Non-financial support

By Deborah Green
Assistant Director
Pilotlight

Three years ago Pilotlight was working on a project to encourage giving by individuals in the City. Our research - into why people give, and how they can be encouraged to give more - uncovered an untapped will among our influential business leaders to give not just their money, but also their time and skills to charity. They just weren't sure how to go about doing so.

This recognition, combined with our own experience of the difficulties facing small, emerging charities, transformed the way we work. We recognised that the right skills, applied in a consistent and sensitive manner, can be as great - if not greater - a value to charities as are financial donations.

Today Pilotlight is a registered charity devoted solely to helping other small charities help more people more effectively by matching and managing the skills of senior business people who want to give their time. We now have 140 of London's top executives working with 40 small local charities. As we have grown we have learned many things about how our volunteers - 'Pilotlighters' in our terminology - can make the greatest difference to our charities.

Here are our five rules for effective skills giving:

1. Find the right charity and project for you

It can be difficult to know where to start when volunteering your time. You may be clear about the sort of organisation you want to work with, and if you are passionate about the work they do, it will, of course, enhance your personal satisfaction and level of commitment. However, there are other considerations: Where can you make the most difference? Can you learn something from the organisation you are working with?

We estimate that each of our Pilotlighters contribute £75,000 worth of coaching and consultancy to the charities they are working with each year, based on the amount they could earn as consultants. Our client charities certainly could not afford to pay for the help they receive.

Think about the skills you have that are most valuable. If you spend your working week in an office and want to spend an evening digging a community garden, then that's a great thing for you and your community, but think what a huge difference you could make if you helped them develop an alternative income stream which could secure their financial future?

The best matches are those where both parties learn and develop through their partnership - so be open-minded. If, through volunteering, you are looking to change yourself as well as the organisation you are working with, then maybe you should move outside your 'comfort zone'. At Pilotlight, we find that some of our most successful partnerships are those between volunteers and organisations who do work that challenges their preconceptions - such as the Pilotlighter who visited Wandsworth Prison with a charity that teaches inmates new skills, and left with a different perspective on offenders and rehabilitation.

If you don't know where to start, there are a range of organisations which can help to match your skills to the right charity or project - see the list at the end of the article.

2. Be sensitive - understand the context before you try and transform the organisation.

We arrange inductions for our new members at Pilotlight to explain some key differences between the private and voluntary sectors. Some are obvious - most voluntary organisations, especially the 89% of all charities that have a turnover of less than £100,000, are chronically under-resourced. Amongst other things, we explain that few funders - grant-makers or local authorities - will give money for core costs, and that donors and grant-makers prefer to fund new projects to help ensure the greatest returns on their 'investments'; so many organisations and/or projects - no matter how worthy - run out of funding after three years.

We talk about the trustee system - its benefits and downfalls, and the ups and downs of organisations that are powered by passion. When push comes to shove, shareholders in a business have a single, shared objective - profit, whereas a voluntary sector organisation has to hold together a group of stakeholders, each of whom may have a slightly different but passionately held vision.

This means that when our Pilotlighters meet with charities for the first time, they take the time to interrogate the challenges our client charities face. As a team, we try to understand the barriers to change, practical and personal, and how the organisation can overcome them.

Most of us have preconceptions about the charity sector - that organisations are badly run, that too much money is spent on administration, that the staff are second-rate. Like in any sector, there are organisations like this. However, several of our Pilotlighters have commented on how impressed they have been by the calibre of the people with whom they have worked, by their clarity of thinking and the breadth of skills represented.

3. Where you can - coach don't consult

At Pilotlight, our members offer charities a mixture of coaching and consultancy - with the emphasis on the former. Coaching is about giving staff within the charity the skills they need to be self-sufficient in the future, whereas consultancy is about doing the work on their behalf. Coaching takes longer, and it can be a frustrating process at times, but its effects are far greater, albeit longer term.

We have lost sight of the number of charities who come to Pilotlight that have a business plan written for them by a consultant gathering dust on a shelf. To many of them it was a bureaucratic exercise with little or no bearing on their day-to-day work. Our process requires each of our charities to have an up-to-date operating plan, which our members help them write. While our members advise, suggest and cajole, it's the staff team that has to do the work. Then it becomes a living document, which they understand and are engaged with. Plus, when it needs updating they can do it themselves. It's a virtuous circle.

4. Be clear about what you want to achieve, and by when.

If you are working on a particular project, agree targets and review dates for the work you plan to do at the outset, and be clear about who is expected to do what. Whether you meet your targets or not, this allows both parties to set expectations and to ensure that you are both working to the same aim.

Importantly, this also gives you the opportunity to recognise your achievements. Take time to do this and congratulate yourself and the charity on the progress you have made. If you are bringing new approaches into the organisation, then demonstrating success as early as possible in the relationship will encourage staff to apply them elsewhere, and motivate them to give more time and resources to you and your work.

5. Be patient - it takes time to make a real difference.

Things can move at a different pace in the voluntary sector for many reasons: lack of resources, uncertain funding and poor governance among other things can all act as barriers to change.

You should also remember that, no matter how crucial the work you are doing is to the long-term health of the organisation, the management and staff are likely to be responsible to a number of vulnerable people and the effective delivery of services must come first.

The most profound and long-lasting changes come about when the management and staff change the way they think about their organisation - how it is structured and what its priorities are. It can be a slow and painful process - but we promise it will be worth it if you persevere; we know because we've seen it happen.

Skills brokering organisations and advice:

• At Pilotlight we offer a highly managed service to board-level professionals from the full spectrum of disciplines, asking for a donation of £1,000 per year from individual members to support our work. We also develop tailored packages for our corporate members who currently include Coutts, Serco, JP Morgan and Channel 4. Call 020 7396 7414 or visit www.pilotlight.org.uk.

• The Media Trust matches media professionals with charities who need help with PR, marketing, design, video and online media. For more information, visit www.mediatrust.org.uk.

• Reach matches the skills of experienced people with voluntary sector organisations. You can register your skills online at www.volwork.org.uk.

• The Cranfield Trust recruits volunteers to act as management consultants to charities with management issues. For more information, visit www.cranfieldtrust.org.uk.

• Your local Volunteer Bureau will be able to advise you on a range of volunteering opportunities in your community. For more information, visit www.navb.org.uk.

• The Charity Commission and Timebank are running a campaign to encourage more people to become trustees. Many small charities desperately need to recruit skilled and committed individuals to their boards, although you may want to gain a better understanding of the complexities of the sector through volunteering before you take on the responsibilities of a trusteeship. For more information, visit www.getonboard.org.uk.

Other organisations that may be of interest to people wanting to volunteer or develop their skills in the community are:

• Business in the Community

• Common Purpose

• Timebank

Pilotlight works to help small, innovative charities grow and fulfil their potential. The charity brings together board-level professionals from business and industry who want to donate their skills to charities, and charities that want to build their infrastructure and plan for growth. The staff manage the time of members and provide administrative support, so that they can make a significant difference to the effectiveness of the charities in just a few hours a month. For more information, visit www.pilotlight.org.uk.