Weekly summary — Swansea

We’ve had a fascinating week in Swansea and the surrounding area. After spending time with 8 ‘micro-organisations’, we’re starting to gain a sense of who they are and what they need to thrive.

As is often the case with ethnographic research, one of the first things we’re learning is that the definitions and categories we carried with us into fieldwork hide complexity and nuance. All the organisations that we’re speaking to have an annual income of less than £50k, but what does that mean in practice? Under this umbrella, we found that some groups are self-sufficient, others are partly funded out of the founder’s own pockets, some have salaries sponsored by local enterprises, and others rely on the resources of larger organisations.

Beyond financing, we came across diversity in the challenges and needs faced by different organisations. In order to make sense of this, we started to question our assumptions around what it means to thrive; what does ‘doing well’ look like for each organisation?

We asked the organisations where they would like to be in the future and heard several visions of what this might look like:

• Some are working towards a mission larger than their organisation — they want to shift attitudes and change policy.

“The system needs to change — it can’t just be me doing this. The baton has to be passed.” — Rob, Glantawe Outdoor Education Academy

• For some, being ‘micro’ is a temporary state — they have ambitions to grow in size, influence and impact, expanding well beyond the local area.

“We’d like our work to be all around Wales. We’d like to be in partnership with every local council and health board in Wales with our way of working.” — Eleanor, People Speak Up

• Other organisations want to be able to expand their reach within the local community; their goal is to provide the services that are needed and have the resources in place to do so.

“We need to get the youth involved. If we don’t invest in the youth then we’ll lose Pontarddulais.” — Cath, Pontarddulais Partnership

• Others are happy with where the organisation is today and just want to ensure that it continues on an even keel.

“We have about 50 to 60 members, and that’s about right. We want to keep doing what we’re doing.” — Caroline, Llanelli Community Heritage

• Across the board, we heard how many organisations want to be able to see that what they’re doing is having an impact on individuals.

“Someone came to us and said ‘I don’t know what I would do if you weren’t here’ and that’s what makes a difference.” — Lisa, Kidwelly Hub

At the end of the week, we rounded off our fieldwork with a workshop. This was a chance for everyone we’d visited to come together as a group to discuss their challenges, learn from each other’s experiences and help us begin to synthesize our findings.

During the workshop, we shared back some of the things we had seen and heard about the challenges micro-organisations are facing. We grouped challenges into 6 broad topic areas: finance and funding; growth; looking after yourself and looking after others; awareness and engagement; resource, skills and capability gaps; and digital concerns.

For example, one of the key challenges that fell under ‘finance and funding’ was the lack of grants available for core costs (e.g. rent and utilities), while under the topic of ‘growth’, not having a seat at the table with key decision-makers is a hurdle some organisations are facing. We also asked participants to add any other challenges they face that we hadn’t captured. Each participant then voted with red stickers for their 6 most significant challenges and marked with green stickers any they had overcome.

Very few Post-Its received more than one vote, showing that while micro-organisations share broad challenges, the specific difficulties faced are circumstantial and tied to the organisation’s unique vision of doing well. For example, several organisations struggle with volunteer management. For some, the difficult part is attracting volunteers to grow their current service, while for others, it’s providing the right environment for people with learning difficulties to gain skills through volunteering.

We spent the second part of the workshop coming up with ideas of what’s needed to overcome these challenges. Participants shared their own experiences and advice, but as a group, we also reflected on where they need support, resources or change to happen from the outside. Some of the ideas we heard were:

• It’s invaluable to have someone to talk to who understands what you’re going through to help combat the stress of setting up and running a small community organisation. This could be in the form of a mentor or network of similar organisations.
• More robust research into the positive impact of micro-organisations is needed to raise recognition of the essential work they are doing in local communities.
• Leadership programmes are a good way to train volunteers to gain confidence and be empowered to take on more responsibility, easing the burden on one person ‘doing it all’.

Next week we’re heading up to Dundee for our second week of fieldwork — you can follow along with our live fieldnotes.