Recent events at Dublin Simon highlight the strained relationship between voluntary and paid charity work. Kitty Holland reports
The volunteer spirit has been at the heart of the Dublin Simon Community since volunteers began more than 30 years ago to go out on the streets each night, offering soup and sandwiches to homeless people.
But the Dublin of 2004 is a very different place. And Dublin Simon, like other charities, has many professionals working alongside volunteers today. It’s a transformation fraught with difficulty.
An independent review of the homelessness charity last March said the relationship between “volunteerism” and “professionalism” needed to change. Though no-one questioned the high standards championed by Dublin Simon, the interaction between unpaid volunteers and paid staff could not stay the same, the report said. But, its author, independent housing and social policy consultant Simon Brooke, warned, change is “not an easy option”.
It certainly hasn’t been easy for Dublin Simon’s outspoken former chief executive, Greg Maxwell. Though enthusiastic about the findings of Brooke, last week Maxwell was dismissed from the post he held for nine years. He was replaced by an interim chief executive on Thursday afternoon, a move Maxwell says he will challenge legally.
Though by no means the only reason behind his dismissal, the fact that Maxwell was more enthusiastic about Brooke’s recommendations than were the eight board members – of whom seven are volunteers – is said to be a factor.
Maxwell, who had been with the charity since being appointed director in 1995, was asked to leave the Temple Bar offices by the chairman, Ronnie Tucker, who then addressed employees and volunteers. Tucker declined to talk to The Irish Times this week, but a brief statement from the charity was issued through a communications company on Tuesday. Confirming the board had decided "to terminate, by way of redundancy" Maxwell's employment, the statement continued: "The board feels that a different skill set is required of the chief executive for the organisation to progress effectively over the coming years."
On Thursday evening a former chief executive of the Galway-based software development company Storm Technology, Sam McGuinness, was appointed as interim chief executive. McGuinness has also been a senior executive with Irish Life and the former Digital Technology company.
"We welcome Sam McGuinness to Dublin Simon Community and look forward to his counsel and assistance in the management of the organisation and in the recruitment of a full-time permanent CEO," a statement said. A clearly bitter Greg Maxwell told The Irish Times he had sought a written explanation for his dismissal as well as clarification as to exactly what "skill set" he is deemed to lack. He said he had received no reply.
The changing nature of charity management in the 21st century appears to be a key issue in the clash between Maxwell and the board. From speaking to his colleagues and to observers, it is clear Maxwell’s outspoken campaigning style as well as his perceived weaknesses in “getting stuff done” were issues for some.
“Things just weren’t getting done that should have been,” said one employee. “His forte was policy and campaigning. He did delegate but it was too late,” said one former long-time volunteer. “The organisation had outgrown him.”
However, a senior member of another Dublin homelessness charity described the decision to dismiss him as “off the wall. Greg transformed Dublin Simon. He was visionary.”
There is no doubt the organisation, and the context in which it is working, have both been transformed since 1995. It was with an eye on this that Brooke was commissioned to carry out the reviews –one on the role of volunteering in the charity, and a second on perhaps Simon’s best-known service, the soup run.
While acknowledging in his first report the fact that “volunteering is deeply embedded in the history of Dublin Simon Community”, Brooke goes on to say “things have changed in recent years”. Foremost, it has become increasingly difficult to recruit volunteers. A combination of several factors, including greater demands on people’s times, the longer time students are staying in education, and more disposable income have robbed NGOs of the legions who used to volunteer – students, older people and women who have reared their children.
Across the charity and NGO community, service standards and client expectations have been raised, as have the legal, employment and health and safety obligations with which all must comply. An undeniable level of “professionalisation” has occurred among charities. And as Brooke points out, homeless people are as entitled to a professional service as anyone else.
Dublin Simon, which had fewer than 20 staff 20 years ago, now has 116 paid staff and 214 volunteers and an annual turnover of €8 million. “What has happened is that volunteers, especially in, for example, the night shelter –which had been almost entirely run by volunteers until the mid-1990s –found themselves on the margins,” Brooke told The Irish Times this week.
Many of the older volunteers resented the growing influence of paid staff in day-to-day management of Dublin Simon. Indeed some, according to Maxwell, felt paid staff should be answerable to volunteers.
In his review, Brooke sought to devise a way in which Dublin Simon could continue to utilise volunteers but “re-define and delineate clearly” their role. He made 14 recommendations, including that volunteers receive training and their “jobs” be clearly defined. Running throughout the recommendations, however, is an overwhelming sense that volunteers should be recruited, supervised, overseen and monitored by paid staff. They should also report to “volunteer co-ordinators” – who would be paid staff.
While the recommendations of the former were accepted by most within the organisation, some – perhaps harkingback to a time when the volunteer and the voluntary ethos were pre-eminent – were less enthusiastic.
The soup-run review provoked even more fierce objections. The first of Dublin Simon’s services, it has seen volunteers going out nightly to provide soup, sandwiches and friendly company to people sleeping on the streets across the city for the past 35 years.
However, Dublin Simon has recently started a professional outreach service to target homeless people, link them into services and move them into appropriate accommodation. Brooke found a lack of communication between the two services “a considerable weakness”.
With the numbers of people sleeping rough falling steadily – a particular credit to the efforts of the Homeless Agency and increased Government funding to tackle this blight – the need for the soup run has diminished, says Brooke. The numbers sleeping rough nightly in Dublin are fewer than 100 and the Homelessness Agency aims to eliminate rough sleeping altogether by 2010.
Furthermore, he says, given the fact that up to 12 centres serve cheap or free food daily across the city there is less need for a soup and sandwiches run. Indeed, providing such a service may encourage people on to the streets at night, he argues. Perhaps most jarring for volunteers on the soup run, Brooke writes: “The aim of the soup run should be to assist the outreach team to engage with rough sleepers by making contact with them, providing them with soup and sandwiches, recording their name, where possible, and identifying the location.”
While the report’s recommendations were badly received by some of the volunteers, Maxwell was enthusiastic about both reports. He had held a number of meetings with the soup-run volunteers before last week’s events.
The changes Brooke says Dublin Simon must undergo are by no means unusual. Other charities, including the homelessness charity Focus Ireland, have had to “professionalise”. Where once volunteers dominated, it now has 250 fulltime staff, about 60 part-time and between 70 and 90 volunteers.
The Homelessness Agency, through which Government funds are channelled to NGOs such as Simon and Focus, makes clear there are contractual obligations – i.e. standards – that must be met before funding will be granted. It remains to be seen how fully Brooke’s recommendations will be implemented, now that Maxwell has been removed.
“Differences in motivation, differences in relationships with work, different relationships with projects,” concluded Brooke in his first review, “present challenges to paid staff and volunteers.” However, one seasoned observer of the charity commented this week that the biggest challenge to Dublin Simon is putting the current debacle behind it.
“All of this is doing [Dublin] Simon no favours. The ones that are really being hurt are the ones at the coal-face. And most of all, of course, the homeless.”