Imagine being head hunted by the British Government to take on a prestigeous role with Her Majesty's Government.
Imagine resigning from your Board positions to avoid having a conflict of interest.
Imagine steeling yourself for your first day of work.
Imagine the night before you start your new job, you find out that your role has no salary!
This happened to Lord Nat Wei of Shoreditch, the youngest member of the British House of Lords.
What is the connection to us in not for profit land?
He is designing the approach to building the Big Society in the UK. In other words, he is trying to find strategies to get people to volunteer.
His 3 day role comes with a nice desk but no salary.
His reaction? After 6 months in the role, Lord Wei has reduced his hours from three days to one day a week saying to friends: " he is cutting his hours to allow him to earn more money and "have more of a life"
In other words, he does not have enough time to volunteer. Yes thats right the man charged with increasing volunteerism in England is reducing his own volunteering! Check out the Article on his situation!
Some Friday Facts
- Volunteer Management is not free. Why does David Cameron, the Prime Minister of England pay his Communications Director £140 000 and pay nothing to his director of volunteerism? How about we swap that around-ask the Comms director to work for free and employ a volunteering adviser for £140 000?
- Not Enough time is the top reason in the UK for people to not getting involved in volunteering. Lord Wei has just shown this in action. Love to see his national strategy now for people who say they need more time for family and work.
- Money reveals priorities The government spends £4.9 million on special advisers (ie media advisers). This is about the total budget for Volunteering England. The PM's own special adviser team is being paid about £1.3million of that money - a little less than the amount the Cabinet Office gave to Volunteering England last year. And guess who got reduced funding?
- Accurate Role Descriptions will keep people engaged - the treatment of Lord Wei happens to lots of volunteers. They are told one thing on recruitment and another when they start the job!
How does your agency, community, department show their real value of volunteering?
Excellent post, Martin. I've blogged about this as well (http://coyoteblog.posterous.com/uk-volunteering-tsar-doesnt-have-time-to-volu) and updated it with a link to your blog. If I didn't know better, I would have thought this came from the Onion web site.
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