Date: April 13, 2020

In its virtual meeting on March 26, the ASD discussed and debated the Nuenen Volunteer Work Policy Memorandum 2020- 2022. Based on this memo and discussions, the ASD formulated questions, comments and recommendations to make the policy clearer, more focused and consistent and to improve readability.

Summary

For the residents of Nuenen, volunteer work is invaluable. It is right that the municipality presents a policy plan to support, encourage, facilitate and appreciate volunteer organizations. The paper contains literature research, surveys, good analyses,
tentative directions for policy and indicators to evaluate the policy. Unfortunately, the actions in size are not defined steps on known paths. The ASD recommends being ambitious and taking big steps, including in new directions. The residents are worth it.

Previous opinions on volunteers

Twice in 2018, the ASD expressed its opinion on the value of volunteers for the residents of Nuenen. They form, with other groups, the necessary civil society (civil society) with valuable initiatives for and support of residents. These two opinions were the Opinion Appreciation of volunteers of March 11, 2018 and parts of the Opinion in response to the Needs Survey among seniors in the municipality of Nuenen c.a. of October 13, 2018. Important observations in both advices:

• Volunteers are intrinsically motivated. The Municipality cannot manage volunteers, but it can appreciate them and support, encourage and facilitate their organizations.
• In Nuenen, an estimated 8,000 volunteers are active with a commitment of about 800 FTEs. The value of these activities is priceless to the volunteers themselves and the community both figuratively and financially.

The 2018 advisory suggested writing a policy plan on volunteerism, which, among other things, should
should address:

• Broker function: Facilitate a match between volunteers seeking a task that suits them and organizations seeking volunteers. Keep this digital platform accessible and up to date.
• Facilitation: Facilitate volunteer organizations, including through support, infrastructure, grants and alignment plans and presentations.
• Encourage: Encourage volunteer organizations to give regular tokens of appreciation to their own volunteers.
• Appreciate: As a Municipality show its appreciation to the volunteers active in Nuenen c.a., for example by organizing volunteer days.
• Support: Have volunteer activities supported by (paid) coordinators.

The 2020-2022 policy plan is now written. Based in part on the 2018 opinions, we have reviewed the paper and are asking questions, making comments and making recommendations with the goal of getting an (even) better volunteer work policy paper.

Introduction

The paper is partly based on a literature review, contains a lot of valuable data and good analysis, and sets the stage for evaluation of the policies formulated. Visibly much and thorough work has been done. We appreciate that. But coherence and readability could be better. Components, such as surveys and interviews could be placed in appendices, repetitions could be avoided, detailed
enumerations not otherwise used could be summarized more concisely, and a logical line of reasoning promotes readability. Drawing more explicit conclusions or formulating decisions with numerical values for the desired commitment makes ambitions visible.

For the readability of the paper, it is essential that the relationships between the municipality, LEV Group (LEV), volunteer organizations and volunteers be clear. Now they are insufficiently so:

• The support point is a municipal office staffed by employees of the LEV group. Therefore, the advice in this policy document is not to refer to the LEV group, but to the support point. For example, for the actions in chapter 8, do not give an assignment to the LEV, but release a budget to the support point for a certain action. That the municipality uses that budget to purchase services from the LEV and can hold them accountable for the result is important, but does not need to be mentioned all the time. Ultimately, the municipality remains responsible to residents for the counter. Then residents know where they stand.
• The municipality primarily has relationships with volunteer organizations, virtually none with volunteers.
• Volunteer organizations recruit, nurture, know and encourage their volunteers.

A second structural ambiguity is the dichotomy between volunteers. There are Health volunteers and other volunteers. This distinction is not made explicitly but is used implicitly. The first group constitutes about 5% of the total number. This group seems to be the most important to the community, more is written about them and it is precisely this group that comes into contact withHealth) professionals the most. It is expected that this group will (should) also grow the most. The recommendation is to make that difference explicit though. The importance of Health volunteers for the municipality should be visible in the action points in chapter 8 and allocated budgets in chapter 9.

Comments, questions and recommendations

Since the memo has yet to be adopted by the Board and may still be modified, we suffice for now with comments, questions and recommendations. These are intended to further improve the paper.

Purpose of the note: The goal to be pursued in the note is phrased as that the Municipality will "empower people." What that means and how the Municipality will do that is unclear and not instrumental/measurable. With the current indicators it is not possible to verify whether a volunteer has been empowered more or not. Probably not with other indicators either. You can only empower yourself. The municipality cannot because it does not know the individual personally 1. Therefore, the wording of the goal should be different:

• Current goal: The central goal of the volunteer work policy in Nuenen is to value and strengthen volunteer work by empowering both associations and volunteer organizations and volunteers.
• Suggested alternative goal: The volunteer work policy in Nuenen, for the benefit of the welfare of the residents, wants to strengthen volunteering by supporting, facilitating and stimulating it and (having) volunteers valued.

Brokerage function

The municipality can/should facilitate more strongly the brokerage function between supply and demand of volunteers. A job bank is one of the elements. The current digital job board does not function adequately/not at all. Old vacancies remain and reappear in local newspapers. A contemporary volunteer bank should spearhead both long-term and short-term volunteer jobs, where supply and demand find each other easily and that is and stays current. For example, by removing unfilled vacancies in principle after x months. The ASD recognizes that keeping current is difficult, but the importance of an up-to-date database is great and it is worth the effort requested. The memo talks about a job board for volunteers, one for Health volunteers and one for short-term volunteer activities/internships. Can these 3 be
combine in the same job board? An example of a useful job bank is 2.

Vulnerable volunteers

To help vulnerable volunteers, adapted participation in associations is relevant. The municipality can do this by calling on associations to pay extra attention to vulnerable people. It can point to courses provided by the support center to bring vulnerable volunteers into the association. Then they can continue to function within the associations for as long as possible. This is in line with the activities within the working groups Mantelzorg and Dementievriendelijke gemeente. The demand here is for more support and somewhat fewer obstacles imposed by the Privacy Act. The problem is often finding out where these individuals are.

Ambition

The proposed policy is sound, but not ambitious. Many existing things, which "will be given more attention" or which "will be strengthened." Then the indicators that are concrete are likely to be missed. Too many going concern issues obscure the view of innovation and ambition. There may be more focus on the things that came out of the survey as important. Less is more, but then also show ambition. The ASD recommends giving special attention to strengthening the Health volunteers and the brokerage function: more creativity and pushing the boundaries to better match supply and demand.

Indicators

Chapter 8 lists some indicators for each action. It is important to distinguish between indicators of actions that describe the process of "strengthening" and indicators that value the outcome of the action for "strengthening" volunteering. The first group of indicators (process) give an indication of whether a facility is used. But it is not clear beforehand whether this always leads to a better outcome. The last group of indicators (result) are the most important, such as growth in the number and/or tasks of Health volunteers (2.4), growth in young volunteers (4.2), growth in active vulnerable volunteers (4.3), growth in the number of volunteers (not mentioned) and number of participants and appreciation of volunteer networking drinks (3.4). Some suggestions:

• When is the municipality satisfied? When the "strengthening" in Nuenen is relatively better than the national trend.
• How can it be determined if volunteer organizations have strengthened, how much and in what area? This could be indicated by the relative growth in membership and/or tasks.
• We are still missing indicators that evaluate the functioning of the brokerage function of the support center. For example, the number of successful matches, the number of applications to mediate and an indication of the continued timeliness of supply and demand.

Quantitative substantiation of intended actions

The paper opts to have 15 actions implemented through the support point. To this end, additional budgets are made available to the support point. Unfortunately, the quantitative justification is lacking, both in the proportions between them and the total amount or commitment. The extent to which the actions can be implemented depends on the budget made available. The desired effects of the actions should be decisive. The budget then follows. A proper/desired allocation of budgets for the various actions requires a choice. There should already be a rough idea of which actions are most effective and efficient to achieve the goal of strengthening volunteerism. A detailed allocation of budgets to the support center limits flexibility, a single amount ignores the priority of the municipality. A wise intermediate position seems best.

Accommodations

The municipality can exert more influence, for example, in finding suitable accommodation for activities. There are many accommodations/spaces managed by the municipality that are only used part of the day, or the week, or the year. It requires steering/mediation to get current users to move up a bit, make working arrangements. Furthermore, in the Klooster, for example, there should be more functional spaces that can be used all the time via a depreciation system. So no more each a space with utter underutilization. Here too, mediation is needed to solve possible bottlenecks (e.g. each has its own locked cupboard with its own stuff, work agreements, as at present in the Goudvinkhof).

Alignment of plans and presentations

When setting dates for activities for residents, it is difficult for associations to oversee what other activities can take place then. The support center could lend a helping hand here by maintaining an electronic calendar for public activities. This agenda could then be made available to the boards of the associations.

Support organizations

The appeal that can be made to volunteers is finite. Volunteers are becoming more demanding in terms of the content, duration and responsibility of the tasks required of them. The number of volunteers willing to do certain, more complex tasks may become limiting. A solution may be to have the volunteers supported by coordinators who could be paid (in part) by the Municipality. An example is the coordinator of Automaatje, but it could also apply, for example, to a neighborhood coordinator.

Volunteer versus professional

There remains at all times a difference between volunteer and professional, especially in Health. It does not seem advisable to professionalize the volunteer. Then he is no longer a volunteer. But coaching and training can enrich the volunteer. In Health , however, it may be necessary and desirable. For example, in the social domain and mental health care, the emergence of the experience expert, the trained volunteer (sometimes for a fee, sometimes eventually paid hours), with the experience expert becoming partly professional. The same is happening in terminal home care, where volunteers are being trained to take over certain care tasks. This is a good development, because it broadly increases carrying capacity in Health and Welfare. And sometimes strengthens a vulnerable group.

Courses

Through or by the associations, courses can be actively offered to volunteers: the volunteer as soccer coach, dealing with "difficult" young people or with refugees from certain regions (e.g. not used to being on time). Example: like the match mentors (LEV) receive training regarding ADHD, autism and LVB. This probably reduces the risk of harm to volunteers.

Social internship

Despite the cessation of subsidies, start a cooperation with the Pleincollege/Eckartcollege for the Nuenen students regarding the social apprenticeship and be creative in this: for example, have students per cycle of 6-8 weeks do the meal support in our nursing/care homes with an overlap of one week each time where one trains the other. This is volunteer work that always involves other volunteers or professional staff (these are also suitable jobs for vulnerable volunteers). Giving them assignments for organizing a pampering afternoon for the elderly, for an afternoon of games for the elderly, young people at home showing an elderly person how to use a tablet or skype. A fixed participation in NL
does on Fridays (on page 13 the reasons for volunteering are missing the interpretation of a social internship). More is possible if you let go of the idea of long-term available volunteers and do not immediately fear that something will happen. Dare to give responsibility. Idem newcomers; deploy them correctly. You learn the language by participating, not by walking along. That is fine first alongside another volunteer or professional.

Intermunicipal volunteering

Several volunteer organizations in Nuenen make use of initiatives in Eindhoven. Initiatives in Nuenen are also used from Eindhoven. For people with intellectual disabilities, the Carrousel foundation collects subsidies from municipalities for this group. Will the municipality ensure that intermunicipal organizations can also continue to be supported, as is currently being done?

Privacy

It is very unfortunate that laws and regulations, including privacy, are inhibiting civil society. This is a signal that the municipality does need to send out, because that cannot have been the intention.

Literature review

It is advisable to also look at volunteer work policies in the region. Both Helmond and Tilburg have developed clear and strong policies in that area.

Data

Chapters 6 and 7 contain a lot of data. This is good and functional. However, because of their extensive description in chapters 6 and 7 they disrupt reading. Recommendation to include the relevant data of chapter 6 already in chapter 4 and the rest of 6 and 7 in an appendix.