Lessons from the Volunteering Legacy

Urban Studies http://usj.sagepub.com/ Lessons from the Volunteering Legacy of the 2002 Commonwealth Games Geoff Nichols and Rita Ralston Urban Stud published online 31 March 2011 DOI: 10.1177/0042098010397400 The online version of this article can be found at: http://usj.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/03/30/0042098010397400 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: Urban Studies Journal Limited Additional services and information for Urban Studies can be found at: Email Alerts: http://usj.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://usj.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav >> Version of Record - Mar 31, 2011 What is This? Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 1–16, 2011 Lessons from the Volunteering Legacy of the 2002 Commonwealth Games Geoff Nichols and Rita Ralston [Paper first received, March 2010; in final form, October 2010] Abstract Potential exists for a more multifaceted and interrelated volunteering legacy from mega sporting events than has been recognised by previous research, including not only the continuation and development of volunteering activity, but also the contribution that activity makes to the social inclusion of volunteers, the economic contribution to the development of events in the region, the development of a skilled volunteer workforce and raising the standard of event volunteer management. This paper provides evidence for that claim via a case study of Manchester Event Volunteers—a volunteer development organisation established after the 2002 Commonwealth Games, which is still operating seven years later and provides a role model for volunteer broker organisations. The case study shows that local government played a key role in generating a volunteer legacy, but that legacy planning was limited by the imperative of running the event. Implications for similar events, such as the 2012 Olympics, are discussed. Introduction: Volunteer Legacy of Mega Sports Events A volunteer labour force is critical to mega sports events such as the Olympic or Commonwealth Games (Preuss, 2004): without volunteers, such events “would cease to exist” (Goldblatt, 2002, p. 110). A major reason for using volunteers is that the costs of running such events with paid labour would be prohibitive and, as such events increase in size and number, their reliance on volunteers has grown apace. The 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester required 10 500 volunteers (Ralston et al., 2005), up to then the largest group of volunteers assembled in the UK in peacetime. The 2000 Sydney Olympics Geoff Nichols is in the Management School, University of Sheffield, Mappin Street, Sheffield, S1 4DT, UK. E-mail: g.nichols@sheffield.ac.uk. Rita Ralston is in the Department of Food and Tourism Management, Hollings Faculty, Manchester Metropolitan University, Old Hall Lane, Manchester MI4 6HR, UK. E-mail: R.Ralston@mmu.ac.uk. 0042-0980 Print/1360-063X Online © 2011 Urban Studies Journal Limited DOI: 10.1177/0042098010397400 Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 2 GEOFF NICHOLS AND RITA RALSTON used 70 000 volunteers in total (Cashman, 2006) and the 2012 London Olympics will require 70 000 volunteers. Claims for an anticipated legacy have become an essential part of bids to host the Olympic Games and other mega sports events (Gold and Gold, 2007). While there has been much discussion about the legacy of mega sporting events in terms of contributions to the sporting infrastructure and as a catalyst to economic development (Cashman, 2006; Gratton, et al. 2005; Mean et al., 2004; Preuss, 2004 and 2007; Smith and Fox, 2007; Vigor et al., 2004), there has been little consideration of the legacy arising from the body of volunteers. Reasons for this may include the lack of precise objectives for a volunteering legacy and the lack of a legacy organisation sustained after the Games. Recent reviews of the legacies of the Olympic Games since 1988, and the potential legacy of London 2012, mention only briefly the intangible legacy of a volunteer programme, noting only that the 2002 Commonwealth Games had a positive impact on volunteering in sport (Poynter and Macrury, 2009; Sadd and Jones, 2009) but with little evidence of this. Auld et al.’s (2009) brief review notes Cashman’s (2006, p. 39) conclusion that the 2000 Sydney Olympics had a “clear and continuing volunteer legacy” but the main evidence for this was the existence of a website established for volunteers, enabling them to maintain contact with each other and to be contacted by further events. Cashman emphasises the emotional legacy for the volunteers, drawing on his own volunteering experience, and Crompton (2004) advocates recognising the ‘psychic income’ in addition to economic impact, but again this is difficult to measure. The evaluation of the 2002 Commonwealth Games Legacy Programme, conducted in 2003 (ECOTEC, n.d., annex 1), concluded that the Pre-volunteer Programme (PVP, which developed into Manchester Event Volunteers) engaged individuals from disadvantaged groups, provided training, established a pool of volunteers, provided an “enhanced understanding of how such volunteer programmes ... can successfully function in the future” and “added a notable social inclusion element to the volunteering around the Games”. This paper is able to use evidence from 2009/10 to extend this evaluation of volunteering legacies, to identify the critical factors contributing to them and to consider how the performance of a volunteer legacy organisation can be measured. As probably the longest-running mega event volunteer legacy programme in the world, Manchester Event Volunteers (MEV) offers unique insights for future events. Review of Previous Research Previous research has looked at mega sporting event legacies in terms of the likelihood of volunteers re-volunteering and in terms of enhancement of volunteers’ post-event employability. These two perspectives are reviewed in turn, followed by consideration of a third which has been heretofore neglected in such studies—that of contributions to social inclusion in a broader sense. Finally in this review section, a fourth, economic, perspective is noted. Re-volunteering studies have attempted to predict the propensity of volunteers at mega sports events to volunteer again through questioning them about expectations and relating this to perceptions of their volunteering experience (Doherty, 2009; Downward and Ralston, 2006). These concluded that the experience of volunteers at events will determine their likelihood to volunteer again, with consequent implications for volunteer management. These studies are limited by the need to ask about future intentions, rather than actual activity. Further, attempts to deduce causal relationships between volunteers’ experience at one event and their intentions to volunteer at a later event may be flawed by the influence on the volunteers of Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 THE VOLUNTEERING LEGACY post-event euphoria and by the value-laden nature of the prompts used to measure intentions (respondents may express an intention to volunteer in order to convey a positive self-image). These studies above attempted to predict volunteers’ propensity to re-volunteer at major sports events, but did not show the rewards gained from re-volunteering, or relate this to policy objectives. Secondly, in relation to volunteers developing skills for employability, a review by the Greater London Authority (2007, p. 9) noted that at previous Olympics “volunteers were trained for low-skilled customer focused service tasks” and that there was “little evidence of volunteer skills transferring to the post-Games economy”. However, it is difficult to know where such evidence could be obtained, given that previous Olympic Games or Commonwealth Games had no records of how many Games volunteers had moved from pre-Games unemployment to post-Games employment. Carlson and Taylor (2003) reported that increasing employment was an objective of the Manchester Games and that 3000 disadvantaged people had the opportunity to take part in the Pre-volunteer Programme (PVP) but could not report for how many this had led to employment. Smith and Fox’s (2007) review of the 2002 Commonwealth Games volunteering legacy, based on an ECOTEC (n.d.) evaluation, conducted in 2003, attributed the PVP with providing training that enabled 2134 individuals to gain one of two qualifications offered as part of the programme, but gave no details of what those qualifications were or how many participants there were on the PVP in total. The report stated Participation in the project and training may also have contributed to the 160 individuals recorded as having gained employment after taking part. On top of this a number of individuals were also encouraged to enter further education and/or training as a result of participation (ECOTEC, n.d., annex 1, italics added). 3 The report notes that a further legacy was the development of an accredited course in event volunteering, [and] an enhanced understanding of how such volunteer programmes targeting disadvantaged groups and communities can successfully function in the future (ECOTEC, n.d.). The PVP “supplied 10 per cent of the volunteers used in the Games” (Smith and Fox, 2007, p. 1134), but it is not possible to say how many of these moved into employment after the event. Thirdly, with the exception of the Commonwealth Games evaluation a year after the Games (ECOTEC, n.d.), previous studies have not considered how any changes in the number of volunteers engendered by an event legacy have contributed to social inclusion in a broader sense. Under New Labour, a prominent objective to promote ‘social inclusion’ and volunteering has been seen as a means of achieving this (Billis, 2001). The ambiguous converse of this concept, ‘social exclusion’, has been analysed as including three competing discourses (Levitas, 2005): one that links exclusion to poverty and implies redistributionist policies (‘RED’); one that frames exclusion in cultural terms and implies policies to elevate a moral underclass (‘MUD’); and one that attributes exclusion to non-participation in the paid labour market and implies policies to encourage participation (‘SID’). A central theme of Levitas’ analysis is that the prominence of the SID discourse “barely acknowledges non-market work at all” (Levitas, 2005, p. 27). In this discourse, volunteering is primarily a means of developing employability and should be encouraged for this purpose. (Paid) work is the prime source of status; the worst thing that can happen is to fall out of work, and lose your employability, your skills, your personal qualities, as well as friends and contacts Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 4 GEOFF NICHOLS AND RITA RALSTON (Commission on Public Policy and British Business, 1997/2005, p. 29). By implication, volunteering can not provide these rewards. The Greater London Authority (2007) review of the impact of the Olympic Games on volunteering is an example of the SID discourse because of its emphasis on volunteering developing employability. Criticisms of this discourse are that it devalues the experience of those retired from paid work and those who chose not to enter the labour market (for example, because they spend time caring for children or relatives); it ignores the impracticality of achieving full employment and it disregards the considerable differences in circumstances of those who are employed (Williams and Windebank 2000). New Labour’s Social Exclusion Unit understood exclusion as a condition, the symptoms of which are poor health, low education, unemployment, propensity to criminality and poor housing (Long and Bramham, 2006). Alternatively, it has been understood as a process (Castells, 2000). An implication of the first understanding is that inclusion can be alleviated by treating the symptoms, while an implication of the second is that it requires addressing the causes. This second understanding is reflected in the Commission of the European Communities definition which refers to the multiple and changing factors resulting in people being excluded from the normal exchanges, practices and rights of modern society [and that] it allows a twotier society to become established by default (Commission of the European Communities, 1993, p. 1). The concern with social fragmentation similarly underlies the SID discourse which stresses the social integrationist function of paid work– in a Durkheimian sense, it binds the individual to society through structural, cultural and moral ties. This raises the question of whether volunteering could provide a similar function. Inclusion could be approached through other theoretical frameworks. Exploring the substitutability of the functions of paid work and volunteering could show if volunteering provided the same psychological categories of experience: a degree of temporal organisation, a regularly shared experience outside the context of the family, a link to goals and purposes transcending those of the individual and a source of personal status and identity (Jahoda, 1981). If a starting-point was the rewards of volunteering (Rochester et al., 2010), one of these is an identity provided by long-term volunteering, in the same way as might be provided by employment. Thus the ambiguity of social exclusion makes it difficult to examine the contribution of volunteering, and any specific programme, to inclusion (Long and Bramham, 2006) and evaluation might draw on different theoretical frameworks. One approach is to examine if volunteering can provide similar rewards to paid work, but to reduce the causes of exclusion, not just the symptoms. This raises the possibility that volunteering could alleviate some of the considerable effects of unemployment, such as poor health (Marmot, 2010). A fourth perspective is the economic contribution of volunteer activity. Volunteers reduce the costs of running mega events. Haynes (2001) estimated that, if the hours of work provided by the volunteers at the Sydney Olympics had been paid, they would have added AUS$140 million to the cost of the Games, or about 5 per cent of the organising committee’s total Games expenditure. In this way, volunteers contribute to economic outcomes, such as tourism or urban regeneration, as they might in any other activity made possible by volunteering. The present case study provides evidence of a volunteering legacy in all these respects seven years after the event. It is able to show how and why MEV has developed from the Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 THE VOLUNTEERING LEGACY original PVP social inclusion agenda in unanticipated ways. Manchester Event Volunteers: Background to the Case Study Independent of the 2002 Commonwealth Games, Manchester City Council’s Economic Initiatives Group held a Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) grant, allocated to spend on regeneration activities between 1999 and 2004, the bulk of which was spent before 2002. Matched funding generated a total of £17.7 million (Smith and Fox, 2007) to run seven social inclusion programmes, including a network of Pre-volunteer Programmes (PVPs). The PVPs were targeted at the most socially and economically disadvantaged areas of the North West region and used the Games as a catalyst to attract the long-term unemployed into training and development which would qualify them for an interview to become a Games volunteer, but might also help them to obtain paid employment elsewhere. The aims of the SRB projects were focused on skill development: the first being “to improve skills, educational attainment and personal development within target disadvantaged areas” (Smith and Fox, 2007, p. 1133). A volunteering legacy had been discussed by the Economic Initiatives Group in 1998/99, but no detailed plans were made. A catalyst to planning a volunteering legacy was the visit to Manchester in December 2001 of the Minister for Sport, who was impressed by the enthusiasm of long-term volunteers in the Games offices, but “noted their anxieties with regard to opportunities beyond the Games” (Games Final Report, n.d., Executive summary, E2 p. 1). Immediately after the Games, the Legacy Manager was charged with writing a plan for what was at the time called the “Post-Games Volunteer Project”. The funds available were approximately £100 000 (about 1.6 per cent) of the original SRB grant. 5 The Post-Games Volunteer Project (PGVP) was established in January 2003 for a oneyear trial period to December 2003 with £400 000 funding from the European Social Fund, the Regional Legacy Programme, the Greater Manchester Learning and Skills Council and Manchester City Council. The PGVP was seen as continuing the work of the Pre-volunteering Programme, with a social inclusion agenda, consistent with the original SRB funding. Five staff were recruited from the PVP. Following the Commonwealth Games, the PGVP contacted people on their database who had offered to volunteer at the Games—10 500 Games volunteers and 1000 people who had gone through the PVP but had not actually volunteered at the Games—and asked if they would like to “find out about other volunteering opportunities”. Of these, 2000 replied positively. It quickly became apparent that the PGVP was providing a previously unmet, and unanticipated, demand for a broker between events and volunteers. Once the funding associated with the package set up after the Games ran out, the project had to apply for further funds and this affected the way it works now. Whilst the initial funding had a north-west England focus, allowing volunteers to come from anywhere in the region, the present (reduced) funding is from Manchester City Council, reflecting social inclusion through employment objectives. This permits it to take on volunteers only from this local authority area. The organisation was rebranded in August 2005, from the Post-Games Volunteer Project to Manchester Event Volunteers, to reflect the more restricted Manchester focus. Manchester Event Volunteers presently acts as a broker between volunteers and event organisers by maintaining a database of 1500 volunteers, advertising events to them and, once they have expressed interest, passing their contact details on to the event organisers. MEV supports over 150 events per year. Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 6 GEOFF NICHOLS AND RITA RALSTON Methods A range of methods allowed the research to address ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions (Yin, 2009) through interviews, questionnaires and investigation of the MEV database. An initial interview was conducted in 2009 with the MEV manager to gain a basic understanding of MEV’s operations and this was followed by more extensive discussions to explore specific issues. Two focus groups of MEV volunteers were conducted in 2009—the first with six of the most experienced volunteers and the second with a broader sample of ten volunteers. These used a semi-structured approach around broad themes, including the rewards from volunteering and the role of MEV in allowing them to continue volunteering after the Commonwealth Games. The focus groups and initial interview with the MEV manager informed the design of a postal questionnaire survey, distributed to all the 1500 active volunteers on the MEV database in June 2009. These elicited 271 useable responses. The questionnaire respondents represented 52 per cent of the volunteers who had volunteered in the year prior to the survey. They over-represented them in relation to all MEV members and over-represented MEV members who were Games volunteers. The questionnaire asked about: the number of events they had volunteered for; the expected rewards from volunteering at events; their views of the service provided by MEV; and demographic details. Questions involved responses to a set of statements on five-point Likert scales and the opportunity to express open-ended comments. Typically, over 50 per cent of respondents took advantage of the opportunity to record open comments, which are used with other quotations to inform the results. Semi-structured interviews were conducted between September and December 2009 with eight event organisers. Topics included the value of the broker service offered by MEV and the contribution of volunteers to events, thus giving an indication of the economic benefits of volunteering. A further interview was conducted in October 2009 with the former Manchester City Council officer who had had major responsibility for developing and managing the legacy of the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games and establishing MEV. The major focus of this interview was on the legacy planning process and the role of MEV in providing a volunteering legacy. Secondary data were provided through MEV’s database on the number of events supported, the personal characteristics of the volunteers, the number of events each volunteer had volunteered for and the number of volunteers who remained on the database from the Commonwealth Games, between 2003 and 2009. Results: What Is the Volunteering Legacy? Re-volunteering and an Increase in Volunteering Only 352 of the database members had expressed an interest in volunteering during the preceding year and 490 over the preceding two years. These ‘active’ volunteers could be regarded as a volunteer legacy, although this disregards volunteers who may have started volunteering through MEV and now volunteer elsewhere. The 490 persons who had volunteered in the two years prior to the survey had done so for a cumulative total of 2840 volunteering opportunities: on average 5.73 events each with a range of 1 to 88 events. This variation in volunteer commitment reflects the ability of MEV to meet the needs of ‘episodic’ volunteers: those who wish to volunteer at separate, irregular intervals (Rochester et al., 2010, p. 30). It is misleading to think of the volunteering legacy as limited to active volunteers as MEV membership enables a return to volunteering Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 THE VOLUNTEERING LEGACY when personal circumstances allow—for example, retirement from paid work. The five most important things MEV provided for volunteers, in rank order, were: making them aware of new volunteering opportunities; allowing them to pick the events they wanted to work on; keeping them informed of events in Manchester; allowing them to volunteer as much or as little as they wanted; and allowing them to volunteer when they wanted to. This again reflected an episodic pattern of volunteering and MEV’s valued broker role. Evidence that MEV had generated more volunteering came from the questionnaire respondents who had volunteered at the Commonwealth Games: 81 per cent of these respondents either ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ (on a five-point Likert scale) that through MEV they had been able to volunteer more frequently after the Games. For 85 per cent, MEV had enabled them to volunteer for a wider range of organisations after the Games. MEV has been continually recruiting new members since the Commonwealth Games—30 per cent of the questionnaire respondents had not been Commonwealth Games volunteers. Increasing Employability and Other Dimensions of Social Inclusion MEV, working with the Open College Network, provided opportunities for volunteers to acquire the first nationally recognised basic-level qualifications in event volunteering, sports volunteering and events team leadership. This enabled MEV volunteers to take a more active supervisory role in events and for some to gain employment in the events industry. MEV provides training in how to complete a CV, an application form and interview skills. Its regular newsletter includes employment opportunities as well as ones for volunteering. These benefits are illustrated in the following testimonials 7 I got a place on a basic skills teaching course more because of my ‘Games’ experience than my ‘academic’ background. I got a free training weekend and got a GMOCN certificate which could help with future employment. I became a volunteer during long-term unemployment to give me something to look forward to. When I gained employment it was one of the main reasons why I got the job. From volunteering, I have got two part-time jobs, one as a match day steward at the City of Manchester Stadium ... and the other job is teaching IT skills to adults one day a week (Manchester Event Volunteers, 2010). MEV does not ask volunteers to report when they have moved from unemployment to employment, or to attribute this to experience on MEV, so it is not possible to estimate the number of MEV volunteers who have gained employment as a result of involvement with MEV. (Indeed, it is difficult to see how previous evaluations could estimate this (Smith and Fox, 2007, p. 1136), as it would have required monitoring the career development of all 2134 participants.) The ambiguity of social inclusion makes it difficult to analyse the experience of volunteering to show how it has contributed to inclusion. However, the Commission on Public Policy and British Business (1997/2005, p. 29) description of paid work as “the prime source of status” and the consequences of unemployment as including loss of employability, skills, qualities, friends and contacts indicates rewards from volunteering which might be a substitute for those from paid work and provides a structure for the discussion that follows. The experience of volunteering at the Commonwealth Games had conferred considerable status and identity, which MEV membership provided an expression of, as the following statements indicate Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 8 GEOFF NICHOLS AND RITA RALSTON I want to continue volunteering because of the great sense of pride and experience at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. A coming together of people from around the world with one common aim, and they came to ‘Manchester’. I was extremely proud and felt privileged to be involved in the Commonwealth Games. MEV have helped me continue feeling proud and privileged in volunteering at events. They are a great team and good friends. It gave me enjoyment and excitement from the 2002 Games which I looked for in other events afterwards. ... the enjoyment of being involved has not waned. This affiliation to MEV as an extension of a Games identity was reflected in the overrepresentation of ex-Games volunteers in the survey sample, 69 per cent. A sense of loyalty and identification with MEV as an organisation was reflected in the number of volunteers in the focus groups who wanted to have a uniform or badge showing they were part of MEV at events (not possible at present) and by this comment from an experienced event manager, on MEV members’ collective responsibility The other bonus I think you get from having an organisation like MEV is you get that ‘crew culture’ thing, they know one another [and] they’re committed to doing a good job. ... one of the people I had missed a bus and ... were mortified that they’d let down their other volunteers who were with them. The experience of volunteering conferred status and worth It gives me self-esteem and pride in the part I play in volunteering. It makes you feel pride and confident that you can do so much for so many people. I come away from events feeling good. It provides me with the information and opportunities to participate as a volunteer in a wide range of events. This enables me to lead an active and fulfilling life which I thoroughly enjoy. Thus volunteering is providing status and identity. Volunteering with MEV provided friends and contacts. Respondents to the questionnaire ranked ‘feeling part of a team’ as the second most important reward from volunteering. This was especially important for retired or semi-retired volunteers—47 per cent of the respondents I am retired. I would not have met so many people; the MEV volunteers are like a second family to me. It enables me to keep in touch with the many friends I have made whilst doing voluntary work organised through MEV. As a senior citizen aged 85, this is a great incentive to ‘keep going’. It enables me to meet up, occasionally, with my old Commonwealth Games chums. It adds variety to my life, as I am a single, retired person. I am very pleased with the way MEV has kept in contact since the games and still feel ‘part of the team’ to a certain extent. Now I have taken early retirement I feel that now I can make more use of the contacts MEV provides. Thus volunteering provides friends and contacts. MEV provides specific skills training and introductions to new opportunities, although these did not necessarily lead to employment The Post-games Volunteers/MEV opened new doors for me—I trained to be a mentor to help young people who had not worked, etc. Although the scheme did not get off the ground, it was no fault of MEV or of the City Council. My training will not be wasted. Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 THE VOLUNTEERING LEGACY I have done voluntary work in the Greater Manchester Youth Games over the past 2 years, and have just completed my first level Coaching award [and] I have been assistant coach at two badminton festivals working with school children of all ages. An underlying concern of social exclusion theory is an alienation from society in a Durkheimian sense. Through volunteering, volunteers were able to feel that they were making a meaningful contribution to society and to Manchester in particular It gives me the opportunity to help individuals and groups when they are in need of assistance. Shows society in general that people within the community that is often ‘faceless’ do care. Enables me as an individual to give something back to the community in which I live. In response to a question asking the importance of 22 different expectations from volunteering at events, ‘make a contribution to the image of Manchester’ ranked third most important. Previous research using pre- and post-2002 Commonwealth Games surveys showed that volunteers gave significantly higher scores to the reward of ‘promoting Manchester’ post-Games (Ralston et al., 2005)—confirming the impact of the experience of volunteering at the Games. This analysis supports and develops the post-Games evaluation conclusion (ECOTEC, n.d.) that the PVP had contributed to social inclusion. The ambiguity of the concept and the scope within this paper to explore this one aspect of the Games legacy means that we have restricted our analysis to noting the contribution of volunteering to identity and status, contacts and friends, skills development and an active expression of affinity with a local community. The high proportion of retired MEV volunteers means that for them the SID discourse is irrelevant, but 9 the analysis suggests that volunteering can contribute to inclusion by the process of active engagement in society, facilitated by organisations such as MEV, and supports the critique of this discourse. Inclusion through volunteering does not arise from alleviating the symptoms of exclusion. Rather, it arises from facilitating a process of active engagement with, and contribution to, society; this is at least as available to the retired as to those in employment. The potential for volunteering to provide a substitute for paid work, especially for the involuntarily unemployed—and potentially to alleviate the detrimental impact on health (Marmot, 2010)—is a further research question. Economic Outcomes of Volunteering Since it was established in 2002, MEV has directed volunteers towards over 1000 events across the North West region. These have ranged from small community and charity events to major international sporting events. Amongst these are 76 major events hosted in the North West over the past five years (2004–09) that have attracted around four million additional leisure and business visitors and have contributed £150 million to the region’s economy. In the 12 months prior to the questionnaire survey, there were 25 major events which brought 1.75 million visitors to the region and generated a £45 million visitor spend, not including tourism revenue. Manchester was ‘crowned’ the ‘World’s Best Sports City 2008’ for its successful hosting of six international sports events during the year (UK Sport, 2008). MEV offered volunteering opportunities at all of these events. The number of volunteers required per event ranges from 200 to less than 10. It is not possible to calculate exactly how many volunteers have been provided to events because MEV only keeps a record of the number of volunteer contacts it passes to event organisers— it does not record which volunteers the event chooses to use. Hence it is not possible to Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 10 GEOFF NICHOLS AND RITA RALSTON calculate the equivalent value in terms of paid wages of the volunteer hours contributed. Nevertheless, the MEV volunteers have made an economic contribution to the North West Region. Interviews with event managers showed that, for them, a major advantage of working with MEV was the ease of contacting a large number of volunteers. Some event managers said that they would either not be able to operate without the volunteers or at a much reduced scale—suggesting that MEV has contributed to the expansion in the number and size of events run in the region. An event organiser from outside Manchester, who ran an event with over 34 000 participants, acknowledged that the availability of MEV was a significant factor in deciding to run an event in Manchester. The value of MEV in establishing Manchester as a major event destination was confirmed in informal interviews with City Council staff although, as with volunteers moving into employment, it is impossible to quantify this economic contribution. Developing a Reliable and Skilled Event Volunteer Workforce Event managers were attracted to Manchester by being able to access volunteers who had experience and training in event work, as this interviewee expressed It’s invaluable that they understand events. MEV volunteers can hit the ground running. When you try to explain in the briefing that there will be 40 000 people at the events, they understand what that means. They don’t panic ... and say ‘I didn’t expect it to be so busy’ (festival organiser). Event organisers valued the reliability, enthusiasm, experience, event skills and confidence of MEV volunteers. Some specifically contrasted the enthusiasm of volunteers with that of employees and said that this contributed to a better atmosphere for the event The volunteers were there because they wanted to be there and that immediately reflects in their attitude to the public because they are enthusiastic, they’re helpful, they’re welcoming to the public (festival organiser). Where some events occurred regularly at the same venue, volunteers gained experience specific to the event or working with the same organiser What I found particularly useful was the expertise of the Manchester Event Volunteers in that they knew how things worked in terms of people. It was they immediately who said we will need a dress code (festival organiser). MEV volunteers ... understand the more complicated things like how the box office works, how the stewarding works. If there’s an issue, they’re experienced enough to be able to deal with it (festival organiser). Two other contributions of MEV to a volunteering legacy are attributable to its innovative status as the first organisation of its type in the UK. Developing Good Practice in Volunteer Management Arising from the broker role was the advice and support MEV staff offered to event organisers on standards for volunteering and on how to deal with and manage volunteers. For some organisers new to using volunteers, this was extremely valuable [The MEV manager] was fantastic and he came out for a meeting to discuss setting up a volunteer policy looking at role descriptions, application forms and also how to structure the volunteer interviews. He sent us lots of really valuable information that enabled us to work on our documents and really understand what the difference was between volunteers ... [and] paid members of staff (event organiser using volunteers for the first time). Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 THE VOLUNTEERING LEGACY Event organisers reported that MEV had “raised the bar” and “set the gold standard for volunteering at events”. MEV insists on a code of practice and minimum standards, including food, rest breaks, uniform, reimbursement of expenses, insurance cover, health and safety procedures, before they agree to work with an event. A Role Model Organisation As the first organisation of its type in the UK, MEV has offered a role model for others, such as in Liverpool following the City of Culture, in Newham (Nichols and Ojala, 2009), and has advised a programme based around the 2012 Olympic sailing facility. Policies and procedures have been adopted directly from MEV. Critical Factors in the Development of a Legacy Organisation Critical factors in MEV’s development provide valuable lessons for similar organisations. While Smith and Fox (2007) argue for greater integration of the legacy planning and the management of the major event, MEV’s legacy manager felt it was important that the programme’s initial SRB funds had been entirely independent of the budget for running the Games. This meant that there was no possibility of funds being diverted from delivering a legacy to delivering the Games. While a volunteering legacy had been discussed in 1998/99 and a Legacy Board comprised of several partners had been established, a general commitment was not converted into detailed plans. As an interviewee put it, from about two years before the event, “the momentum just becomes so huge that the steam roller sort of tramples you, unless you’ve got a way of working with it”. The over-riding priority by 2000 was to run the event successfully. There was neither time nor resources to discuss legacy plans. 11 This prevented specific plans being made in the immediate period before the Games, but it was imperative that the bid for further funding was made as soon after the Games as possible to capitalise on the enthusiasm and goodwill created by the success of the Games and the volunteer programme. The legacy manager estimated that this ‘window of opportunity’ was only about four weeks. It was important that key staff, who were employed by Manchester City Council and had an interest in generating the legacy, remained after the Games. Immediately after the Games, the staff who had worked for Manchester 2002 Ltd (M2002), the organisation formed to deliver the Games, rapidly dispersed. The only people left to plan and implement a legacy were the 20 staff in the City Council legacy team: they almost outnumbered those left in the M2002 team. It was these staff who remained to make the bid for extended funding. As already noted, the bid for further funding was supported by £100 000 of the original SRB grant. If this had not been available, the bid would not have been so strong. The ECOTEC (n.d.) evaluation recommended that future events allocate a higher proportion of the legacy budget to the post-Games period. Having obtained funding for the continuation of the PVP, it was essential to act quickly to contact all the Commonwealth Games volunteers and PVP members to capitalise on their enthusiasm and because the site licence for the database system containing their contact details, used by M2002, was due to expire four weeks after the Games. Greater integration between M2002 and the PVP might have anticipated this need. Similarly, the PVP programmes in different sub-regions of the North West also had independent databases which were not compatible with the Games database, or with each other. Having generated a database of potential volunteers, it was essential to have a volunteering opportunity to offer them after Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 12 GEOFF NICHOLS AND RITA RALSTON the Games finished on 4 August. The new organisation was committed to providing 200 volunteers in November 2002 for the first large event held in Manchester after the Commonwealth Games. On the one hand, it was important to have an event for volunteers to be directed to; on the other hand, this left little time to establish working practices. Once the unanticipated gap for a volunteer broker organisation became apparent, it also became clear that the development of volunteering capacity through MEV had not been planned to co-ordinate with an event development and tourism development strategy for the region. The direction of the Post-Games Volunteer Project (PGVP) was set both by the funders and the staff recruited to manage it, all of whom had previously worked on the Prevolunteer Programme. This gave it a strong social inclusion agenda, in terms of focusing on the development of disadvantaged people through volunteering. This has persisted, despite the emergence of a volunteer/event broker focus. This analysis refines that of Smith and Fox (2007) and ECOTEC (n.d.) in showing more precisely how better co-ordination between planning and delivering the Games and the legacy would have been helpful. Leaving detailed planning of the legacy until after the Games almost led to insurmountable logistical problems. As with the 2012 Olympics, it seems inevitable that the imperative of running a high-status political event will absorb all available resources of potential partner agencies in the immediate run-up to the event. On the other hand, the key point is that local government will be the organisation that will remain after the event, has most interest in ensuring a legacy and can potentially work with an independent legacy budget. Objectives and Performance The post-Games evaluation (ECOTEC, n.d.) was related to aims, but not to any specific targets. For example, these could have included: the number of PVP members, the number of these to gain a specified qualification, the number to complete the PVP and the number to be successful in an interview to become a Games volunteer. It may be that specific targets were not set because it was too difficult a task for a completely new organisation. However, lack of them makes it impossible to establish performance indicators as benchmarks. As a ‘mature’ organisation now, it should be possible for MEV to set measurable performance indicators in relation to its objectives. The outputs could be related to the costs of running the programme to show, for example, how much it costs to support 490 active volunteers over two years, or 25 major events over 12 months. Information on performance presented in this form would be valuable to support funding applications. The experience of MEV since the ECOTEC evaluation suggests more precise PIs, which could be appropriate for similar programmes. The quantitative monitoring information presently compiled by MEV includes new volunteers engaged per month—(broken down to show those disabled and from Black and ethnic minority groups) and the number of events offered per month. Recognising that there is a danger in relying only on quantitative data, these figures are supplemented by accounts of good practice and brief case studies of volunteers. The analysis of the contribution of volunteering to social inclusion, presented in this article, demonstrates the value of qualitative data. Conclusions The MEV case study illustrates the potential for a much more multifaceted and interrelated volunteering legacy from a mega event than the literature has explored. Previous research has identified the intangible but significant euphoria and collective spirit experienced by volunteers after such events Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 THE VOLUNTEERING LEGACY (Cashman, 2006) and their future volunteering intentions (Doherty, 2009; Downward and Ralston, 2006). However, this study of MEV has also shown that it is possible to convert some mega event episodic volunteers to long-term committed volunteers as their motivations for volunteering for a mega event are transformed into a commitment to, and identification with, a collective identity which volunteers want to continue. It has been shown here that an organisation such as MEV can provide the vehicle for this social glue to gel—as demonstrated by the extreme loyalty of some of the Commonwealth Games volunteers. The MEV case also illustrates the contribution of volunteering to social inclusion in terms of status, identity, friendship, skills and expression of an affinity with the community and Manchester. Contrary to the SID discourse, such rewards can accrue through experiences other than that of paid work and volunteering contributes to a process of inclusion rather than just an alleviation of the symptoms. For some volunteers, the MEV experience can be a stepping-stone to employment; but for others, such as the retired, this is an irrelevant consideration. MEV has retained the Pre-volunteer Programme ethos of increasing social inclusion through volunteering, but in a more general sense than development for paid employment alone. The unanticipated importance of MEV’s broker role in matching volunteers to events has contributed to the development of events and attracting them to Manchester. This is a consequence of MEV’s reputation for providing experienced and well-motivated volunteers, with skills specific to events. This has become an increasingly significant dimension of MEV’s work, as has the support to event organisers to develop good practice in volunteer management. Thus MEV has raised the standard of volunteer management and, as an innovative organisation, it has provided a more mature role model than that identified by the post-Games evaluation. 13 In many respects, the present work of MEV could not have been anticipated during the planning stage before the Games, or even in their immediate aftermath. Thus a contingent valuation approach to justify such an event on a cost–benefit basis, as has been suggested for the 2012 Olympic Games (Atkinson et al., 2008), would have been invalid, as the benefits could not have been anticipated. At the time of planning the event, it would also have been impossible to devise appropriate performance indicators. However, as a mature organisation, MEV is now in a position to establish performance indicators that will further enhance its position as a role model. We agree with Smith and Fox (2007, p. 1141) that this aspect of the Commonwealth Games legacy programme is an initiative “which should be carefully considered by other cities” and this is already happening: the Pre-volunteer Programme in Manchester has been used as a model for the ‘Personal Best’ programme run by the London Development Agency (2008) and the Learning and Skills Council. In April 2008, ‘Personal Best’ was established in 11 London boroughs with plans to expand to all of them in that year. The Greater London Authority (2010) has established a ‘Volunteering London’ website through which potential volunteers can find out about volunteering opportunities, thus offering a similar broker function to MEV. Wherever an enhanced mega event volunteer legacy is the goal, the development of MEV offers some valuable practical lessons. These include —the key role played by local government in legacy creation; —the difficulty of gaining specific commitments to a legacy programme in the face of the imperative of successfully running a mega sporting event; —the use of the Games database by a legacy organisation; and —the importance of independent funding. Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at University of Sheffield on September 22, 2011 14 GEOFF NICHOLS AND RITA RALSTON On this last point, the value of independent funding for an organisation with responsibility for a legacy from the 2012 Olympics has been recognised by the DCMS in the establishment of a charitable trust—Legacy Trust UK—which (using money from the Lottery and the Arts Council) has been “endowed with £40m of expendable funds, with a target to double the value of the funds by 2012” (DCMS, 2008, p. 8). One of the ‘legacy promises’ made in the DCMS plan is To inspire a new generation of young people to take part in local volunteering, cultural and physical activity (DCMS, 2008, p. 3). Commenting on these plans in 2009, Poynter and Macrury (2009, p. 319) note that “costconscious realities appear ... to be diminishing the legacy plan”. Thus, similar to the 2002 Commonwealth Games, as the main event draws nearer, staging it becomes the over-riding priority and concerns over costs are increasingly likely to impact issues deemed to be peripheral, such as those of the volunteer legacy. This paper has shown the significant if unanticipated legacy engendered by MEV in terms of developing volunteering, employability, social inclusion, economic benefits of event promotion and volunteer management, and its status as a role model organisation. Poynter and Macrury note that legacy is not a state achieved—an ‘outcome’— but instead it describes an unfolding, multiform process of debate and action (Poynter and Macrury, 2009, p. 324). Further, it also requires “vigilant planning, stewardship, flexibility and continuity of vision”. It is clear that valuable lessons can be learned from the ‘unfolding’ of MEV, but it is important to note that, in the case of MEV, the legacy vision was owned by local government— an organisation with an on-going interest in the legacy—in contrast to, and independent from, those set up specifically to manage the mega event. For any mega event, its day of reckoning—in terms of volunteer legacy as well as all other potential legacy benefits— may be a sad one indeed unless appropriate initial considerations are made and structures put in place. As Gold and Gold (2007, p. 320) put it, in relation to the Olympic Games, “what is certain is that the circus will have left town long before the day of reckoning arrives”. This study has shown MEV to provide a model by which to increase the chances that mega event volunteer legacy aspirations can be achieved. References Atkinson, G., Mourato, S., Szymanski, S. and Ozdemiroglu, E. 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