Big Society - big opportunity?

The 'Big Society' is a phrase you've probably seen or heard a lot in recent weeks. Whatever your view, it is THE political idea of the moment and has a huge potential impact on volunteering, so we need to be fully involved in shaping what the Big Society means.

The ultimate aim is to make giving a social norm, a lofty (and exciting!) ideal, but a pretty big challenge to deliver because it requires even more public support. The invaluable help of our 11,000 volunteers is already worth £28m a year to Guide Dogs and something we simply couldn’t operate without, but the Big Society could provide opportunities to offer help in new ways.

The current Government Green Paper looks at corporate support of employee volunteering, and technological solutions such as ‘micro-volunteering’ - just giving a few minutes of your time, often online. How might this work for us? Obviously not in our core services – you can’t feed a puppy on twitter - but maybe there is potential here to reach out to people, even when they are busy at their desk.

The Green Paper also talks about encouraging action at a local level so people can see the impact first hand in their own community. However from a charity viewpoint this still requires support (such as volunteer management) and experience (including legal, logistics etc).

This sort of service is not available everywhere, but there could be a role for national charities like Guide Dogs, as well as businesses, in providing this infrastructure. In fact we are already working with local organisations to mobilise communities through the Sighted Guide pilot schemes.

In the Volunteering department, we’ve drafted a response to the Green Paper on The Big Society that will go to the Cabinet Office. I also recently attended an interesting session at Voluntary Action Islington where I was able to get a broader view.

There are certainly obstacles, and concerns were expressed about a range of issues from the future of volunteering centres to a feared gap in volunteering between rich and poor areas. But I think we need to consider how we can align with some Big Society ideas because the reality is that giving is changing and people are no longer volunteering for years with the same charity. We need to fit with busy lives.

Just one of our initiatives which fits in with the changing needs of society is Puppy Walking in the workplace, which is being piloted in eight Guide Dogs offices around the country this year. How else do you think we can change to meet the demands of the Big Society?