All Posts by Chris

1 What is the Third Sector?

This Monday I’m starting a new sequence about the Third Sector.  Recently I’ve written about a specific example of partnership working and I shall return to partnership later.

What is the third sector and is ‘third sector’ the best name for it?  You can refer to an earlier post about the scope of third sector organisations.

The Labour government’s Cabinet Office had an Office of the Third Sector between 1997 and 2010.  The current coalition government used the term Civil Society or Big Society, and has an Office for Civil Society.  Third Sector and Civil Society seem to cover much the same territory.

Terms Used to Describe the Third Sector

1. Political parties use ‘Third Sector’ and ‘Civil Society’ for organisations and activities that are not public or private sector.  These two terms are useful if you want to refer to the sector but they carry political baggage.
2. ‘Voluntary Sector’ covers similar organisations and activities.  The term has been around since the late 1970s.  Whilst most people have a rough idea what it means, it can be confusing because it covers local groups run by unpaid people and large organisations who employ staff (sometimes called the professional voluntary sector).  Organisations with established income streams, often from donations, have little in common with small community organisations.
3. ‘Community Sector’ – applies to a narrower range of organisations than ‘voluntary sector’.  It covers organisations working locally, usually with no or very few staff.  They usually don’t have their own income streams and so are dependent on grants.  Some city-wide or national organisations, representing local groups, belong to this sector.  It might  also include organisations with a national profile that work locally, eg churches.
4. ‘Not-for-profits’ describes the third sector or parts of it.  Perhaps any third sector organisation is not-for-profit but the term only makes sense where an organisation is trading.  Some use the term ‘not-for-personal-profit’ because social enterprises and mutuals do trade and generate a profit.  Sometimes people use “surplus” to show an organisation trades but not for personal profit.  Surplus cash is not always spent for community or charitable purposes and so many of these organisations could just as easily be described as private sector.  Sometimes it is difficult to see how small traders, adding value to a neighbourhood, are making less of a socio-economic contribution to their neighbourhood than social enterprises.  So, not-for-profit describes those organisations that generate surplus to be used locally and collectively but perhaps does not adequately convey a full picture of the local economy.

Do you have other names for the sector I have not identified?  Which terms do you use and how do you use them?

1 More Community Development Websites

Last Friday I posted about 10 Community Development Websites, Blogs and Forums.  Mark Woodhead in a comment to that post, has suggested six more sites.  I list them below with a brief description.  I’m planning to review some of these sites in later posts and so I have not commented on them here.

Forums and Blogs

ABCD Europe

This is similar to the Asset Based Community Development Institute, a site I covered in the previous email.  This is primarily a forum, similar to the Forum on the ABDCI website.  It may be more relevant for UK development workers.

Nurture Development Blog

See below for brief description of their website.  This is their standalone WordPress blog. It is certainly live; they post once every 1 – 2 weeks.

Websites

United Kingdom

Federation for Community Development Learning

I believe this was formerly the Federation of Community Work Training Groups, which I mention for the benefit of ancient community development workers.  They say:

“FCDL is the UK wide membership networking organisation that supports community development through advancing and promoting good quality Community Development learning and practice at local, regional and national levels. FCDL works to provide a network to support the development, evaluation and dissemination of good quality Community Development learning, training and qualification opportunities.”

Locality

Locality is a merger between BASSAC (British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres), an organisation that goes way back, and the Development Trusts Association.  They say they are “the leading nationwide network of development trusts, community enterprises, settlements and social action centres.”  Mark’s concern about their understanding of assets is possibly because they discuss buildings as assets, when they can just as easily be liabilities.  Asset Based Community Development uses assets to refer to the potential in local residents to effect change.

International

Nurture Development

This is another site that specialises in asset based community development.  They have a call to action to the effect that in communities the professionals need to step back and there should be a community builder in every neighbourhood.  In my day a community builder used bricks and mortar, presumably by builder they mean development worker.

Reflect Action

“Reflect is an innovative approach to adult learning and social change, which fuses the theories of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire with participatory methodologies.”  Perhaps I should add participatory methodologies to this list.  I’ll give it some thought and come back with more soon.

Please suggest community development sites I’ve missed and participatory methodology sites.  Thanks!

1 Six Drawbacks Using WordPress

Last Thursday, I showed you 10 reasons for using WordPress.  There are some disadvantages; although outweighed by the advantages you need to be aware so that you don’t have unrealistic expectations.

WordPress is a doorway to everything you need for a website, easily to hand.  However, to use WordPress, you need to overlay it with a theme.  Once you have a theme it’s like trying to paint your entrance hall through the letter box!  In other words, you may need help to get your WordPress site running properly.  Fortunately there’s lots of help around.

So, here are five things to watch out for:

1. It takes time to understand any content management system.  WordPress is no different from other platforms.  So, if you pick a theme and want to adapt it to your requirements it can be quite difficult at least until you’re used to the way WordPress works.
2. Security is an issue because WordPress is so popular.  Every crook and idiot in the universe seems to target it.  There are some good plug-ins that look after all this for you, but you need to install them, keep them up-to-date and be mindful of good housekeeping.
3. Good housekeeping means installing updates as soon as they become available and maintaining your site.   You must install updates because they enhance site security but they can crash your site.  This happened to me last week and it is a pain!
4. Good housekeeping includes the need to back up your site.  This is fairly complicated to set up but easy once running.  If you don’t do this, you can’t be certain you’ll recover your site should it crash!
5. Plug-ins are variable in quality and some of them are not reliable and can jeopardise your site.  So choose the popular ones, where you can be certain of their reputation.
6. As soon as you install WordPress, you have a massive site, even though initially you won’t use all its functionality.  It gets bigger when you install plug-ins and if you install too many it can slow your site down.  This is not an issue I’ve encountered too much, although some people do complain about it.

So, what has been your experience using WordPress?  Almost certainly, you will have found it’s brilliant once you’ve set it up.  It’s the set up that’s the problem.

1 Four Models of Consultancy: Introduction

George Lovell’s book “Analysis and Design” identifies four natural categories for non-directive consultancy.  (I’ve called them models of consultancy because model easier to type than “natural category”!)  They require different approaches.  It isn’t always obvious at the outset, which model best applies to a particular consultor and so the consultant needs to find the best model or models as the work progresses.    Where more than one model applies, the consultant will need to schedule the work with the consultor’s agreement.

So, the consultor might present a

1. situation they wish to analyse to plan
2. an online or real life project.   However, it may become clear the consultor is facing a number of
3. problems such as issues about software or applications, which might be about choosing the best solution or getting something to work better but as the problems persist, the consultant may find that
4. they have a case, an issue specific to the history of the organisation, that needs to be resolved before the consultor can make progress.

How the Models Apply to Web Consultancy

Over the next four posts I shall present each model in turn.  You can find out more in Lovell’s book but my contribution here will be to show how each model can apply to the work of a web consultant with third sector organisations.

These four models apply to any type of organisation.  However, private and statutory sector organisations often have more resources to throw at a problem.  They can employ staff to design their systems or hire consultants to run their systems for them.  So, a lot of the work involved in site design and maintenance can be resourced.  This is not to say these organisations don’t benefit from non-directive consultancy, just that perhaps they have less immediate need for it.

In the third sector the consultor, perhaps with an internal team, is more likely to need to take on long-term responsibility, with all the issues and conflicts that entails.  When you’re struggling with your online presence it is easy to lose sight of the real life organisational issues underpinning your lack of success online.

Lovell developed non-directive consultancy with community groups and churches so it seems logical to extend it into web consultancy with similar organisations.  He borrowed from conventional business consultancy and wealthy organisations may well borrow from non-directive consultancy.  Third sector groups may find, therefore, that non-directive consultancy has a better fit to their general ways of doing things.

Do the four options address the sorts of problems you encounter online?  Have you examples of one or more of them from your own experience?

Here is the Amazon uk page for Analysis and Design.  There are other book sellers available.

4 What Makes Content Compelling?

Of the many things you must consider to be successful in your marketplace online, perhaps the most important is good content.  Scratch that – the most important thing is excellent content!  What makes content compelling?

If your content is excellent, you need not worry so much about search engine optimisation (seo) because people will find their way to your site.  OK you may need to do some seo and conversion testing, that depends on what you’re aiming to do but with good content you’re almost there.

That’s the claim and we need to question it!

It’s certainly true if your content is compelling then you have the foundation you need for your site.  People will recommend your site, place links on their site to your site and so help you build your following.  This is a long haul strategy; you may have to post regularly for as long as 2 or 3 years to build up the site authority you need!

So, simply posting good content is unlikely to be enough.  It’s foundational but it’s worth considering what you can do to promote your content.  With some of the following you need to have made a start and have something for people to read.  They are strategies for the long haul but remember every organisation is different and sometimes there are opportunities to do things quicker!

1. Find out what your market wants and meet their wishes on and off site.
2. If your site is local then promote your site offline and locally.
3. Collect contacts’ email addresses and build an email list.
4. Encourage visitors to your site to join your email list.  Offer some good reasons to join it.
5. Encourage your subscribers to link to your site and recommend your activities.

In future posts I’ll address each of these in turn.  And I shall write about the content itself in the fullness of time.  Please share your ideas and examples of good content in the comments.

1 Alternatives to Grants

Over the last nine Mondays I’ve examined the failure of New Deal for Communities (find 11 November 2014 for the first post).  Similar stories can be told  in many other places, where the implications of receiving grant money is not understood.  We need to seriously consider alternatives to grants.

In the private sector, bank loans support businesses (except in the current recession!) and so they have a business plan that identifies a market and shows how the work will continue post-loan.  I’m fed up with 3 to 5 year projects that do good work and then collapse because the money runs out, following no attempt to develop a market.  An online presence can help develop a market and so there are fewer excuses than there used to be.

This cavalier approach to grants wastes everyone’s time.  New Deal was a 10 year programme, which is a big chunk of anyone’s life.  To get to the end and find all the work that went into it and the work we put into the Forum and Trust before New Deal, counts as nothing is frustrating.

All that work got us nowhere and the primary reason is careless and untrusting interventions from national and local government agencies.  Grant aid does not work, surely there is enough experience out there to show this conclusively?

Three Approaches to Funding

To develop local projects, consider the relative merits of the three main approaches to funding:

1. Grants have their place but must take a back seat.  Burngreave New Deal demonstrates just how damaging grant aid can be in a neighbourhood.  Everyone knows of grant-aided projects providing a brilliant local service for a few years and then collapsing as the grant source dried up.  With grants you do not need to trade and you need no customers.  Furthermore, people with no business sense administer projects, who do not understand how the economy or communities work.  In the last analysis the grant providers do not care about communities; the only thing they care about is outputs and evidence the money is deployed legitimately.
2. Loans are better than grants because they involve a relationship.  If a business has customers and is trading, loans can be helpful.  The lender has an interest in the success of the enterprise.  In theory, they won’t make a loan unless they are certain the business will work.  However, loans can be destructive because ultimately the lender will want to cut their losses when things go wrong.  Far better to pull out than risk staying in.  Again, they have no interest in business survival. let alone communities.
3. The third option is equity, where the wealthy invest their money and their time in the success of a venture.  This way they pass on expertise and identify viable projects; working together to fund and make the project work.  Equity works where people understand the local economy and how to grow business.  It implies equal commitment on the part of the investor.  Not all equity is so committed, for example shares can be impersonal although they don’t have to be.

Questions

So, what do you think about grants?  How can they be best deployed.  I’d particularly like to hear positive stories of effective use of grants.  I shall return to this topic and ask how we can do community development using loans and equity; small businesses as an alternative to community projects.  And how all of this can be supported online.  What do you think?

5 10 Community Development Websites, Blogs and Forums

Why is community development poorly represented online?  This is not a comment on the quality of community development websites, so much as an observation about how few websites about community development there are.

Today, I shall list the websites, blogs and forums I have found.  I plan to review some of them in future posts, once I get to know them better.  If you are aware of any I’ve missed, anywhere in the world, do let me know.  There must be more!

Blogs and Forums

NatCAN: National Community Activists Network

This site seems to be a follow-up to the closure of the Community Development Exchange in the UK; it is mainly a forum for its members.  The site supports all forms of activism and so it is fairly political, although non-aligned.  There are a variety of discussion groups, touching on various aspects of community development and some regional discussion groups.  Some of these seem to have very little going on.  Definitely worth a look if you’re based in the UK.  But watch out for the mysterious starfish!

This estate we’re in

So far this is the only personal blog I’ve found.  Written by a parish priest, this blog includes material about faith-based work.  There’s no pattern to posts but it seems to be live at present!

If you know of any other community development blogs, please let me know and I’ll add them to the list!

Websites

United Kingdom

Building Effective Community Ventures

This website is the work of the Association of Bridge Building Churches and promotes a workbook of the same name as the site.  People using the workbook can join a Forum.  The site claims to have blogs on it; I’m not convinced they’re blogs as we know and love them!  May be worth a look if you’re a church seeking involvement in community development.

Centre for Local Economic Strategies

These are the people who own the New Start magasine.  They say they are “the UK’s leading independent charitable research and member organisation, with a focus on economic development, regeneration and place-making.”  You can join them for £125 a year or else there’s a free newsletter.

Faith-based Regeneration Network

They say “faith-based social action happens when people of faith work together, often with others outside their faith community, to make real and positive change within their local community, or in wider society.”  I can’t work out where they have come from but the staff and trustees are from various faith traditions.

Common Purpose

I decided to include this one because “Common Purpose runs courses which give people the skills, connections and inspiration to become better leaders both at work and in society” and its reputation is good.

United States

The Asset Based Community Development Institute

This seems to be the keeper of the flame for asset based community development.  I shall be writing about abcd in the near future.  The website includes a forum which seems to be international.

Community Development Society

This site includes a blog, which is be posted a few times a week.  The society aims to support community development through “best practices, networking opportunities, tools, and other resources”.

International

Local First

Local First is a development approach that looks first for the capacity within countries before bringing in external expertise and resources, recognises that much of this capacity is found outside central government, and understands that local people need to lead their own development.

The site includes a blog with frequent posts.

International Association for Community Development

This site is “an international membership organisation for those working in or supporting community development and is open to both individuals and organisations.”  It has a blog which appears to post infrequently.

4 10 Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Website

There are many content management systems (CMS) available.  Several are suitable for community organisations and in time I may post about most of them.  Today I’ll make a start with the pros and cons of using WordPress for your website.

WordPress is possibly the most common CMS, with about 20% of websites worldwide using it.  This means it is a reliable system, its issues well-known and unlikely to disappear.  Here is a list of the advantages you might like to consider.

1. WordPress is open source, which means anyone can view the code and program the CMS.  Whilst this is not something likely to interest a beginner, it does mean there are a lot of people who can help when things go wrong.  You’re not tied to a single designer or a single company.
2. There’s no charge for WordPress.   There are some issues about free stuff online but the big advantage for community organisations is that WordPress is accessible on a small budget.
3. Because so many websites use WordPress the issues are well-known.  So, if you encounter a problem (and there are always problems!) the chances are there is already a solution.
4. A  huge community supports WordPress and so it is hard to see how it could vanish overnight.  Support for a smaller CMS that belongs to a single company might vanish should the company fold.
5. It is usually less work than designing a site in flat html and css.  Whilst you still might need help from a designer, the chances are it will be a lot cheaper to put the site together.
6. It is easy to work alongside your designer.  As soon as you set up the site, you can log in and make changes.  So, design can be about walking alongside and not leaving it all to a designer to deliver a finished product.
7. There are a many plug-ins and widgets that make the site customisable.  You can do almost anything with relatively little effort.  Many plug-ins are free and the ones you pay for are usually reasonably priced.
8. Similarly there are many themes and frameworks that can help you design the look of the site as well as its functionality.
9. WordPress started as a blogging platform and so any WordPress site can include a blog.  This is more flexible than it sounds because you can use blogs in many ways.
10. Apparently WordPress is search engine friendly.  What this means is you can structure your pages and blog posts so that search  engines can find them with relative ease.

Next time I’ll look at six disadvantages of using WordPress.

What has been your experience?

2 Consultant and Consultor

Third sector organisations do engage expert web designers but many cannot afford to spend a minimum of £3000 on a website, especially if it is not going to generate significant income.

Non-directive consultancy works better for third sector organisations planning their web presence and not because it is likely to cheaper!  The values of non-directive consultancy are more likely to match the values of the sector.  So, this is how it works.

If you engage a non-directive consultant, you are the consultor.  It is essential you understand the consultor role to get the best out of your consultant.

The Consultant – Consultor Relationship

The consultor has specialist knowledge about the purpose of their organisation, its history and background.  The consultant, supplies additional brain-power.  So, many third sector groups have a volunteer  or staff member who looks after their website.  Often the site lacks purpose or the knowledge of its in-house designer is limited.  Sometimes, a team of people maintain a site but they lack the expertise to put it together in the first place or to make major changes.

The role of the consultant is to help solve your problems.  If you know what you want and know what resources you have, sometimes it helps to have someone alongside who can challenge your thinking.  Similarly it helps to challenge your thinking if you don’t know what you want!

You are likely to need to work out how your website team is going to maintain the site.  Developing a disciplined approach is sometimes more important than the technical details.  The problems many sites encounter are to do with content not site design.

Non-Directive and Expert Approaches

A web consultant combines non-directive and expert approaches.  As a non-directive consultant, they aim to help the consultor develop a sustainable approach to their online presence.  As an expert consultant they offer you the technical know-how you need.

The issues you face may have nothing to do with computers or the Internet.  Maybe your web presence suffers because you are not able to manage your site.  Low capacity could be lack of staff or volunteers or else it could be the way you deploy your people and resources.  The consultant can help you think through the changes you need to make to be better equipped both on and off-line.

As a consultor you are in the driving seat.  You make decisions when you have the knowledge and expertise you need to develop an effective online presence.  The key is understanding your role, whichever approach the consultant uses.

If your website doesn’t do what you would like it to do, what are the reasons?

0 Reclaiming the Marketplace

Last Tuesday I wrote about the Co-operative Movement and the massive changes working people made to the country through mutuals.  They did this without the support of community development workers and usually with luke warm support from politicians.

The point is the economy is in our hands.  There was never a time when politicians supported the structures the public needs to conduct their business affairs.  How could there be?  If we need institutions we must develop our own.

An Exception

Perhaps one exception is the 1945 Labour Government.  They built the welfare state within 5 years. It is arguably the greatest of the changes brought about through co-operation and the start of its decline.  Two points:

Does the internet offer an opportunity to find our way towards another period of similar innovation?  I believe it might, provided it’s integrated into the local economy.  So long as the internet is a network of local economies and not one economy centralised in massive servers.

Quite a challenge!  How can we support local economies online?  What are the new structures we need to regenerate our communities today?