Befriend: Community Campires

21/11/2024

Volunteer management: towards excellence

Project Overview

Befriend’s Community Campfires project is an innovative, inclusive approach to volunteer engagement that provides an open entry point for people from diverse backgrounds to discover volunteering and community contribution possibilities. Regular and informal Campfire gatherings build attendees' confidence and ideas in contributing to their community, through engagement with lived-experience stories and accessible personal reflection exercises.

The Community Campfire method aims to unite people around the shared human experience of contributing to community, in a way that honours diversity of contributions.

The situation and problem being solved

As a community building organisation, Befriend supports people to discover and give their unique gifts to community, to grow an inclusive, connected society. The nature of their work means they have always existed in the grey space between formal and informal volunteering. They saw the potential for purpose-driven organisations to develop multiple pathways for volunteer engagement that span the full continuum of both formal and informal volunteering. Within this context, they introduced the term ‘mission-aligned informal volunteering,’ to refer to the way in which community members might contribute towards an organisation’s mission in a more independent, autonomous capacity.

Strategy

Befriend identified a strategy that involved different stages of community building:

  1. Initiating: Initiating relationships and inspiring contributions.
  2. Cultivating the soil: Discovering gifts, building skills and knowledge.
  3. Planting the seedling: Helping get new community ideas off the ground.
  4. Tending the seedling: Practical support in the development stages, helping navigate the challenges as they arise.
  5. Supporting growth – providing platforms, resources and support to nurture, amplify and sustain initiatives.

These stages provided a foundation on which different pathways (formal and informal) can be offered to contributors.

Outcome

  • New community-led group established, ‘Preserving Pals’ at Perth City Farm.
  • ‘Gifts discovery’ methods resulted in strong engagement and will be adopted to help prospective volunteers determine meaningful ways to contribute.
  • Strengthened partnership relationships with pioneering innovative new models for supporting mission-aligned informal volunteering.
  • Interest from local government community development teams that may lead to co-hosting series of similar workshops with local councils.

Key learnings

Community Campfires were tested in multiple locations and identified some issues with terminology and also the structure that they were able to change to reduce barriers to participation. They found that the strongest engagement happened when workshops co-hosted with partners, for example through their activities at Perth City Farm. Their person-centred approach concludes that inclusive volunteer management means honouring and supporting the uniqueness of each person, taking the time to discover their unique gifts, and supporting them to self-determine the nature and terms of their contribution.

The Volunteer Management Activity Project Grants are funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services.