Talk:Volunteer strategy consultation 2015

This is a good place to provide general feedback on the volunteer strategy consultation

I welcome all attempts to bring more volunteers into the charity's activities and I'm glad that the Board and Office are taking steps to encourage that.

However, as I was a strong proponent of non-board committees as a means of attracting more volunteers into regular activity in liaison with the Board and Office, I am naturally disappointed to see the suggestion of replacing them with working groups. Working groups are, by definition, made up of subject specialists, focussed on singular objectives, and time-limited by nature. When a working group has accomplished its task, it disbands. I would suggest that those features are precisely the features that we do not want if we are to encourage greater participation by volunteers. We need volunteer groups to be open, so that nobody feels they don't have the expertise to contribute; we need them to be responsive to change in their focus; we need them to have the ability to consider multiple topics in their area of interest; and we need them to have a continuous existence, preferably independent of the Board and Office, to allow them the additional role of "critical friend" of each of those. --RexxS (talk) 15:30, 5 June 2015 (BST)

Thanks @RexxS:. Guess we should've checked Wikipedia(!). So the intention here is to have a fairly open discussion about how we should define these groups - so feedback on scope and composition is useful. But more importantly in this case it certainly isn't our intention to imply that the working groups should be temporary or made up solely of subject experts. They might be closer to 'special interest groups' (more permanent and composed of people with that interest, as the OKF seems to use) but that maybe implies (1) expertise is required, and (2) that they're almost peripheral to core activity (which is of course not the intention here). Maybe we need to think of another name? Sjgknight (talk) 15:41, 5 June 2015 (BST)

This may be an issue with nomenclature rather than of substance. My own view of the working groups is that they should be open, entirely flexible as to membership, and should be formed wherever and whenever a group of volunteers thinks that working in a focused way would be useful or interesting. Groups would normally be permanent, unless some volunteers wanted to set up a temporary group for some time-limited task. Members needn't be subject specialists, but would have a common interest in some area of work, and a desire to work with the charity and other volunteers towards a common aim. The group itself would define that aim, and could change it whenever they wanted. Groups can and indeed should be flexible in what they focus on, and if a group wants to address multiple topics or to dive into some specific area that should be fine. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:57, 5 June 2015 (BST)

<irony>You mean a bit like the present non-board committees?</irony> Seriously, if there are aspects of the current committees that are not satisfactory, then reform is better than revolution, in my humble opinion. --RexxS (talk) 19:40, 5 June 2015 (BST)