Last time I discussed the nature of volunteering and today I’ll write about how voluntary groups evolve.
Most large professional voluntary sector organisations never plan to be successful. They start as small groups, discover a successful formula and grow. For some, their growth was so long ago, the public have long forgotten their roots.
Groups often start as small self-help groups in a neighbourhood or else people with a common interest collaborate across a city, region or country. With the Internet, common interests across larger areas, maybe even continents, is a possibility.
Most groups have a short life-span. They have an objective, meet it and dissolve. Or else they get nowhere and their members move on to other things.
How Voluntary Groups Evolve
A common example is churches, either on their own or perhaps several churches within a neighbourhood, find an issue and set up a group to tackle it. Church members will have a variety of aims for their work; to relieve the consequences of the issue, to tackle the issue through campaigning or as church’s mission. In a secular group, you will find parallel mixed motives.
I’ll stay with churches to illustrate the conflict that plays out. Some church members emphasise the interpersonal aspects of the work; they speak in terms of caring or sharing the love of God and for them the issue is less important than the opportunity to befriend and care for people in need. Others might emphasise the professional aspects of the work; for them, they understand caring as doing things properly, so the standard of care can be guaranteed.
Professionalisation
The longer a project persists, the more likely it is the professional approach will prevail. This can be a healthy development, but not because professional groups are better than amateur groups. As a project grows into a voluntary organisation and eventually cuts away its roots, two things should happen:
- an issue identified by a church or community group moves into the mainstream. If it is successful, it becomes less urgent for the activists, as paid staff take over responsibilities and the change guarantees the care it offers is reliable.
- it frees up the original church or group of activists to take a rest and perhaps find a new need. Their experience may mean their response to the new need will be more effective.
It is easy to assume the organisations we see around us are somehow fixed. The reality is most organisations have a relatively short life-span and are at some stage of a life-cycle because the environment they operate within is protean.
Community and Voluntary Groups
Whilst the third sector includes community and voluntary groups, there is an intersection between them where one evolves into the other. People move between organisations; learning and sharing their experience and expertise.
I’m not sure there is that much understanding of how to represent the protean nature of the third sector online.
What might be the priorities whilst building web presence for evolving and transforming organisations? How do websites evolve with their organisations?