Exploring Volunteering

This afternoon on the day the Government launched the National Citizen Service, Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, was interviewed on Radio 4′s PM programme by broadcaster Eddie Mair.

May be Francis Maude was expecting the same lacklustre questions that Gavin Esler had put to him earlier in the week when Newsnight did its much criticised feature on the Big Society. He obviously hadn’t banked on Eddie Mair. Anyone who’s followed his broadcasting career knows the guy’s not averse to throwing the odd googly question into his interviews. And so it was that we heard the following exchange (hear original here [via an AudioBoo from Alison Charlton]):

Eddie Mair (Radio 4) [42m:52s]: And what volunteering do you do?

Francis Maude (Minister for the Cabinet Office): I do… golly, what do I do? Umm, a whole load of things. I’m involved in my local church. Um, gosh, that’s a really unfair question cold. But actually the point is…

Eddie Mair: I think that given we’re talking about volunteering and how important it is, I thought you might be able to tell me. And not least because in your manifesto it says quote: “Our ambition is for every adult in the country to be a member of an active neighbourhood group.”

Francis Maude: Err, well I’m involved in things in my local community… Well, MPs spend their time involved with voluntary groups, umm…

Eddie Mair: Well that’s part of your job, you get paid for that. What else do you do?

Francis Maude: Well, we do it seven days a week kind of thing, so… Well, I do various things. It’s a great question to err… drop on me err… and if I had time to think about it… my point actually is that people, most people in their lives are doing things that you could define as volunteering with a capital ‘V’ but which are actually just doing things that support their neighbourhoods, support their neighbours, and be a part of… an active citizen, in an active community.

Eddie Mair: Understood, thank you very much for joining us, the Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude.

I’m posting it here not just because it was a rare example of an interview that cut through the normally poised narrative and lofty rhetoric that politicians are so used to dishing out. I’m more interested in it because it helps to flush out the real essence of volunteering- even if it did so kind of by accident.

Volunteering is not just about doing things, about actions. If it was it would be very straightforward. Volunteering is about values, it’s how we express who we are as people. It’s more than just the sum of it’s parts. Volunteering’s not just a verb, it’s a noun. On an individual level, it can become part of our identity. On a social level, it can become part of our culture.

This interview caught Francis Maude on the hop because I think it showed that, he at least, has so far only thought about volunteering as a thing you do (or you don’t ). Not as something you are.

If this Government wants to make volunteering front and centre of it’s policy agenda through the Big Society, it’s got to understand that volunteering is empty rhetoric, unless it’s backed up by a genuine and personal belief in the values that make volunteering worth so much. At the same time, it can only work as a policy if the people (us) encouraged to volunteer, believe in the value of the volunteering they do. Not simply go through the motions because it’s part of a universal programme that has to be done.

That said, I thought the most revealing part of the whole interview came right at the end. Francis Maude was noticeably trying to get back into his stride when he said:

…most people in their lives are doing things that you could define as volunteering with a capital ‘V’ but which are actually just doing things that support their neighbourhoods…

This sounded like he was saying that volunteering is really nothing more than neighbourliness. It’s what we all do, in the course of our normal everyday lives. Maybe Maude said this in his attempt to suggest that he actually ‘volunteered’ in as far as he was a good neighbour, an active citizen as an MP seven days a week.

But I think he accidentally put his finger on the confusion that exists in how we value volunteering. Something that the idea of the Big Society has not fully reckoned with up till now.

Unlike any kind of impersonal commodity or transacted service which declines in exchange value the more there is of it; it is the very abundance of volunteering which is its value. It’s because volunteering is something personal we can all do that’s the basis for its value. The trick, though, is that we can only realise that value when it influences who we are, not just what we do.