The big questions: The impact of the last year

The last few months have been filled with workshops, interviews and speaking with over 100 VCSEs, providers and funders. We’ve heard stories of successes and pain points. Stories of people that have been able to navigate the last 12 months well and of those still in crisis-mode. All of this has provided the insights and reflections to create a set of principles to help build stronger and more flexible organisations.

Unearthing the big questions

Alongside this work, we’ve also been speaking regularly with a small group of advisors who have been encouraging us to push our boundaries and challenge our thinking. Throughout these conversations, a number of big questions have arisen such as, Should the organisation be de-emphasised with organisational development in the VCSE sector? And Is organisational development too heavily influenced by practices & ideas from the private sector, which are fundamentally at-odds with social change/charitable objectives?

Sharing our conversations

As part of the OpenOD project, we wanted to delve into some of these big questions, understand the effects they might have on civil society and the role organisation development plays.

Here, Nick Stanhope, CEO of Shift, along with Bonnie Chiu from The Social Investment Consultancy, Rob MacMillan from University of Sheffield Hallam and Tayo Medupin, project design lead discuss: Have the events of 2020 fundamentally challenged the role and organising principles of VCSEs and therefore of organisational development?

As with many big questions, this one is packed with many assumptions that we want to address. Here are some of the points that the group explored together…

• 2020/21 confirmed the importance of civil society, but does the after effect shift the values of the system?
• What is the role of civil society in the wake of the pandemic, and who is it for?
• Is this a moment to recognise a fragile system that needs more support or that we are increasing the fragility with our efforts?
• How the things that excite us; such as digital design, venture building, collective development, are equally weaponised and used against a sector to hold them accountable?
• If we don’t take on radical sector change now, when will we?

Nick, Bonnie, Rob & Tayo unpack the inequalities that have been highlighted in the last 12 months (Black Lives Matter, profiteering, Brexit) and discuss what we could and should take forward. They dare us to look at the way the sector is truly shaped.

Ultimately, it’s been hard and many VCSE leaders have had to scramble to keep things together. Nonetheless, this is a great chance to really reflect on what’s happened and learn from this moment so that the decisions we make going forward are a real fundamental change for this sector.

Listen to the discussion below and share your thoughts.