Abstract
Employee Volunteering (EV) schemes represent a cornerstone of many company Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies, being identified as a classic “win-win” situation in which businesses contribute significant resources into local communities while gaining a more skilled and engaged workforce and increased reputational benefits. This article questions the “win-win” scenario of EV arguing that existing research has focused predominantly upon the business–employee dimension while largely ignoring the role of third sector organizations engaging in these relationships. By focusing more directly on third sector experiences, the article identifies four “gaps” which place considerable constraints on the reach and impact of EV. It demonstrates the importance of not simply presuming a “win” for the third sector and the added value that can be gained from redirecting EV research toward the “business/nonprofit interface.”
Introduction
Employee Volunteering (EV) schemes enable employees to volunteer in the local community with the support of their employers through formal and informal policies and programs (Tschirhart, 2005). As an increasingly significant aspect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies, EV schemes have been identified as a classic “win-win” scenario with businesses providing significant resources into local communities, while gaining reputational benefits for the firm and skills development for employees (de Gilder, Schuyt, & Breedijk, 2005). Despite growing interest, recent analysis suggests that engagement remains relatively low with company engagement levels rarely extending beyond 10% to 20% and third sector 1 engagement dominated by larger charities (Brooks & Schlenkhoff-Hus, 2013). Given EV’s notional “win-win” status, this raises questions regarding why take-up is so low and what barriers are restricting engagement?
This article seeks to examine this paradox. In doing so, it presents a theoretical approach focused specifically upon the experiences of the third sector organizations and the employee volunteers, rather than the more traditional business–employee focused analysis (Rodell, Schröder, & Keating, 2016). By adopting this approach, the article demonstrates that the notional “win-win” for EV is not inevitable and that too often the “win” for the third sector is simply presumed rather than analyzed.
The article develops three core arguments—first, it outlines the problem of overstating the win-win in existing approaches to EV. Second, it highlights the importance of focusing more attention on the role of third sector organizations. Third, it utilizes this alternative focus to conceptualize a series of gaps which can restrict the ability of EV to achieve its potential. To bridge these gaps, the article argues, greater consideration needs to be given to the infrastructural support processes underpinning engagement. The article begins by summarizing theoretical approaches to EV, highlighting an over-emphasis upon business-focused analyses at the expense of closer examination of the “business/nonprofit interface” (Harris, 2012, p. 899). It will outline a series of U.K.-based research projects focused upon the interactive cross-sectoral processes surrounding EV and the experiences of third sector organizations within this. Subsequently, it will highlight the four “gaps,” derived from this research data, which it is argued, can shape the ability of EV activities to realize their “win-win” potential.
Existing Approaches to EV
EV focuses upon employees giving their time, knowledge, or skills as part of a community service, outreach, or CSR activity during company time without additional compensation or direct personal remuneration (Bussell & Forbes, 2008; de Gilder et al., 2005). A plethora of definitions have emerged with Rodell et al. (2016) noting that definitions vary according to whether the volunteering is employee initiated (Grant, 2012) or employer defined and organized, and the extent to which it takes place on corporate or own time, and so on. However, all these terms describe broadly the same phenomena, defined as: employed individuals giving time during a planned activity for an external nonprofit or charitable group or organization. (Rodell et al., 2016, p. 57)
Rodell et al. (2016) note “areas of muddiness” regarding exactly what constitutes EV, so this article makes a clear distinction between EV that is attached to the organization and volunteering that is self-initiated, undertaken in the personal domain, and separated from the organizational context.
EV schemes represent a core aspect of the evolving CSR agenda with research indicating increased engagement across Europe and North America. Rodell et al. (2016), for example, estimate that at least 60% of companies have formal EV programs with participation rates and hours volunteered increasing annually. One can also identify a series of newly emerging international initiatives such as the United Nations Impact 2030 and the Employee Volunteering European Network.
EV research has adopted a broad range of approaches with many studies examining the strategic value for companies of developing relationships with nonprofit organizations. Aligning EV programs with their own strategic goals, it is argued, increases the propensity for businesses to generate a range of internal benefits, including increased motivation/morale (Caligiuri, Mencin, & Jiang, 2013; do Paco & Nave, 2013), training (Basil, Runte, Easwaramoorthy, & Barr, 2008; Cycyota, Ferrante, & Schroeder, 2016), retention and attraction of new employees (Pajo & Lee, 2011; Sanchez-Hernandez & Gallardo-Vázquez, 2013), and increased employee commitment and attachment (Booth, Park, & Glomb, 2009; Jones, 2010; Peloza, Hudson, & Hassay, 2009). Similarly, sociological and psychological approaches reflect on what motivates employees to volunteer and how engagement may strengthen organizational commitment (Clary et al., 1998; Rodell et al., 2016).
Studies have also examined EV through the lens of social exchange and social identity theory perspectives whereby employees who perceive high levels of organizational support are more likely to reciprocate with higher levels of emotional attachment to the company (Gatignon-Turnau & Mignonac, 2015; Jones, 2010).These approaches conceptualize the shaping of organizational identity through volunteering and the interaction of employees’ own identities in terms of how they perceive or attribute their company’s values (Kim, Lee, Lee, & Kim, 2010).
. . . corporate volunteers are likely to reciprocate with affective commitment in response to a variety of social and psychological benefits derived from CSEV, such as perceptions of skill acquisitions . . ., expression and fulfilment of prosocial motives, well-being at work and satisfaction with life in general. (Gatignon-Turnau & Mignonac, 2015, p. 9)
EV programs enable organizations to enhance a prosocial identity which in turn fosters a sense of pride and emotional bonding, enabling employees to “make sense” of their emotional commitment to their company (Meyer & Allen, 2007). Present throughout most of the literature outlined above is the assumption that EV represents a classic “win-win” scenario (Caligiuri et al., 2013) providing benefits to the employing organization, the employee volunteers, and the receiving third party organization (Kim et al., 2010; Rodell et al., 2016).
Given its portrayal as a growing phenomenon producing “win-win” outcomes, recent statistics somewhat surprisingly suggest that EV’s scale and impact remains relatively limited and peripheral for both businesses and third sector organizations. A Volunteering Matters (the United Kingdom) study noted that while approximately 70% of Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 businesses have active EV programs, only 23% of private sector organizations and 33% of public sector organizations engaged in volunteering (Brooks & Schlenkhoff-Hus, 2013, p. 4). In addition, while Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) represent an overwhelming majority of U.K. businesses, “only 14 per cent . . . have access to [EV] schemes” (Brooks & Schlenkhoff-Hus, 2013, p. 6). Similarly, within the EU, engagement levels generally represented less than 10% of available employees even within countries with strong EV engagement activity (Perez et al., 2014, p. 28).
It is not only within the private sector that statistics identify limited engagement. In the Netherlands, the “Management by Objectives” Monitor noted that only 10% of 5,450 volunteer organizations surveyed were actively working with companies (cited in Perez et al., 2014, p. 32). In the United Kingdom, the majority of EV processes and business partnerships involve larger third sector groups with incomes over £100k (Thompson, 2012), but only 18% of organizations registered with the charity commission fit this category. In addition, while more than 6 million people have ticked the volunteer box on their “linkedin” profile, only 55,000 volunteer opportunities have been listed (Murray, 2015).
While these statistics inevitably represent only a partial view of EV development, they do raise important questions for research. If EV represents a classic “win-win” scenario for business, their employees, and the third sector (Caligiuri et al., 2013), and this is framed by a socioeconomic context in which it should flourish, the inevitable question must be “what is holding back the levels of engagement with EV?” To address this question, research must look more closely at the “win-win” assumption and particularly the impact of EV on the third sector.
The Absent Partner: Problematizing the Win-Win From a Third Sector Perspective
In a 2012 Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly article, Margaret Harris called for nonprofit scholars to “undertake systematic empirical investigation of what is happening at the business/nonprofit interface” (Harris, 2012, p. 899), noting that prior research was predominantly business led and largely ignored the experiences of the nonprofits. EV analysis undoubtedly sits at this interface and has experienced the one-sided analysis Harris identifies. With the exception of a handful of studies (Bussell & Forbes, 2008; Caligiuri et al., 2013; Muthuri, Matten, & Moon, 2009), EV analysis has focused upon two sides of a three-way relationship; evaluating the “wins” for businesses and employees, while largely neglecting the potential “win” for third sector organizations.
As third sector organizations often rely on volunteers, the simple provision of a greater number of volunteers through EV is assumed to represent a “win” for these groups. Peloza and Hassay’s (2006) study, for example, states that, Charities are often heavily reliant upon volunteers for the delivery of programs and services and clearly benefit from the additional support provided by employee volunteers. (Peloza & Hassay, 2006, p. 357)
Indeed, their study goes on to suggest that charities are “perhaps best positioned to reap the benefits of intra-organizational volunteering” despite their study only interviewing volunteers and not actually engaging with third sector organizations at all. Research has failed to adequately address the building of the relationship with the third sector, and the myriad of issues and challenges that these organizations face in engaging with EV.
This article seeks to contribute to redressing this imbalance and to demonstrate why examining EV from a third sector perspective provides significant insight. Adopting this approach can help to explain the engagement paradox outlined earlier, to consider whether EV is being utilized to its fullest potential and to examine whether what is on offer actually reflects the resources sought by the third sector from business engagement. In addition, it places significant emphasis upon the conditions under which this engagement is taking place. By adopting this approach, the article presents a more critical standpoint which addresses not only the impact and potential, but also the limitations, of EV from the perspectives and experiences of all groups involved.
EV in the U.K. Context
To examine EV from a third sector perspective, one must first contextualize the socioeconomic conditions that shape, enable, or restrict the sector’s engagement with business. The United Kingdom represents an interesting case with an extensive EV framework built upon a strong commitment to CSR within the business community and a heritage of active community organizations. The Conservative government has engrained EV and business/third sector collaboration into its policy agendas—under David Cameron via the “Big Society” and the “three-day leave” agendas 2 and more recently under Theresa May through the emergence of concepts such as “Shared Society,” “Inclusive Economy,” and “Social Action.” 3 Embedded within these initiatives are policies designed to facilitate the socialization of business and the marketization of the third sector, within a context of severe economic austerity and drastically reduced third sector funding. National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) estimates that the U.K. voluntary sector has experienced a drop in public funding of 9.4% between 2010 and 2016; approximately £3.3 billion over this period (https://data.ncvo.org.uk/a/almanac16/income-from-government/#Income_from_government_the_policy_context). Professor Diane Leat characterized these challenges as “doing more with less, less background support, more competition, more demand and higher expectations” (Leat, 2012, p. 14).
Concurrently, policy agendas have encouraged the third sector to engage with business CSR activities and forge new cross-sectoral relationships as a route to enhancing long-term sustainability (Alcock, 2010; Leat, 2012). Nonprofit and social policy scholars point to the broader changes within which EV operates suggesting we are entering a new epoch in state/third sector relations, bringing a form of trial separation or at least a “partial decoupling of the state and the third sector” (Macmillan, 2013, p. 187). Others highlight the risks of commercializing the third sector—including the race to win contracts and seek alternative funding sources—which threaten to undermine the sector’s authenticity and ability to meet the needs of its communities (Baines, Hardill, & Wilson, 2011; Purkis, 2012).
Faced with such dramatic cuts, there has inevitably been a drive toward greater involvement of business in civil society; whether through CSR (including EV), philanthropy, employability agendas, or through contracting the private sector to provide public services (Farnsworth & Holden, 2006). The third sector is being encouraged to engage with business in a climate of reduced funding but heightened community demand. Some have questioned the desirability of increased business/third sector engagement when the overwhelming emphasis appears to be marketization in preparation for state withdrawal (Macmillan, 2013; Purkis, 2012). The insights offered by these approaches combined with an understanding of the broader policy context, helps to contextualize some of the opportunities and risks EV may offer.
The Study and Methodology
The data in this article stem from a series of projects examining the development of EV in the United Kingdom and the experiences of different actors (business, employees, and third sector). The research methodology draws from Participatory Action Research (PAR) approaches (Bergold & Thomas, 2012; Bradbury, 2015) which prioritizes “working with” participants as opposed to “doing research on” them (Barnes, 2005). The research examined the challenges, drivers, motivations, and lived experiences of the actors engaged in EV, including the individual experiences of employee volunteers and the organizational (both business and third sector) experiences shaping these processes. The data come from three studies (2009-2016) and a series of Employee Volunteering Network (EVN) Workshops coordinated by the research team between 2010 and 2015. Table 1 summarizes the focus for each of these projects, the data collected, and which aspects of the data have been utilized within this analysis.
Note. EV = employee volunteering.
Purposive nonrandom sampling techniques were used to recruit participants (Mason, 2002; Ritchie, Spencer, & O’Connor, 2003), ensuring a broadly representative spread of business, third sector, and consultancy actors and a cross-section of values, perspectives, and approaches. Third sector organizations included regionally located small and medium-size charities as well as large national bodies. The sampling techniques are nonrandom and involve some degree of snowballing. All interviews were transcribed verbatim. The research was approved via ethics committees and participants gave informed consent.
Transcripts were analyzed using thematic coding of emerging themes (Mason, 2002; Ritchie et al., 2003). Qualitative data were examined using inductive thematic analysis whereby the emerging themes were explored through an iterative process of moving back and forth between the themes and the extant literature to identify patterns of meaning (Braun & Clarke, 2006; McShane & Cunningham, 2012). This iterative process underpinned the development of the “gaps” framework as a way of conceptualizing emerging themes regarding different actors’ experiences of EV participation, the conditions under which they were engaging, and the benefits, challenges, barriers, or opportunities for their organizations’ engagement. These gaps should not be seen as functioning in isolation from one another but as interrelated. While not the only way to interpret these themes, the gaps framework offers a useful conceptualization of the challenges facing business, employee volunteers, and third sector organizations in realizing the win-win in EV.
The gaps framework has been tested and validated as useful for reflecting the primary challenges surrounding EV. In 2016, the research team utilized this framework to structure a series of EV workshops with over 650 business, third sector, and public sector organizations at 11 separate locations across England. These workshops were organized in partnership with Office for Civil Society (Department for Culture, Media & Sport, the United Kingdom), and the framework was reiterated and substantiated in the reports from this new phase. (Downloadable at http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/management/esv). To illustrate and evidence the gaps framework, we review the emergent themes that constitute each gap and where appropriate illustrate with direct quotes, both to reflect the collective experiences of all participants and also the differing perspectives of actors across sectors. Quotes are drawn from the three studies, the EVN workshops, and the 11 regional workshops where the framework was tested.
The article will now outline the four key interrelated gaps—the skills, capacity, knowledge and infrastructure gaps. It will demonstrate that the interplay between these gaps creates a challenging environment for creating successful EV engagement and help to explain the continuing participation paradox.
The Skills Gap
The research highlighted a mismatch between the business-led prioritizing of numbers of volunteers and hours volunteered and third sector concerns regarding the actual utilization and impact of the volunteers. While EV offers significant additional resources to the third sector, the research highlighted an important skills gap restricting their impact. In particular, the skills being offered were not necessarily those most needed by third sector organizations ( Cook, Burchell, & Platt-Lowe, 2013). Key issues incorporated within the skills gap theme included a greater demand for professional skills over more general volunteering support, the nature and scale of volunteering activities being undertaken, volunteers’ evaluations of the activities they enjoyed undertaking, and employers’ evaluation of the developmental benefits of volunteering.
The incongruence between skills demand and supply, in terms of both scale and skill level, was a consistent theme emerging within third sector interviews and EVN workshops. In terms of scale, an imbalance existed between the utilization of short, resource-intensive engagement processes and longer term, less intensive, targeted models. One-off “challenge-day” style activities represent a traditional focus for EV. While skills-based volunteering is evolving, “challenge-days” still predominate, partly because they allow businesses to involve large numbers of employees with a clearly defined outcome, good publicity potential, and measurable impact. Although these activities can enable some third sector groups to undertake transformations, they lack the resources to achieve; many groups wanted fewer volunteers but for a longer period.
Well we’ve had offers of the one day blitzes . . . we never have anything like that needs to be done, . . . That would be way more trouble than it’s worth. I mean it’s just good for their publicity purposes but it doesn’t actually benefit us much because you know why would you want a team of volunteers you’ve never met before, you’ve no idea their abilities or what the hell are you gonna give them to do? . . . (Third Sector Interview 1 Brokerage Project)
Building partnership-based relationships over time, they argued, enables volunteers to work on longer term developmental projects and become more engaged with the organization.
Third sector organizations also emphasized their desire to gain skilled resources from EV rather than the generic volunteer support of “challenge” days. Skills in marketing, accounting, IT, planning, and finance were key areas identified. EV often creates an anomaly whereby skilled professionals (accountants, lawyers, etc.) are undertaking painting, decorating, and other low-skilled activities rather than providing their distinct professional skills. This reflects Bussell and Forbes’s (2008) contention that EV activities are often “driven by the needs of the employing organisation rather than the receiving organisation” (Bussell & Forbes, 2008, p.254).
Business participants also highlighted a skills gap of their own. Employers were keen to develop skills-based volunteering opportunities but were encountering several challenges in doing so. Evidence is growing concerning the value of challenging employees to utilize their professional skills in alternative settings (Burchell & Cook, 2011; McCallum, Schmid, & Price, 2013). However, employers still appear relatively unsure of what skills employees can strengthen through EV and how to utilize this within a HR setting. Simultaneously, third sector organizations struggle to market skills development opportunities to employers effectively.
The motivations and drivers that employees identify for volunteering often appear incongruent with the development of a skills-based volunteering framework. The opportunity to “give something back” and “do something different” from their day jobs were key motivations for volunteering, with employees often preferring opportunities to do more “hands-on,” manual activities. This reflects Grant’s (2012) claim that “employees often seek out experiences in one domain of life that substitute for what is missing in other domains” (Grant, 2012, p. 596). Employees prioritized activities where they could “see a finished product” and “make a difference,” seeking volunteering opportunities which broke with the “monotonous” day job or the “isolated environment of being sat in an office” (excerpts from employee interviews from all three projects). This challenge is captured by the following quote: they [employees] want to go as a team, they don’t want to engage long-term and in skills. It’s harder to get people to volunteer for personal, face-to-face mentoring activities, but these are the bits that are needed most. (Business, Leicestershire Workshop)
Employees and managers identified “soft/generic skills,” that is, empathy, networking, and improved confidence, as EV outcomes but rarely identified “core” skills development. Furthermore, many were reluctant to link volunteering to career development, perceiving volunteering to be something given to help others rather than for personal benefit.
I work for a good company, on a good salary with good benefits . . . not everybody has had the same opportunities . . . So for me I just feel I have a responsibility to give something back to the local community . . . (Brokerage Study Focus Group 1)
While the majority of employee volunteers welcomed the opportunity for their volunteering to be recognized, few wanted it formalized: I wouldn’t ever want to put that sort of stuff into an appraisal, people’s actual job because I mean you’re just setting yourself up for making volunteering a competition, you’re making it into, you know, you’re forced to do it, to do well in your job basically rather than you’re doing it because you want to. (Brokerage Study Focus Group 3)
Connecting EV to skills development is challenging as employees appear highly motivated by the break from the workplace that EV offers and fear that its formalization through instrumental skills agendas could conflict with the prosocial motivations of “giving back” without “personal gain” (Gatignon-Turnau & Mignonac, 2015). There is, however, potential in harnessing the motivation to “make a difference,” if one can demonstrate to employees the increased community impact resulting from the utilization of work-based, professional skills.
To summarize, EV activity needs to overcome a skills gap which requires better matching of third sector need with employee skills. Without addressing this gap, the resources offered will not necessarily generate the best benefits for the third sector or enhance the skills development potential of EV for employers and employees. However, this is difficult to bridge with “challenge” activities still more popular than small-scale incremental support, employers not always clear about what skills development staff gain through volunteering, and many third sector organizations struggling to pitch skills-based opportunities. There is a disparity between the skills agenda and what employees say they enjoy about volunteering. The skills gap poses significant questions for existing EV research. While attention has been devoted to identifying and classifying motivations to volunteer, and the development of work design approaches to creating effective volunteering programs (Grant, 2012; Pajo & Lee, 2011), little attempt has been undertaken to connect these dimensions to the needs and challenges of the third sector and the contradictions that might exist when one is seeking to satisfy their needs with the demands of the employer and the employee.
The Capacity Gap
While organizations were able to recognize the potential benefits of EV, significant barriers existed regarding the capacity of some to actually engage. The capacity issue has been neglected in existing research, with little focus on what types of organizations are more likely to engage and the implications of this. Within the capacity gap, themes included the resources required for third sector organizations to engage with businesses; the costs of engaging, supervising, and training volunteers; the locational specificities of where EV is having an impact; and the challenges for businesses of engaging staff in EV activities.
For third sector organizations, the capacity gap concerns the ability to become “EV ready.” Identifying, coordinating, and planning volunteering opportunities that meet employers’ requirements is resource intensive, and many third sector organizations struggle to commit staff resources to these processes. Many smaller organizations struggled with the administrative burden of health and safety and risk assessments, and the scale of support and training that employee volunteers required. This was especially prominent for “challenge days,” with organizations often finding it impractical to have numerous volunteers descending on them in a single day. Organizations highlighted the additional costs these events created, and that volunteering was not a “free” activity. Companies, it was argued, were either unaware of these, or were reluctant to meet them within their offers of support.
It’s difficult to be able to facilitate whole departments coming and volunteering with us for a day. It will cost us to do it and we can’t afford it. Or we waste it and get them to [undertake mundane task] because we don’t have the resources to supervise people doing anything meaningful. There’s a misunderstanding that volunteering is cost free—there is a lot of investment there to ensure it is safe. (Third Sector Organization, EVN Workshop 4)
As the quote illustrates, gaining the “support” EV offered often meant diverting key staff resources from core organizational tasks. Set against the backdrop of reduced funding and greater demand, the barrier this poses to third sector organizations embracing EV is significant. Within the brokerage study, a diagnostics exercise identified that only one third of groups could be considered as potentially “volunteer ready.” While many other groups would like to engage, their lack of spare capacity prevented their participation (Cook et al., 2013).
Businesses also identified their own capacity gap. Engagement levels remain relatively low and context-specific, being more suited to large businesses, with significant regional or national administrative headquarters, and less suitable for smaller regional offices or within businesses where the majority of employees are either customer facing or production line focused. While many businesses have official EV policies, the pressures of workloads and targets often reduce the viability of volunteering. Furthermore, despite representing the vast majority of businesses, SMEs currently only display marginal levels of formal EV engagement. 4
These capacity issues have serious implications for EV as a mechanism for increasing resources into a stretched third sector. In particular, it questions the ability of EV to deliver resources to areas of high deprivation (which struggle to attract large employers) and highlights a catch-22 scenario that has thus far been ignored in existing research. Large employers represent the cornerstone of EV activity but are largely absent from areas of high deprivation. Without them, however, the potential of EV in these locations is severely restricted. In short, the areas with the biggest demand are often those where capacity for supply is most limited.
The capacity gap is a key challenge to EV in terms of both targeting business resources to areas of most need and enabling third sector organizations to utilize them. Failure to overcome this gap, and build capacity on both sides, will consistently restrict EV’s potential and lead to resources being targeted toward larger organizations. Business capacity building therefore needs to encourage organizations to look toward alternative models of volunteering engagement, more suited to smaller third sector organizations and for companies for whom large-scale offsite EV is problematic.
The Knowledge Gap
The research identified a knowledge gap, emerging from claims that private and third sector organizations “speak a different language” and a raft of myths and misunderstandings which pose barriers to collaboration (Burchell & Cook, 2013a, 2013b). This gap is exacerbated by the limited opportunities for cross-sectoral dialogue, engagement, and networking. Within the knowledge gap, key themes included misunderstandings across sectors about the aims of EV, limited access to detailed information regarding opportunities, understanding the aims and objectives of groups for engaging, and the costs of volunteering.
Third sector participants highlighted a number of ways the knowledge gap was restricting EVs’ potential. Businesses were perceived to have limited understanding of the costs incurred by the third sector to administer and support EV activities. Participants noted that companies were often reluctant to pay for volunteering opportunities as they were already offering “free resources.” Everyone thinks the third sector is a free service and people can dip in for nothing, and people are surprised when there is a cost involved. They don’t see the value—we need to dispel that myth, it’s not a free service and there are costs involved in every interaction. (Charity, Birmingham Workshop)
Some businesses incorporated these costs into the brokerage fees but were reluctant to pay third sector groups directly.
I think businesses would be far more up for paying for brokerage if they know what they’re paying for. . . . would I pay [third sector organization name] to come in, you know and do something . . . I think the response from colleagues and managers would be no. (Brokerage Study Company 1 Manager 2)
Participants identified a limited understanding from business of the range of third sector organizations, the types of support they needed and why offers of support might be refused. EV activity was often linked to existing charity connections, or to key causes supported by owners, directors, or employees resulting in resources being directed to well-known third sector organizations. Thus, EV tended to be concentrated among the “usual suspects” limiting its reach and potential.
Misunderstandings of business motives also existed among the third sector. Business participants explained that third sector organizations often failed to clarify what types of engagement they were looking for.
What’s articulated to the business, as what the charity needs, is not always what they actually need. Often they don’t have a business plan, they need prodding and probing to find out where they are and what they need. (Broker, Leicestershire Workshop)
Organizations often had unrealistic expectations of business resources and requested funds rather than targeting EV-related support and tailoring requests to the business case and internal business skills development. Many third sector organizations recognized that they struggled to pitch what their organization did and why it needed support. Concerns were also raised that often cross-sectoral misunderstanding meant that potential relationships often failed after an initial engagement.
Many larger charities had proficient strategies for engaging with business and negotiating forms of EV that delivered real organizational benefits. However, others were operating at much earlier stages of engagement and lacked the ability to conduct due diligence exercises and the confidence to refuse opportunities.
You perceive that you have to say yes otherwise you may lose it [the opportunity] in the future. You don’t want to be ungrateful. (Third Sector Participant, EVN Workshop 4)
The research found that this reluctance to say no can lead to a waste of resources: I know somebody within the charity sector . . . and they had a site where they kept an unruly garden . . . because they constantly had requests for companies to come down and do some gardening work . . . and they said well we might as well just let that, we don’t need it, we’ll just let that overgrow and they’ll feel like they’re doing themselves some good and doing us some good but they’re not. (Brokerage Study, Broker 1)
This “Fallow Field” scenario is an example of both the strategic response of the sector to engagement opportunities, while symbolizing the risks of wasted resources that the knowledge gap can create. Another example involved a charity who had been given so much chicken by one company that their freezers were full, their clients were tired of eating chicken but they felt unable to disrupt the collaboration by refusing yet more chicken!
In summary, the research highlighted a significant level of cross-sectoral misunderstanding. Participants across sectors spoke of the importance of developing a common language around EV, emphasizing the value of transparent negotiation. Often where potential relationships have failed, lack of understanding has created unrealistic expectations. Successful relationships by contrast emerged as an evolutionary process of engagement and learning, creating joint initiatives that met shared objectives. Power imbalances between small charities and large businesses can play a significant role in producing EV activities that meet business needs but not those of the third sector. More needs to be done to empower third sector organizations to engage on a level playing field.
The Infrastructure Gap
The discussion above highlights the importance of greater cross-sectoral understanding to match the potential skills contribution of EV with the resource requirements of the third sector and to overcome restricted capacity on both sides. At its core is a need for a strengthened infrastructure framework that enables greater interaction and builds effective collaboration. This research demonstrates that the infrastructure gap needs to be bridged if the other gaps are to be tackled. Key themes within the infrastructure gap include the resource restraints facing infrastructure bodies, the range of activities that need to be supported for EV to be successful, the increased competition and market environment for infrastructure support, issues of state support, and the significant role of brokers. 5
Infrastructure support, predominantly in the form of brokerage, is key to successfully matching resources to demand, creating cross-sectoral connections, and providing support and training to increase EV capacity. The role of brokers was identified as key to improving connections across sectors and effectively targeting skills and resources. Brokerage is especially important for third sector organizations lacking the resources, knowledge, and power to negotiate as equal partners (Haski-Leventhal, Meijs, & Hustinx, 2010). However, little research has focused upon the role of brokerage and infrastructure organizations in shaping EV (Lee, 2015).
Brokerage takes on a bigger developmental dimension than the simplistic “match-making” often ascribed to it. Brokers undertake significant capacity building, getting third sector organizations “EV ready” and helping them to present their activities to business. They also build capacity within business organizations, to develop a clearer understanding of EV aims, understand the interest among employees for different types of engagement, design EV to enhance organizational benefits, and develop connections between business skills and community need.
While understanding the brokerage role is in itself a valuable contribution to EV research, significant questions exist regarding where this form of support will come from and how it should be funded. Funding represents a key challenge in bridging the infrastructure gap given that traditional funding sources have been depleted against a backdrop of austerity and increased commercialization of infrastructure bodies (National Association for Voluntary & Community Action [NAVCA], 2015; Purkis, 2012).
Brokerage has traditionally been located within volunteer support services such as the Community and Voluntary Service (CVS), Voluntary Action Services (VAS), and Community Foundations. With their historic grounding in volunteer coordination and sector support, these organizations could potentially help bridge the gaps highlighted above. However, they have undergone significant resource depletion and, faced with increasing demand but reduced capacity, have few resources to deploy toward EV brokerage. Some infrastructure organizations have developed commercial brokerage models, but corporate willingness to pay is low, so many have found limited commercial potential for these activities. Yet without initial financial support, organizations struggle to develop an effective brokerage role with many successful examples being instigated through financial support from businesses, local government, or grant capture.
A number of consultancies and commercial brokers are also active in this arena, seeking to provide large-scale EV services tailored to business requirements. With a stronger commercial business-to-business focus, these organizations provide fee-paying corporate clients with a tailored set of EV activities, often as part of a portfolio of CSR services. While arguably demonstrating that some businesses will pay for EV brokerage, there are clear limitations with this model similar to the catch-22 model outlined earlier. First, commercially focused services inevitably target areas where there is a financial incentive to deliver. As a consequence, these groups cluster in areas where large companies predominate, such as Central London. In contrast, these organizations have either withdrawn or are entirely absent from locations where the financial incentive is low, where SMEs predominate and where larger companies are scarce—the locations most in need of EV support. Second, these organizations are less embedded in the third sector, are less able to meet these needs, and could potentially be directing scarce resources away from the very sector which EV claims to support. Third, the “muddiness” of the EV brokerage marketplace leaves many businesses unsure of who to work with.
While brokerage frameworks could provide the infrastructural support necessary to bridge the key gaps in EV, to achieve this, one must overcome a significant funding dilemma regarding the creation and maintenance of this infrastructure. The emphasis upon market-led brokerage funding currently encourages a commercial brokerage model that prioritizes what businesses want to achieve from EV, rather than developing an EV framework targeted toward third sector need. While some groups strive to create a brokerage model more targeted toward third sector need, the difficulty of commercializing this to a business audience and lack of state funding support reduces their capacity to develop this role. It is questionable, therefore, whether the current methods of bridging the infrastructure gap will actually meet the demands of both the corporate and third sector that the “win-win” interpretations of EV claim to deliver.
Conclusion: Bridging the Gaps in ESV
This article has demonstrated the importance of focusing upon the experiences of third sector organizations to understand the potential of, and the barriers to, creating effective EV. By focusing upon EV as a three-way relationship between employer, employee, and third sector, it has highlighted the danger of assuming the “win” for third sector, while also indicating some of the limitations of the “win” for business. The “win-win” scenario therefore, is not an inevitable outcome of EV but often occurs in locational pockets and for certain types of organizations. The gaps framework outlined above highlights the significant challenges that exist in trying to tailor EV schemes to satisfy the demands of the employer, the employee, and the third sector.
Highlighting the skills, capacity, knowledge, and infrastructure gaps helps to frame many of these challenges and questions the underlying assumption that simply introducing business resources into the third sector can fill the void left by state funding and provide the types of resources that the third sector actually needs. In doing so, the article demonstrates why the “win-win” potential of EV must be examined from a multi-stakeholder perspective (business, employee, and third sector) and must be placed in its broader socioeconomic context so that the conditions under which the third sector are being asked to engage come to the fore. It should not simply be assumed that third sector groups should be grateful for any form of support. Similarly, third sector groups cannot expect business engagement purely because they represent a “good cause,” but must have the skill set and resources to demonstrate professionally what support they need and the value that engagement with their organization will bring to both business and the community.
The skills gap highlights a significant mismatch between the resource needs of many third sector organizations and the traditional framing of EV activities. While this gap is being addressed by the increasing focus on skills volunteering, the challenge-day “quick fix” model of EV still holds significant appeal for business and also for many employee volunteers. Indeed, while the skills agenda may appeal to businesses, it may prove a harder sell to the volunteers themselves, given its incongruence with many of the initial motivations for why employees choose to volunteer and the underlying perception that volunteering should benefit others and not necessarily the volunteering individual.
Traditional approaches to EV also tend to presume that these forms of engagement inevitably bring extra-valuable resources into the third sector, increasing capacity. However, the capacity gap identified above highlighted a more complex picture with many organizations struggling to become “EV ready” and unable to commit increasingly stretched resources. Many businesses also have their own capacity gap as they struggle to engage more than a small proportion of the workforce. As a consequence, the “win-win” model of EV only tends to occur under certain contexts and within specific areas often clustering around the location and engagement of large businesses and involving more established third sector organizations who already have the capacity to engage.
The knowledge gap is also central to the potential weaknesses of the “win-win” as it highlights the consequences of myths and misunderstanding across the sectors. This gap demonstrates the significance of the cross-sectoral power imbalance which leaves third sector groups struggling to direct EV to meet their needs, engaging on business terms rather than on their own. Currently the knowledge gap serves to reinforce presumptions of a “win-win” and hides some of EV’s limitations. This is particularly significant for those companies wanting their EV activities to have a positive impact and for employees who engage in the schemes precisely because they want to “make a difference.”
Finally, the gaps framework demonstrates that there are significant barriers to EV delivering on its potential as the current infrastructure is too weak to ensure that resources are channeled to meet third sector need. Stronger infrastructure is needed but the research highlighted that the emphasis upon commercialization and financially self-sustaining brokerage support results in a framework that prioritizes business-led aims and objectives rather than prioritizing third sector need.
Focusing attention on the external relationships aspect of EV rather than the internal structuring of EV programs raises some important questions that future EV research must address. Significant amounts of research has been devoted to establishing a business case for business engagement with EV and to demonstrating the positive impacts and outcomes such activities can have for business. In contrast, the “win” for the third sector has largely been assumed rather than analyzed in any real detail. As this article has demonstrated, more research focus needs to be addressed toward both challenging this assumption on one hand and the incorporation of the third sector dimension into existing models and analyses on the other. Redirecting EV analysis in this way, and considering exactly what the case for EV engagement is for the third sector, offers a range of key research challenges for future analysis and can help to broaden the understanding of the potential impact of EV.
First, more research needs to be developed regarding the distribution of EV support and the implications that this holds for third sector engagement. The gaps framework pointed to a relatively uneven distribution of EV engagement both with regard to location and size of third sector organizations successfully engaging. Currently it seems that EV activity is more connected to locations and organizations that suit business participants rather than always being areas and activities in most need. More attention therefore, could usefully be given to questions regarding how EV resources are distributed and the size of groups engaging.
Second, the research highlighted the central role of brokerage and infrastructure organizations in shaping and developing effective EV engagement. However, relatively little research has been devoted to the role such organizations play at the business/third sector interface. While Lee (2015) provides initial insight into this area, much more consideration needs to be given to the role of these organizations in helping to bridge many of the challenges and gaps that exist between business and the third sector as they seek to develop EV.
Third, closer examination needs to be given to the types of activity being undertaken within EV. As the skills gap highlighted, there is significant potential in increasing the application of skills-based volunteering and, to an extent, distinguishing this from more “challenge”-based activities. While skills-based EV would appear to more effectively fulfill the “win-win” model claimed for EV, more research needs to address why the up-take of skills volunteering is still quite weak. Our research suggests there could potentially be some important contradictions between the motivations and aims of employee volunteers and the benefits both businesses and third sector organizations seek from EV. More broadly, this connects to a wider research question regarding what factors are holding back engagement with EV and how might these be overcome, given that EV remains the domain of only a small number of companies (and only a small percentage of employees within them) and a minority of third sector organizations. As our research shows, answers to these questions clearly require analysis of all three parties within EV—business, third sector, and employees.
Finally, while the gaps framework presented here has been developed from an analysis of the U.K. context, there is real potential for its application in other locations and for comparative analysis. Much could be learnt from further analysis to identify where, and under what conditions, these gaps are either addressed or present themselves differently.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the reviewers and the editor for their useful comments which helped improve this article substantially from the initial submission. Our thanks also go to the ESRC and all the research participants.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: One of the three projects where the data is drawn from was funded by the Economic and Social Reseach Council. No financial support was received for the authorship or publication.