Report of the Yorkshire CSSC Conference
Held at Bradford on 13/14 November 2009
30 members braved awful weather to attend the Yorkshire Annual Conference in Bradford. The delegates were a mixture of Regional executive, Area Association reps, sports organisers, HO staff and guests.
Following an excellent lunch, the first agenda item - Valuing the Volunteer - was presented by Running Sport. This interactive session had three objectives:
- Understanding the value of volunteers in sport - e.g. did you know that sports volunteers in the UK give freely an enormous 1.2 billion hours estimated to be worth £14 billion a year?
- Appreciate the importance of making volunteering a management issue - This was about development plans, identifying tasks and the skills needed to do them, the provision of training & support, retention of volunteers and ways of rewarding them. It then led into managing a volunteer workforce and the need for a volunteer coordinator post.
- Begin to develop a volunteer action plan - This session asked the delegates to consider where we are now, where we want to be and how to get there and knowing when we've arrived by monitoring, adapting & evaluating.
There was then a general discussion on what motivates a volunteer. We were given the results from a national survey in 2007 and the top answer was "wanting to improve things & help people - 53%". It was agreed that the results may have been slightly different if the survey had just been about CSSC volunteers, but the information was useful in knowing what makes people tick. Did you also know that a common reason for not volunteering was that they weren't asked? Interesting.
Next up was Hedley Featherstone, CSSC's Volunteer Development Manager who told the delegates all about CSSC's Framework for Action, which is all about supporting and advising our volunteers. He pointed them towards the Good Practice Bank on the website, saying that it contains a wealth of information all designed to help volunteers. He wound up by informing everyone about CSSC's Volunteer Week which will be happening in 2011.
Following on were Emma Hermon & Lacey Kenworthy from CSSC's Business Support Unit. Their theme was Communication, in particular relating to the website & electronic newsletters. They explained that the website & newsletters weren't the sole property of HO and that volunteers' input was highly desirable and necessary. They covered the frequency of newsletters, the number of email addresses held in the region, what can be put on the website and how to do it. Delegates were asked to think about how they communicated with their members and were advised that it's not necessary to keep membership lists as mail merges can be done directly from the central database.
Finally, and perhaps the most rewarding part of the day, was the Presentation of Awards. Every year our Chairman, Mervyn Stanley, takes great delight in announcing the winners. Despite congratulating Hull, West Riding & Craven and York on their performance, the Best AA award went to South Yorkshire for the second year running. This was because of their huge range of events and their policy of regular communication with their members.
The Volunteer of the Year award went to John Fell. I wish we could have shown a picture of him when his name was announced but you'll have to make do with the one of him receiving his trophy from Mervyn, our Chairman. John is the regional game angling organiser and he won because he organises an excellent event, completes all the necessary forms on time and keeps everyone informed.
Saturday was just as miserable outside with howling winds and the rain threatening again. But we weren't worried as we had an interesting morning ahead of us.
First up was Ruth Bentley, the Yorkshire BDE. It was her job to update the volunteers on the Regional Organisers Pack. Whilst it contained a lot of advice and tick sheets to help with organising an event, it also had some forms that had to be completed, such as the Event Information, Budget & Accounts and Membership Checking forms. All were reminded to use these so that everyone was kept fully informed at every stage of the event.
Next we looked at Valuing the Member with David Hayday, CSSC's Director of Operations. David took colleagues through a wide ranging session that examined what customers expected in a retail environment and the how elements of this related to CSSC. The consistent things people look for in a service were agreed as:
Choice
Quality
Service
Cost
The group looked at ways that the service to members might be improved within the Yorkshire Region including looking for ways to be more consistent in the services and benefits on offer to members; including how these were communicated.
David was then joined by Andy Shaw from the North West Region who explained how the North West had introduced a new region-wide online purchasing service for a small range of 'token' benefits, including cinema tickets. This was seen as a good way to provide a modern, consistent, secure, convenient and efficient service for members whilst lessening the considerable burden on volunteers.
Overall, the session gave everyone plenty of food for thought and some prioritised actions on how the region might do more to improve the service to members were agreed.
Mervyn wrapped up the Conference thanking everyone for their input, for their work over the past year and, in advance, for the work now ahead of us. So we packed our bags and set off into the foul weather with plenty of ideas and enthusiasm and looking forward to next year's event!