| Making it work
I Good practice: management matters
Jane Slowey
Chief Executive, Birmingham Voluntary Service Council
Can I begin by thanking you very much for inviting me
to take part in your conference today. I think that today’s event,
supported as it is by the Government through the Department of
Environment, Transport and the Regions and the Active Community Unit of
the Home Office, demonstrates a growing awareness that we perhaps
underestimate the contribution faith communities can make to the
regeneration and renewal of local communities.
I will start with a few words about Birmingham
Voluntary Service Council, the organisation for which I work. We are a
large council for voluntary service, one of around 200 across the country.
We provide advice, support and information to voluntary community
associations within the City of Birmingham. We help new organisations by
providing advice on constitutions, management committees and fund raising.
We also provide development support to existing organisations, including a
very successful "quality development" programme with training
activities to support it. We help organisations to recruit and support
volunteers and provide information through a monthly newsletter to around
1500 individual organisations, many of which are themselves umbrella
organisations, and through our web-site. We manage a range of projects and
programmes and are increasingly holding public money on behalf of other
organisations which do not have the capacity to do that for themselves.
Finally, we provide a voice for the sector on a range of strategic and
other partnerships and we support and co-ordinate a number of forums and
networks to ensure that we are as accountable as possible to the wider
sector.
I want to draw both on the representational role of the
Birmingham Voluntary Service Council and on our organisational development
work in my remarks this afternoon. As I was looking through the conference
programme over the weekend I was struck by its breadth. It covers both the
role faith communities can play in local neighbourhoods and the structures
that are needed to make this contribution effective. I think that dual
emphasis is particularly important. Anyone who works in or around the area
of regeneration or neighbourhood renewal, whether they are in the public,
private or voluntary sector, is acutely aware of the need for flexible
organisational and representational structures, which are able to adapt to
a constantly changing external environment.
My own sector has, for example, spent considerable time
in the past couple of years developing a new regional infrastructure so
that we are able to engage with the emerging regional agenda. I currently
represent the sector on the West Midlands Regional Chamber as the interim
nominee of the Regional Action West Midlands which is our new voluntary
and community sector network. I know from that aspect of my work that many
of you within the faith communities are struggling to identify new
relationships, partnerships and structures to enable the faith communities
in the West Midlands to be represented much more directly at the regional
level and to ensure that their diverse voices are heard more effectively
by organisations in the West Midlands such as our Regional Development
Agency and the West Midlands Regional Chamber.
I hope that in the few minutes that I have got I can
convince you that, even for the smallest organisations, time spent in
making sure you have the right structures and processes is time well
invested in the effective achievement of your objectives. Lord Phillips of
Sudbury said the following about charities, which I think include
voluntary and community organisations even if they are not ‘registered
charities’:
"Charities are on the horns of a dilemma over
professionalism. The more we look like businesses, the less we look like
charities. And the less we look like charities, the less people will give
to us. The public, in effect, wants to have its cake and eat it. It wants
well run charities, efficient in the way they think good business is,
which are nonetheless recognisably different and recognisably
charitable."
So perhaps the first issue to consider is whether it is
necessary to impose a formal structure on to activities which may
essentially appear to be informal. Many activities in the life of the
community of course happen naturally and do not require an organisation to
make them happen. However, more formal activities and projects do often
develop from within informal groups. The trick is to make sure that you
have the most appropriate organisational structure for where you want to
be rather then where you are at the moment. It is quite common, and I
think it has been a particular issue for groups within black and ethnic
minority communities, for small groups to operate very effectively for
some time and then to be encouraged to bid for funding which might involve
managing a building or perhaps employing staff. It is often only at the
point at which the bid has been successful that the organisation realises
that it has not yet developed the skills and capacity to manage the bid
effectively. I am sure that we are all aware of groups with excellent
track records in developing and delivering innovative activities while
living from hand to mouth or relying entirely on volunteers who then
really struggle once funding has apparently secured their position. I
think government and other funders sometimes have quite a lot to answer
for in encouraging underdeveloped groups to bid for funding in a rather
tokenistic way without paying sufficient attention to their capacity needs
or, indeed, ensuring that sufficient resources and support are available
to help them develop that capacity in advance.
So, assuming some kind of structure does seem
appropriate, then a voluntary or community organisation is often what
seems to be the answer. Voluntary or community organisations are run so
that they cover their costs rather than to make a profit for a share
holder. They may, of course, use volunteers for delivering their
activities and indeed they may employ staff but they are called
"voluntary" because they are run by volunteers at management
committee level. There also needs to be more than one person involved in
running the group. That may seem obvious, but that is one of the
definitions of a voluntary organisation that we use and, believe you me,
we sometimes have to use that definition.
When it comes to deciding what type of structure you
need, it is important for the structure to enable the group to be run in a
way that works for the activities they are trying to carry out and for the
people that have the responsibility for the group. There are three main
legal structures: the unincorporated association; the trust; and the
company limited by a guarantee. I am not going to go into a lot of detail
on this but suffice to say that each of these types of structure requires
a different set of rules to enable it to function properly. In the case of
an unincorporated association it is called a ‘constitution’; in case
of a trust it is usually known as a ‘trust deed’; and in the case of a
company limited by a guarantee it is known as a ‘memorandum’ and ‘articles’.
Whatever the nature of an organisation’s
constitution, or whatever it is called, it has to have enough information
in it for the organisation to run smoothly and to be a reference point for
its overall organisation. Whichever legal structure has been chosen, the
sorts of issues the rules will need to cover and the sorts of questions
the group needs to ask will include:
- What and who is the organisation for?
- What activities do we want to generate?
- Who will run both the organisation and the activities?
- How will it be funded?
- Will staff need to be employed?
- Where will it be based?
- Will it have members, and if it does, what will their right and
responsibilities be?
- How will people get on to the management committee?
- How will the meetings be organised, chaired and managed?
- How will the finances be dealt with?
One of the other issues that groups need to consider
when looking at a more formal structure is their charitable status. We
sometimes talk about applying for charitable status as though this is
optional but it is actually a matter of law and not a matter of choice. If
your activities are charitable and your budget is over £1,000 you
are required by law to register as a charity. Unfortunately there is not
an exact definition of what a charity is. It is the Charity Commission
that decides whether or not a particular project is charitable or not. The
Charity Commission also keeps a register of all charities and gives advice
to charity trustees as well as investigating misconduct or abuse of
charitable assets.
At present, in order to qualify as a charity, an
organisation must have wholly charitable purposes. It is no good some of
the activities being charitable and some not. The organisation must also
be for the benefit of a large number of people – not just one family for
example – and it must carry out activities which are recognised as
charitable by the Charity Commission. People will probably recognise the
four areas: relief of poverty; advancement of education; advancement of
religion; and, in a sort of global way, of benefit to the community. It is
worth just mentioning that the Charity Commission has, over last year or
so, been reviewing its register of charities and, 35 years on from when it
was formed, has been looking at whether those definitions are actually fit
for their purpose. The whole issue about whether regeneration is a
charitable activity is one of the questions that they have been bending
their minds around. I recommend those of you who have access to the
internet to look at the Charity Commission’s website if you want to know
more about that review and about the support the Charity Commission can
provide. It is a very accessible and useful website.
The benefits of registering as a charity include being
able to apply for certain sorts of funding. For example, some businesses
like you to be a registered charity, because they see that that is a
demonstration that you are safe to support. Many charitable trusts and
other funders prefer you to be a charity. Also, as a charity you can
qualify for mandatory and discretionary local rate relief. One of the
other benefits of being a charity is that you do have the comfort of
knowing that you have the back up of the Charity Commission if the
organisation gets into difficulties.
Once you have decided you want or need to register as a
charity, the Charity Commission can provide an application form and
booklets explaining how to set up and run a charity. It has also recently
produced a very useful document The Hallmarks of a Well Run Charity.
This sets out pretty clearly the characteristics that they expect from a
well-run charity and I would say that these are applicable to any
voluntary or community based organisation whether or not it is registered
as a charity. Let me summarise these "hallmarks".
A well run charity:
- Keeps under review its constitution, its legal format, its aims and
powers. It, regularly reviews its governing documents. (Here I would
refer back to what I said earlier about making sure you have the
structure and the constitution that fits you for where you are trying
to go, rather then where you necessarily are at the moment);
- Has a clear management structure including a clearly identified
management body who act collectively and take decisions, are not
influenced by private interests, have clear rules for delegating
functions and understand the different roles of staff, volunteers and
trustees or management committee members;
- Involves its users in developing the organisation’s policies and
can show through the activities it undertakes that it understands
their needs;
- Manages its resources effectively and is open in the way in which it
conducts its business.
Over the past three or four years at Birmingham
Voluntary Service Council we have developed a quality development
programme which enables us to help voluntary and community organisations
to look systematically at their organisations and to identify areas for
development and improvement. As part of that programme, we developed our
own quality system tailored to the very small organisation that relies
entirely on volunteers. It is called ‘Quality First’. This has proved
a very effective way of linking capacity building within organisations
with a systematic approach to quality. It is very much a developmental
approach which takes account of where an organisation currently is and
where it wants to go.
I just want to finish with a few words about
representation. I know that one of the structures you are all looking at
is the "inter faith council". As a council for voluntary service
we struggle daily with the issue of representation. There is a real
tension when Government wants a simple, clear voice from a sector that is
as rich and diverse as the city in which it works. How can one
organisation represent that diversity effectively? Well, of course, it
cannot. But what it can do is to try to reflect that diversity in what it
does. It can also make sure it has the structures that enhance
accountability, and it can make sure that it works in partnership with
other organisations to ensure that those diverse voices are heard.
In closing, I think there is no better starting point
than the guide that was sent to me as part of a pack of background
information about today’s event: The Local Inter Faith Guide: Faith
Community Co-operation in Action. Skimming through this over the
weekend, it seems to me a really practical starting point for thinking
about the nature of the organisation and the kind of structures and
organisational systems that are needed.
Question: Thank you for that very illuminating
talk. You have talked about registered charities. Is there anything called
an "unregistered charity" and if so how can you help us on that?
Jane Slowey: No, there is not anything like
that. If you are a charity you have to be registered with the Charity
Commission. A lot of organisations that work within the voluntary
community sector are both a charity and a company limited by a guarantee.
Through its review that is going on at the moment, the Charity Commission
is looking at a possible new structure that brings those two together, and
it is likely to be called a ‘charitable incorporated company’. This
would be helpful because it is a little bit of a problem that at the
moment at the end of the year you have to satisfy the Charity Commission
that you are doing things in their way and at the same time you have to
satisfy Companies House. If you are a very small organisation with an
income of under £1,000 then you do not have to register at all even if
your objects are charitable. If they are charitable, you are covered by
that law.
Question: I am an independent Pagan member of the
South-West Regional Council of Faiths which supports a member to the South
West Regional Chamber. You mentioned regional matters before. Can you tell
us a about the West Midlands Region and what role the faith communities
play in your chamber.
Jane Slowey: We have one of the smallest
chambers in the country. The Government said that it wanted
"lean" chambers and we went for the positively skeletal! We have
a chamber of about 60 members. Of these 42, I think, are drawn from local
authorities across the region and 9 are drawn from the business community
and from the business groups and 9 are from what are known as the other
"stake holders". To put it charitably, this is a bit of a rag
bag! The voluntary and community sector groups have one place; the trade
unions have one place; there is a representative from higher education,
one from the cultural sector and one from the housing sector. You can see
that it is very diverse. There is not a representative from the faith
communities. I think that when setting up the Regional Chamber, the people
that came together to do that in a sense "copped out" when it
came to faith communities, because of the issues I was raising at the end
about representation. How in a region like the West Midlands do you
identify who that representative should be? Interestingly, I have had
quite a number of representations from faith organisations who clearly
see, looking at that composition, that the voluntary and community sector
is probably the one though which they would see their voice being heard.
The chamber has been going for about a year and it is just reviewing its
operation. I have just filled in my questionnaire response and, in answer
to the question whether the chamber is big enough, I have said ‘No’.
In answer to the question "Who else would you like to see
included" I have made a number of suggestions, including faith
communities. I have also made the point that you need to have enough
representatives to ensure that diversity is heard.
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