Evidence, ideas and recommendations a response from the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation to the Giving Green Paper

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1 Evidence, ideas and recommendations a response from the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation to the Giving Green Paper The Mentoring and Befriending Foundation (MBF) is a national charity that encourages the growth and development of mentoring and befriending programmes throughout England. We do this by providing a source of expert guidance, inspiring excellence and creating a force for change. MBF currently reaches over 3,600 projects in the voluntary, education and statutory sector. Our vision is of a society where mentoring and befriending can empower all people to reach their full potential and improve their future life choices. Our mission is to support the expansion of quality mentoring and befriending provision across all sectors. This submission is based on feedback from mentoring and befriending projects in direct response to the key questions set out in the Green Paper, on our experience of supporting mentoring and befriending, an activity in which the Citizenship Survey advises that 1 in 5 of all volunteers take part. We have only addressed those questions set out in the Green Paper where MBF has comments to make. For further information please contact: Sue Bradley Head of Policy, Information and Research Mentoring and Befriending Foundation Suite 1, 4 th Floor, Building 3, Universal Square, Devonshire Street North, Manchester, M12 6JH sue.bradley@mandbf.org.uk Tel:

2 Increasing opportunities for giving 1. The government is supporting the engagement of people from all walks of life in giving, including the business sector. MBF has been working to encourage more business involvement in the mentoring and befriending sector, through employer supported volunteering and encouraging businesses to provide mentoring support to civil society organisations. 2. We know there are some excellent models of business involvement in voluntary groups which cover all forms of giving. They seem to work best when there is a reciprocal benefit to both parties. For instance, Zurich Community Trust (ZCT) has enabled the development and funding of an innovative model of employee volunteering, playing a pivotal role in the development of the Call in Time project, a telephone befriending service for isolated and lonely older people. To date, over 600 isolated older people have been befriended by over 200 volunteers. This number is continually growing and by 2014 it is hoped to reach over 1,500 people in later life. 3. As well as support for volunteering, creative help in kind from business can manifest itself in many different ways, for instance, when asked for new ideas on how to improve accessible and general ways to give, one mentoring and befriending project suggested raising the profile of "Keep the change" campaigns in shops and supermarkets. MBF recommends and is working to be part of the engagement of the business world to understand its shared responsibility for contributing to social good. New approaches to volunteering 4. When asked about the opportunities and barriers to growing online donation platforms in the future, including for micro volunteering etc, projects emphasised the need for a face-to-face interview to produce good volunteering - even micro-volunteering. Without this investment bad volunteering experiences could be more likely through lack of guidance, support and information to volunteers. However if the right start and support structure is put in place, projects felt the use of websites might appeal more to young people and attract them into volunteering if it worked. Others, identifying safeguarding processes and the importance of good inductions for new staff/ volunteers suggested that it was important that innovative ideas such sliver.com are put in place to attract more people to give their time but that it is recognised that the funding which pays for high standards of volunteer recruitment, induction and ongoing support will still be as important. Improving social impact reporting 5. Small community groups including many of the mentoring and befriending projects that MBF works with need support to measure their impact, taking into account both the needs of their 2

3 immediate and wider audience, and then access the practical support which enables them to demonstrate success or where more needs to be done. MBF believes this is done much better through an accessible and co-ordinated infrastructure that understands and values the work of the grassroots projects. 6. MBF is committed to developing a range of support resources which will enable mentoring and befriending providers to improve their social impact reporting, capturing both the value they bring to their communities as well as the contributions they make to complementing and enabling public spending to be directed where it is really needed. 7. At present, small community organisations such as mentoring and befriending groups often feel disenfranchised because the fees charged for support or training to implement the various social impact reporting models are very high. Small projects are rightly unsure as to whether what they are getting is right or appropriate for them, and they are unsure as to whether their audiences are going to be impressed by the results at the end of the day. There is a great deal of confusion and competition between the various approaches advertised by competing developers, as well as mixed messages from both government and commissioners on what models to use and whether the results they provide are either useful or credible. 8. The result is that the groups the Green Paper wants to help have lost confidence in the range of different models being promoted and desperately need something that is cost-effective, practical to use and provides a credible means of being able to show the impact that is important to their various audiences, from service users to donors to funders to service users. 9. MBF believes that government s support for the Big Society makes it important that they avoid backing one particular methodology, in favour of agreeing the key elements of what social impact reporting needs to show in order to avoid excluding a wide range of community groups and support the wider need for clear public accountability. 10. Government also needs to recognise that it is essential for civil society groups to be able to access secondary level infrastructure support to help them with their capacity building and improve operational effectiveness as well as the expertise offered by community accountants, trainers in measuring impact, etc. Visibility - harnessing the power of social media 11. In 2010, MBF initiated a campaign based around its own website to raise the profile of mentoring and befriending. Supporting Life's Journeys brought together thousands of people who support mentoring and befriending up and down the nation. It enabled mentoring and befriending projects, volunteers and service users to highlight why mentoring and befriending matter to them and why they need investment to survive. 3

4 12. We allowed mentoring and befriending projects to speak for themselves, through social media, web media and high profile events which brought home the incredible range of settings where mentoring and befriending is used. Staff, volunteers and service users also took part in a virtual dance which was recorded and then spread as a viral through social media to spread the message and build a conscious sense of community and identity amongst the mentoring and befriending sector. Feedback from mentoring and befriending projects suggests this was an important step. i. Great to hear and meet other projects ; Brilliant way to raise awareness and recognise the fantastic work supporting people through mentoring and befriending ; Thank you an excellent opportunity to recognise the contribution befrienders make!. MBF report on Supporting Life s Journeys Other data or other resources that can assist the media 13. The media have an important part to play in creating the right environment for increasing the giving time and money. Through the Supporting Life s Journey campaign we have trained volunteer mentoring and befriending ambassadors to work with the media locally. MBF has also worked with those responsible for releasing funds collected through media campaigns to ensure they understand key evidence of quality in mentoring and befriending organisations. For instance, BBC Children in Need, which provides grants nationally to support work with disadvantaged children and young people, approached MBF to develop a checklist for its grant assessors to use when reviewing applications from mentoring and befriending programmes. We fund a wide range of mentoring and befriending projects and have noticed that applications for this type of work have increased in recent years....the checklist helps us to assess how projects will ensure the wellbeing and safety of all participants in the project so that young people benefit as much as possible from the relationship. Jan Carruthers, Grants and Policy Officer, BBC Children in Need 14. The checklist describes good practice in the management and operation of mentoring and befriending projects. It is based on the Approved Provider Standard, the quality framework devised by MBF specifically for mentoring and befriending projects, but with significant differences. The checklist is shorter and more streamlined than APS, as it focuses on specific aspects of delivery that relate to mentoring and befriending programmes. Celebrating giving 15. As a national voice for mentoring and befriending projects in England MBF is keen to celebrate the reciprocal benefit for everyone involved in mentoring and befriending relationships, and that extends to funders. One of last year s Supporting Life s Journeys 4

5 awards went to the Harris Cartier LLP for their support of The Back-Up Trust, London. Harris Cartier LLP is the exclusive sponsor of The Back-Up Trust. In they pledged approx 61,000. This is an exceptional amount for a small law firm. They also conduct regular fundraising efforts and volunteer within the project. This mutually beneficial two-way relationship has deeply impacted on the quality of service offered by both organisations and ultimately has had a positive influence on the spinal cord injury community. Norms for giving time and money 16. MBF asked projects for their views on establishing norms for giving time and money and projects suggested there should be a sliding scale starting at 0.5% - 5% based on income, collected like tax but accountable and acknowledged by good causes. They also see the potential for increasing employee volunteering although didn t feel it should be made mandatory. They also want to see Timebanks promoted for more people to donate hours to. Some felt that with the current climate people could be expected to donate time / money whilst their hours of work increase and their wages etc decrease, which indicates that the government needs to assess the whole culture of work and giving to send out the right messages of balance between responsibility to work duties and the wider society. Exchange 17. Another project suggested that charities could help themselves by setting up a Freecycle type website specifically for charity where all proceeds go to a specific charity or charities. Supporting an increase in giving of time and money 18. MBF believes government should do more to acknowledge and celebrate the mutually beneficial nature of volunteering activities like mentoring and befriending whereby both the volunteer and service user can get real benefits out of the relationship Both myself and my befriender have similar backgrounds in teaching and are both fluent in languages in which we often converse. I have been teaching my befriender Italian as she is going on holiday to Italy soon and hopes to be able to use what she has learnt to help her converse with the locals. (E, 95, is an ex- teacher and travel writer, she is currently writing her autobiography with the help of her befriender as she is no longer able to use a computer due to age-related health conditions.) For E and her befriender, befriending is a two-way process with dual outcomes for both service user and befriender. Befriending has helped E maintain a high level of intellectual stimulation which in return has helped her befriender learn a new skill. 19. MBF also recommends the strength that lies in peer support, where people who have been helped through mentoring and befriending are often motivated to put something back by 5

6 helping others and provide input into the development of new services for their own communities as illustrated by the quote below. When I was away at college I had a busy social life and lots of friends. After my course finished and I returned home I was very lonely and isolated and became really depressed. I wanted to do all the things that everyone else my age was doing like going to the cinema, bowling and getting a job. I helped set up the charity as there was no other service that helped people like me participate in young people s activities. I now have four befrienders who I regularly spend time with and my social life is great. (H, 26, has cerebral palsy) Recommendations 20. We hope our experience in supporting this significant part of the volunteering sector and the feedback we ve received from projects will help further understanding of the qualities of giving which need to be safeguarded in whatever innovative and experimental forms that giving, whether of time or money take in the future. 21. Our recommendations to the Green Paper proposals are:- To continue to support the engagement of the business sector and those organisations that are building links. To work with the charitable sector to establish basic requirements for social impact reporting that reflect the capacity of small community groups. To acknowledge and support the work of second tier infrastructure organisations in building the capacity of small community groups to demonstrate their impact. To use the experience that organisations such as MBF have gained through innovative profile raising campaigns. To recognise and celebrate the mutual benefit that donors of time and money and beneficiaries get from the relationships created by giving when they are established on the principles of good practice. March