Archive for year: 2022
Queen Baton Relay batonbearers nominations
This is a huge milestone for the Queen’s Baton Relay, as following its journey across the Commonwealth, the Baton will return to England, where it will spend 25 days traveling the length and breadth of the country and we need 2,022 Batonbearers to take on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of carrying the Baton!
Get involved
Birmingham Organising Committee for the 2022 Commonwealth Games encourages you all to submit a Batonbearer nomination via their website, for an inspiring individual in your life or networks. To submit a nomination simply explain in 100 words or less how your nominee meets the Batonbearer criteria below. Please note arts, culture, and charity are represented in the criteria list, so it’s a great chance to highlight our wonderful sector.
The criteria for a Batonbearer is someone who meets one or more of the following:
- Always willing to take on a challenge and has a unique and inspiring story
- Has made a meaningful contribution to sport, education, the arts, culture, or charity
- Is a figure of inspiration that positively challenges others to achieve their best, and
- Has taken on a challenge or cause and made a positive impact within their community.
The Code of Fundraising Practice (the code) sets out the responsibilities that apply to fundraising.
Managing volunteers
Watch our short video that explains how to manage and support volunteers.
Download a transcript of this video
Further Resources:
Leading through challenges
Watch our short video that explains how lead through challenges.
During your time as a leader, your organisation will encounter challenges and periods of change. This can be difficult for you and the team, so it’s a good idea to have some strategies in place to get help.
When you are faced with a challenge or crisis, you often need to act quickly – sometimes even before you have all the facts. Despite this, it’s important to make sure that you bring your team along with you and one of the key factors is communication. Information should be provided to everybody involved in a transparent and open way.
Information is powerful as it:
- reduces the emotional distress caused by the unknown
- diminishes fear,
- provides tactical guidance, and
- demonstrates to employees that their leaders are concerned, involved, knowledgeable when dealing with a situation.
During challenging times, it’s more important than ever for a leader to take charge and show they are in control of a situation. As a leader, make sure that you are accessible, and that people know how to contact you. Recognise people’s emotions, show respect by listening, and also consider what is not being said.
When the challenge or crisis subsides and things go back to normal, it’s useful to look at what happened and consider ways that can make your organisation more robust for future challenges.
Managing change within your organisation is often strategically necessary but can fail more times than it succeeds. To ensure you have a better chance, be clear about the outcomes and results you expect. What you say and do as a leader affects how people respond, and in turn, how successful the results are. Although formal processes can be put in place, it’s useful to remember that understanding the practical side can take time and the human side of change can be forgotten. When change happens, an effective leader will recognise the importance of engaging everyone involved whilst remembering that people need time to adapt.
Effective change is about leading people and not just the process. If you have the commitment from the people involved, then change is more likely to happen.
This five-step framework is useful for leading through change.
- Let go of what you can’t control and lead on what you can. This enables you and your team to focus and achieve what’s needed.
- Change can be an opportunity to learn and grow, and in turn, brings the chance to explore new ground.
- Communicate clearly at all stages by being open and honest with your team. Give them as much information as you can, and make sure you let them know what’s happening.
- Let your team know the changes that are taking place. Help them build upon their existing strengths and skills, this will help them to continue feeling motivated and engaged.
- Recognise the efforts of your team by telling them their positive response to the changes is valued. Highlight specific instances where you valued their support and ability to adjust.
Getting the best from your team
Watch our short video that explains how to get the best from your team.
For an organisation to be successful and effective, it is crucial to have a team that is engaged and motivated. Although everybody can have different motivations at different times, there are certain things you can do to maximise the potential for engagement from the team.
A happy team will ensure a productive workplace, and there’s a lot a leader can do to support this.
- Communication is essential.
Be open and honest with your team by making sure they have a clear understanding of your organisation’s mission, vision and plans. Listen to their ideas and give them feedback. Positive feedback can increase engagement so don’t wait to give it in periodic appraisals. Negative feedback is just as important and should be fair and focussed, but ensure people have time to respond.
- Show your team they are valued.
Voluntary, community and social organisations are rarely able to offer financial rewards to their paid or unpaid employees, so find other ways of showing recognition. This could be anything from a verbal, written, or public acknowledgement of praise, or providing refreshments for the next team meeting. Giving extra responsibilities can show that you trust and have confidence in the team, but make sure they are comfortable with this and have the necessary skills and training required.
- Offer opportunities for training and development.
There are a lot of formal training courses available, but don’t feel restricted to these. Look at opportunities for networking and support sessions with people in similar roles both in your organisation and externally. Give people time to shadow or become mentors.
- Provide clear and realistic goals, targets, and objectives to the team.
It’s hard to be effective if team members have no guidance on their objectives. Where possible, involve the team in setting the goals, as well as other organisational decisions. A team will feel more involved and motivated if they have the opportunity to contribute.
- Try to avoid disputes at an early stage.
Conflict can happen when descriptions of roles are unclear when there is a lack of support or just a clash of personalities. Disputes can have a detrimental effect on team morale and performance. The risk of conflict can be reduced by having clear roles, responsibilities, good leadership, and communication. Conflict can’t always be avoided though so try to spot it early, meet with those involved and mediate to resolve any issues.
Find out what motivates your team, in order give you an understanding of what is important to them as individuals. If an individual needs flexibility in their role what are the options and is it relevant. If they need more or less support, find a way to build this into your framework. If the needs of the team or organisation as a whole are being met, then responding to individual needs can be one of the most effective ways to build a loyal and engaged team.
Join the Midlands Learning Together programme
Midlands Learning Together programme free to join, as part of Thriving Communities which aims to support community health and wellbeing groups sustain their work for Social Prescribing
Thriving Communities is a new national support programme for voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise groups, supporting communities impacted by COVID19 in England, working alongside social prescribing link workers.
The learning together programme will help you understand the developments of Social Prescribing and how your work is part of Social Prescribing. You will have the chance to create partnerships with fellow community groups and other professionals across the health and local authority system to sustain your work in the long term.
Click here to learn more about the Midlands Learning Together programme as part of Thriving Communities National Academy for Social Prescribing.
Leadership in a digital world
Watch our short video that explains leadership in a digital world.
Digital tools can improve your organisation’s capabilities and capacity, but it can be difficult to know where to start. You need to ensure that you have the right skills to use them effectively.
The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has produced some tips for running a digital skills programme.
- Think strategically
Combine digital training with existing strategies, this will help you get commitment across the organisation and makes it more likely your programme will succeed. Consider strategic aims when assessing your skills gap and planning training. Content needs to be relevant to your organisation.
- Engage leaders and trustees
Digital needs to be part of the organisation’s culture. Support from the leaders and trustees is vital as they have the influence and authority for long-lasting change.
- Listen and adapt
Listen to the feedback, comments, and suggestions from your users. As your programme grows their insight will help increase engagement, attendance, and impact.
- Build confidence
You don’t need people to become experts, but you do want people to feel confident enough to try something new. Focus your sessions on building confidence by using group discussions, fun and practical exercises, and easy to follow tips.
- Build engagement
Focus on the people who are engaged and enthusiastic first and use them to encourage others who are less interested or worried about their digital skills. Offer one-to-one as well as group sessions to ensure everyone participates.
- Collect data
Data will help you review your programme and discover what impact it has. Collecting attendance and evaluation feedback at the end of a session will enable you see what’s working and what needs to be improved.
- Use internal communications
Use a range of communications within your organisation to remind people about upcoming sessions. This can include email, chat posts, posters or desk flyers. Focus on reasons why people should attend a session and try to use informal language and focus on words such as learning, sharing, confidence, effectiveness and efficiency.
- Plan learning options
Use your survey to find out how people in your organisation prefer to learn. Include practical exercises, discussions, guides and external resources in your sessions.
- Make it scalable
Focus on delivering effective sessions and keeping the programme manageable. You can add more as your programme progresses.
- Have fun
The more approachable and friendly you can make your programme, the more likely you are to engage your colleagues. By using amusing images, quotes, soundbites, and videos you can liven up presentations and it will make learning more appealing.
The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations has produced a useful tool for you to assess your current digital maturity and how this compares to other organisations. You can start the checkup at digital.checkup.scot
