to make management decisions, they have to carry out all the administration, book-keeping and implementation of those decisions.  And the janitorial issues such as ensuring there are tea bags in the cupboard or clearing up after the children's birthday party the day before. Is it any wonder that the prospect of developing a business plan, marketing strategy or just doing anything more than juggle the existing responsibilities is seen as an unrealistic option?

This high volunteer workload can sometimes be combined with an ever diminishing pool of volunteers willing to take on the legal responsibilities of a Company Director or Charity Trustee along with that day to day workload.  The vicious circle starts to accelerate and the less volunteers you have, the more work required, the less desirable the job and the smaller the potential pool of people known to existing volunteers.  For that is another problem..... unless there is a full recruitment campaign, committee members tend to recruit from the people they already know.

This can mean that any offer of assistance is viewed as a means to fill not only the volunteer capacity problem but also the lack of faces at the Board meeting.  Unfortunately this can scare people off.  I have one example in mind where the insistence that someone become a Director of a community organisation before they could volunteer resulted in the loss of a highly skilled individual's time and expertise - another organisation with a more accommodating response won out.  It even happened to me!  My local community centre were embarking on a more enterprising approach and when I got a leaflet through the door, I realised I could be an asset when it came to business planning, feasibility or financial projections. It's what I do.  I contacted the email address outlining my skills and experience and told them that I had skills to offer in a focused fashion but couldn't commit to regularly attending a committee on their chosen day. I also made it clear that meetings in the evening were out as I would be alighting from a train after a 12 hour day just as they would start their meeting.  The response?  Please come to our next committee meeting.
We have the technology to communicate outside of a fully convened meeting - email, telephone, even letter, so why don't we use them? Of course, if there are decisions to be taken then everything must be done according to your constitutional arrangements, but often much of what is done at community organisation committee meetings is concerned with day to day organisation rather than management decisions.  We stuff the meetings full of business and never quite get to the end of the agenda before people rush off or drop off!

So, instead of scaring people off, what's the alternative?  

Do you let people climb the
"Ladder of Participation" one rung at a time?

Colleagues of  mine from the world of co-operative development and community shares have promoted the idea of a "ladder of participation".  In addition to being clear with your organisation needs, try to think of what the individual member or volunteer or your organisation might want, or be able to offer.

• Do they want to rise through the ranks to become Secretary or Treasurer of the Committee?  
• Do they love meetings and committees or would they rather drill their own teeth? 
• Are they more interested in putting their time to use differently?  
• Can they offer a regular commitment?  
• Is this too difficult for them?  
• What skills do they have to offer?  
• What interests?  
• Are there people who are time rich and cash poor or cash rich and time poor?
• Are they already activists in the local community who can promote or support your association as they go about their other activities? 

A good way to attract people into membership of your organisation is to have a range of offers of involvement available to suit all who might be eligible rather than a "one size fits all" and allows people to contribute what they can. E.g.

• Supporters/Investors - people with money or goods to donate
• Volunteers -people who want to give time regularly
• Activists - people who are already involved in the community and can help promote your association/centre
• Service Users - people who use the building, events or activities
• Customers - people who hire rooms to offer events either as a business or a community activity
• Specialists - people linked to your community with specialist skills you can use occasionally at reasonable (free?) rates such as tradesmen, solicitors
• Committee/ Board Members, Directors or Trustees  - people involved in management decisions at regular meetings and legally responsible for the organisation

Why bother with participation?

Here's a few thoughts.  Focus on participation because:

• It's the right thing to do: You are a community organisation so you should reflect the community you serve.  The more opportunities for involvement there are, the more you can know the community is getting what it wants.  The more people that are involved in design of services/activities/facilities the more likely your group is to get it right.  Some people call this co-production.  But if you go back to basics, its about achieving the purpose of the organisation.
• You have a mandate: When it comes to negotiating with public bodies or funders you can honestly say that the community wants what you propose.  And if anyone complains, they can get involved and change things.  Don't let the naysayers press their nose up against the window - invite them in to sit in front of the fire and talk it over.
• Market intelligence: If you aim to serve the needs of your community then that is your market.  Anything that helps you understand the market's desires, interests or needs gives you a competitive advantage and increases your prospects of being sustainable through earned income.
• It lightens the workload:  One of the most obvious reasons, and very pragmatic.  Remember the old saying "Many hands make light work?".  It's true.
• Participation can open up access to investment: If people have a stake in the success of the organisation because it is meeting their needs, providing employment, helping their neighbours or making the place a better place to live they are more likely to support it - especially if they co-own it with the rest of the community and have a direct say in how it is managed (that would be one member one vote democracy, but can also be more subtle influences by being listened to).  The Community Shares programme has shown that communities can access finance from within themselves for the purchase of assets.
• You can unlock potential in your community by engaging more people:  For example, some community associations I have worked with have acknowledged that they have difficulties in attracting young people or knowing what they might want.  At the same time, I have heard them remark that they struggle to keep their website updated.  An obvious solution springs to mind - why not start with young person who can take on some of the responsibilities of social media and use their understanding and approach to try and attract more young people?  While solving the problem of lacking time or skills to update the website, you bring a fresh pair of eyes into your organisation.
• Wider ownership provides protection: If the association comes under threat from under-involvement, or external threats such as losing the building or unfavourable terms and conditions, your membership share the responsibility for turning things round and they have something to lose.

I can hear the response to my call to arms already "This is all very well, but how can we do it?  Where do we start?"  Here are some ideas but you can use whatever works as long as you end up with the same outcome of increasing involvement, sharing responsibility and sharing ownership.

Some ideas

- As an organisation:
Open up opportunities. 
Break down responsibilities into bite size tasks
Consider the different ways that people can get involved.  Don't default to the meeting as the only way of getting involved.  Not everyone likes reading minutes and tramping out in the rain to sit in a cold room looking at accounts.  One way you can do this is with the tool attached below.  Analyse your organisation and write down everything that is done or could be done.

- As an individual committee member:Look at your work load.  Is there anything you could pass to someone else.  You feel valued - share that feeling!  You feel overworked?  Share that workload.  If you had extra capacity think what you could do with that extra time!  You can use the same tool to analyse your individual workload.

- As a local community member:
Find out what you can do.  Ask if there is anything the group needs help with.
Think about what you have to offer in terms of skills and experience and make an open offer, then see what happens.

Things may not change immediately but we are creating a virtuous cycle (the opposite of a vicious circle).  As things get easier, they get easier to make easy.  Momentum starts to carry you in  the right direction.  Tasks get easier as they are shared among more people.  Things get done more quickly or cheaper.  Activities are more successful because people are interested in them.  Everyone shares in the success.

Resources

If you need to buy in specialist support for your community association in the areas of business planning, marketing, feasibility or viability then please contact me via nathanbsocialenterprise [at] gmail.com

Human Resources planning tool (mentioned above)
Community Ownership capital grants (April-June 2014) Grants for communities seeking to buy assets
My Community Rights - support, advice and funding for community groups managing assets
Cooperantics - co-operative skills for groups to work together effectively, some free resources on website
Community Shares Unit - for communities considering raising finance from the community to buy assets

Identifying your Human Resources Development requirement (basic level).

This tool aims to help you identify the basic level of Human Resource Development to help you start planning to make your organisation more sustainable.

Step 1

Identify all the jobs, roles and activities required from people in your organisation or business to make it function, such as making & delivering the product or service, selling to the market, managing finance etc.

Step 2

A job or role is made up of a number of key tasks. For each role write a bullet point list of what tasks the job entails. Remember to keep it simple and focus on key tasks rather than detail.

Step 4

Compare tasks the enterprise requires with tasks that people can perform. Some organisations carry out a skills audit to inform this process. 
 

The areas that cannot be currently met, or cannot be realistically met because people do not have enough time to do all of the tasks they match are your human resources development requirement.

A grid like the one below can be used to map out the existing capacity and identify gaps. Put all the team's initials in a column under the “people” heading. Tick off in each person's column the jobs or roles they perform.

For each person's job or role, tick off the tasks they are able to perform.

Step 5

Decide how to meet the requirement.

If there are any jobs that are not allocated, this may indicate a need to recruit or buy in the expertise (e.g. accountant to do year end). In some cases a member of the team may be interested in upskilling to take on the task.

If there are tasks that are not ticked off, you may decide to upskill the person whose job it is. Alternatively another team member may be able to share that task, or you may be able to buy in a complementary service (using an accountant to complete the year end is a good example).  The frequency with which someone carries out a task and the cost of buying it in can be compared to the cost of training & development to inform your decision.  Consider also the added benefits of having those skills in your team.  Do they offer opportunities?

If you decide to upskill, what skills or knowledge does the person need to develop to be able to carry out the task?

How can they develop those skills? Consider

• Training courses or workshops
• Self directed learning (e.g. reading on the internet)
• Experimentation (Note it is advised to assess the risk entailed)
• “Sitting next to Nelly” I.e. learning from someone else who does the job
• Mentoring
• Advice from a support organisation
• A manual/written procedure

Job/role	Task or activity	People				Development requirement: Skills/knowledge required (which and for who) / Recruit / Buy in.
		initials	initials	initials	initials

How robust is a CIC's asset lock and why should it matter?

A true asset lock comes from members not regulators

This week, Civil Society ran a piece highlighting Social Enterprise UK's concern about how well CIC asset locks were protected. Nice one, SEUK! This is a subject I have blogged about previously and one which I feel too few people concern themselves with but equally goes to the heart of what makes some* "social enterprises" different from a business that is trading in a field that is socially beneficial or that has a strong sense of social responsibility.  I thought it was time to look at this again.  I don't have all the answers.  I don't even have all the questions but I want to flag some up.


The issue of how the assets are controlled in the future (which is why you have the asset lock) is partly about ownership but also about mission or purpose.  As a group of founders, you want to know that the value you put into the business by virtue of working for nothing/low wages in the early years, or freely giving your intellectual property will be used for the same purpose to which you gave it.  You effectively give a gift to a community or a cause, not to the future owners of the business so they can realise the value of the asset and pocket it.  This motivation equally applies to some funders - particularly those providing funds to purchase assets rather than fund activities.

CICs are not the only form of legal structure that provide a statutory asset lock - Registered Charities (which may be unincorporated associations or often Companies Limited by Guarantee) , Charitable Incorporated Organisations, and some Community Benefit Societies have a statutory asset lock.  It is only Registered Charities which have particularly engaged regulation - which can often itself become a problem but that's another story.  Other legal forms such as Co-operative Society and Company Limited by Guarantee can have a "members asset lock" (common ownership) which has no regulator paying particular attention to it and can be removed by the membership.

Whilst I support calls for asset locks to be properly enforced, I also think that over-reliance upon legally recognised asset locks gives false belief. It provides a "false positive" providing external supporters or stakeholders an easy answer to the question "Is the money that I have given for community or social benefit safe from being used for person gain?".

As I outlined in my piece "Why Asset Locks Matter" back in May 2012, within a CIC reinvested profits and other cash assets can be legitimately used to pursue the objects of the organisation - arguably that is what they are there for, not just to sit in the bank achieving no good.  Now, that can include spending money on delivery of services (by staff or contractors) that achieve those stated objects or have the intention to, regardless of actual outcome - because none of us has a reliable, working, crystal ball to predict the future.  This is a good thing.  Having the freedom to spend the organisation's money in pursuit of declared community benefit allows for the development of creative and sustainable solutions to problems.

 Money can in this way be shifted from the balance sheet (assets, which are protected on winding up) onto the profit & loss as losses.  This opens up the possibility that an organisation could spend money under the guise of pursuing the objects which is really payment to persons or organisations for services they have not really delivered (which would be fraud) or at a premium price (which is not fraud but definitely questionable) or that produce no real social gain but provide some income (there is no accounting for people being rubbish at their job).  This possibility increases where the only people involved in making or scrutinising the decisions are the ones that stand to gain from the dodgy practice.  The regulator would not necessarily notice this or be able to prove it either way - social enterprises make losses as well as profits,and sometimes this investment in products/services produces profits in the long term with a reasonable or good return on investment.

So how could you stop this?  Well, firstly, you need scrutiny of what is going on at the time, not months after.  And how do you get that scrutiny?  Well, it would be reasonable to suggest the involvement in management and governance of people who have no stake in payments made to deliver the service, which is the Charity Trustee model of governance.  Equally it is reasonable - and in my view preferable - to suggest the involvement of all (or as many as possible) of those people who are directly affected by the successful delivery of the service such as the beneficiaries or service users and staff whose long term employment relies upon it, which is the Co-operative approach - stakeholder governance.  By widening the group of people who can hold the Directors to account we create more accountability and, as in the Emperor's New Clothes fable, the likelihood of a dissenting voice spotting something is awry increases.


Without internal scrutiny, openness and accountability, by the time a regulator gets to find out about potential wrongdoing it is likely to have been going on for some time before anyone external noticed.
So, is the answer to rely on the regulator, or should we be striving to have better governance, wider & more open membership to provide a true lock on the assets?  I believe it is.  The larger the membership and the more engaged that membership, the stronger your asset lock is in real world, as well as purely legal, terms.

So I'll finish by suggesting that if you really need or want an asset lock, consider for whose benefit that asset lock is put in place, and make sure they own it!


*For others it may be inclusive ownership and governance that makes the difference.  Not all social enterprises have to have asset locks, do they?

Meanwhile, over on the Guardian Social Enterprise Network

Today I had a piece published on the Guardian Social Enterprise Network Co-operative & Mutuals Hub all about a subject my co-op "Co-operantics" cares a great deal about - Co-operative Skills.  It has to be stressed that Co-operative Skills are not just useful to co-ops, they are useful to all social enterprises! Co-operative Skills can improve all organisations who have meetings, deliver work in teams, want to develop a positive team spirit and want to improve motivation.   
You can read the blog by following this link:
https://socialenterprise.guardian.co.uk/en/articles/social-enterprise-network/2013/apr/19/cooperative-skills-what-are-they

Training delivery in Nottingham

Following critical acclaim on the first run in London, for its second run of the excellent First Steps in Social Enterprise course for Metropolitan Housing Association, Olmec has again asked me to deliver a day on legal structures.  This time it involves a trip to Nottingham.
My only regret is that I arrive on Friday too late to visit the "Screaming Carrot" co-operative bakery and will be starting and finishing before they open and after they close on Saturday.

Details of the learning outcomes for the day can be found here:
http://socialenterprisehelp.blogspot.co.uk/p/legal-structures.html

Code of Conduct

I have decided to put up a few guidelines for people who may be interested in buying in my support.  I have published an interim Code of Conduct while I await the development of an appropriate code for professional co-operative and social enterprise advisors.  This is really just crystallising what I already do, but I thought you should know, dear reader!  Check it out using the link in the menu bar.

Housing Co-ops coming home to roost

My first paid role as an advisor was working as a Housing Co-operative Development Worker back in 1998.  The wheel seems to has turned full circle as I am currently working with a number of Housing Co-operative initiatives.  I am working with 2 new Housing Co-ops for Olmec Co-operative CIC who themselves are sub-contracted to deliver the support for the Co-operative Enterprise Hub.  One is based on water!  I have also just started a piece of work through my co-op Co-operantics with a well established Housing Co-op to review and improve their governance system.  As an associate of CAN I am assisting the fledgling Housing Development Co-operative which aims to address some of the systemic barriers to the development of co-operative housing.  When you add to that conversations with the Wales Co-operative Centre about support for housing co-ops it seems like Housing Co-ops are flavour of the season.