Catherine Alexander talks about her experience as a Specialist Volunteer
Specialist Volunteer Catherine Alexander, has over thirty-five years’ experience in banking and financial services, having worked with private clients, institutional clients, insured defined contribution pension scheme clients and insurance company clients. Most recently Catherine worked with Aegon Asset Management / Kames Capital where she was she was Head of Client Service before joining Inspiring Scotland as a Performance Adviser, and now as a volunteer with the Specialist Volunteer Network.
Inspiring Scotland’s charities have benefited from Catherine’s broad range of skills but especially her approach to getting the best from people to build effective and empowered teams. Since January 2017 Catherine has delivered £11,800 worth of pro bono hours to various charities, of which £5,400 of was with The Usual Place, based in Dumfries. This encompassed assisting with strategic and business plans as well as Cost Benefit Analysis.
Catherine’s Specialist Volunteer work has focused on Cost Benefit Analysis which charities find invaluable in helping them demonstrate the benefit of the service that they provide, as well providing equivalent costs to the community if the charity had not provided the service. This helps the charity put a value to the service they provide more fully and more importantly it allows them to demonstrate to funders and other stakeholders, just how vital their service is and the cost to the community if they did not provide this service.
The secret of Catherine’s success is that she delivers this knowledge in a very empathetic way to the charities and gives them the confidence and an extensive toolkit to carry on the CBA themselves in future. So, the learning is embedded which is vital.
Being used to being behind the scenes Catherine was keen to see the impact of their work with young people directly and she was invited to attend the first Graduation Ceremony for the young people and some of their mentors at The Usual Place in Dumfries.
Here is Catherine’s take on Inspiring young people in Dumfries.
“This was a wonderful evening when the first group of SVQ graduates from the programme at the Usual Place were presented with their certificates.
The transformative power of the ethos which underpins everything at the Usual Place has enabled and empowered a group of young people whose talents and qualities would otherwise have been overlooked. As a result, they are now able to be active participants in their communities rather than passive recipients of care.
Many of the graduates stood at the lectern and spoke to the assembled gathering sharing their experiences and recording their thanks. These were young people who could barely make eye contact or hold a conversation when they started and here they were holding a room full of people in the palms of their hands with their words.
One of the graduates couldn’t be there to collect his certificate. Why? Because he was working! Just proves that the Usual Place works too!”
Catherine Alexander
Inspiring Scotland Specialist Volunteer
It’s Volunteers’ Week and we want to say Thank you
From board rooms to community halls, volunteers are the backbone of our thriving third sector. National Volunteers Week (1 -8th June) is shining a spotlight on the extraordinary commitment of the 12 million volunteers who give their time and experience to charities across the country every week. It is an opportunity for those of us who work in the third sector to say a huge thank you.
Volunteers are active across all areas of our work at Inspiring Scotland, and without them we and the charities we support, would not have been able to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across Scotland in our first 10 years.
We are continually amazed by the commitment shown by individuals from Scotland’s business community in helping the charities we work to become truly extraordinary. Unlike many traditional corporate volunteering programmes based around staff volunteering days, our pool of 400 Pro Bono volunteers focus on using their skills and expertise to fill gaps in knowledge and help organisations to build their capacity, resilience and sustainability, and be better able to overcome challenges. All our Pro Bono supporters lend their time and knowledge because they share our vision and our values and want to help the voluntary sector to transform the lives of the most disadvantaged people and communities in Scotland.
As an example, please watch this video of Pro Bono supporter Elaine Speirs, an operations expert, using her skills and experience to support Move On to improve the way its food distribution warehouse works.
Inspiring Scotland Pro Bono Supporter Elaine Speirs helps FairShare Glasgow from Inspiring Scotland on Vimeo.
Being a volunteer can also be a very powerful experience for the individual involved; a way to build skills and confidence that can open doors to new life experiences. This is evidenced in our Link Up programme where 1,160 volunteers are now taking an active role in making positive change in their own communities and in their own lives. These volunteers set up and run many of the groups in their communities and go on to create entirely self-managed programmes embedded in their communities.
Volunteering also creates opportunities for individuals to connect and spend time together.
The whole intandem programme relies on the support and commitment of volunteers to make it a reality. In little over a year, 236 volunteers have signed up and are ready to be intandem mentors, offering their time and support to young people whose home life can be difficult and disruptive. By simply taking an active interest in a young person’s life, a mentor can help each young person to go on to realise their full potential.
As a keen cyclist and experienced charity and business leader, I have found my perfect volunteering balance as a board member and volunteer coach for a children’s cycling club. Whatever way you choose to volunteer, I hope you find it fulfilling. Thank you for doing it. Volunteering makes a difference.
Celia Tennant
Chief Executive
Pro Bono brews up a fine new brand of business
Callander’s Bridgend cafe development shows how our free support network can help, says Elaine Crichton, Pro Bono Executive
If you find yourself in Callander in need of a pick-me-up, I highly recommend you stop by the Bridgend café and get a young barista named Jamie to make you a coffee; he may well make the best latte north of the M9.
Jamie hasn’t always made such great coffee, and the Bridgend café wasn’t always a place worth stopping off, but the fact I now hold both statements to be irrefutable truths has as much to do with accountants and property lawyers, as it does with the training Jamie received at the coffee machine.
The Bridgend café, and the Callander Youth Hostel which houses the café, are both social enterprises run by the Callander Youth Project Trust (CYPT) – a charity specialising in helping young people into work and education.
The hostel occupies a beautiful building just off the main street in Callander and has been re-vitalised by CYPT in the last five years, including picking up 5-star visitor status from VisitScotland. The success of both businesses is a direct result of the Trust’s determination to have a place where local young people can meet and socialise, as well as to create employment and training opportunities for local young people.
CYPT Managing Director Chris Martin was a key factor in this success and he often tells the story of when he first presented the idea of developing the building at Bridgend to the charity’s board – they thought he was completely mad.
That’s when he turned to the offer of support from Inspiring Scotland’s Pro Bono network, a group of individuals who offer non-financial, expert support to charities free of charge.
Most social change organisations such as CYPT don’t have the ready access to resources such as strategic marketing, finance, IT, and HR that they need to succeed. When skilled volunteers from the Inspiring Scotland Pro Bono group bring their expertise to these organisations, they not only help them accomplish projects, they help develop strong organisations and allow them to fulfil their mission statement.
In many ways the project at Callander is the poster child for the power of pro bono, it simply would not have been as successful as it is today without pro bono input. The list of requests from CYPT was long and varied at the outset; support with property issues, project management, consultancy work on tourism, marketing and accounting support, website design, interior design and even a request for advise on gable-end water ingress! These were all delivered for free.
As Pro Bono Executive at Inspiring Scotland, I now have a group of over 260 people from all walks of life with myriad skills and experience reflecting almost all professions, from employees of large legal and accountancy firms to individuals, business entrepreneurs, consultants and retired executives.
The common purpose among pro bono supporters is the desire to give freely of their expertise but pro bono is more than corporate volunteering. The level of involvement, strategic input, and mutual collaboration embodies something that often goes on to build long-lasting relationships.
It’s a great way to match willing experts to the incredible organisations doing amazing work in communities across Scotland.
The Callander Hostel and Bridgend café are very visible examples of the power of pro bono but this happens on a daily basis across our portfolio of over 200 charities. Requests range from business mentoring and coaching as a charity approaches critical mass, to requests for social media training or professional photography.
Our charities are actively encouraged to use the pro bono resource and they do. Last year nearly 1600 hours of pro bono support was delivered amounting to a (very understated) value of £302,000. What we can’t yet measure is the compounding effect this has on the organisation.
I am constantly struck by how important this kind of professional assistance is to our charities; it can give them renewed hope with a problem or open up solutions they thought were beyond their expertise.
The support provided by the Pro Bono network at Inspiring Scotland is a key part of making the organisations we work with more sustainable and allows them to achieve their vision more effectively. In the case of CYPT and the Bridgend café that has meant, not just two successful social enterprises, but a place in Jamie’s home town where
he could get a job, earn money, learn new skills and pursue a career. As well as make fantastic coffee.
Callander Youth Project Trust is a youth orientated charity which is part of the Inspiring Scotland 14:19 fund set up in 2009 with a view to support disadvantaged young people aged 14-19 into employment, education or training.