Enhancing the Sector’s Reputation and Reach
This is this final part of a three-part policy update.
In this blog, I look at the sector's reputation as it stands right now; how we're seeing its standing change in the public eye, and how The Wheel is working to develop its reach and capacity.
- Part one: How Rising Costs & Covid Aftermaths Affect Nonprofits
- Part two: The Sector and the State Right Now
Some Good News – Sector’s Reputation Recovering
It remains the case, however, that the sector's reputation is vulnerable to the vagaries of the next news cycle, and there is a great need for a counterbalancing narrative. The very well-received We Act campaign is the primary resource we are deploying (collaboratively with many others in the sector) to achieve this objective. We are also working closely with all relevant actors to ensure that unhelpful tropes that perpetuate negative stereotypes about charities are not reinforced in future campaigns about charities.
Need for Workforce Training and Development Strategy for Sector
We are working to address the sector’s training and development needs through development of a comprehensive workforce development strategy for the sector.
According to Indecon research commissioned by The Wheel, there has been a historical under-investment in the sector, and any investment by the state would yield a 3x productivity return (Indecon, 2020).
Another piece of key research we published identifies the areas where training and support is needed.
Good progress is being made on promoting our work in Towards a Strategy for Human Capital Development in the Community and Voluntary Sector. The document contains proposals which have been discussed with Department officials and which are being circulated among key stakeholders with a view to creating a shared vision for the National Training Fund, a key new training support for the CV sector.
Shared Island – The iCommunity Initiative
We are also working to fully involve the community and voluntary sector in the Government’s new Shared Island initiative, as many of the big societal and economic public policy challenges that our members experience will best be addressed on a shared-island basis.
Our iCommunity initiative, in partnership with our counterpart and partner the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA), is off to a strong start and an ambitious series of podcasts and discussion forums is now underway.
Social Enterprise and Social Economy
There are a number of important initiatives underway in this space that is becoming a crucially important paradigm for understanding the sector and its future.
We met an OECD team that has been commissioned by the DRCD to review the current national Social Enterprise Policy and to make recommendations relating to the development of a new strategy for social enterprise.
We have also been developing our own vision for social enterprise in Ireland which we will be publishing shortly.
Additionally, Deirdre Garvey, CEO of The Wheel was invited to participate in a conference on Social Economy, The Future of Europe organised by the French Presidency of the Council of the EU in May.
Finally, we also had the honour of providing a briefing for Minister Heather Humphreys prior to her participation in the first Council of Ministers meeting on 17 February for Ministers responsible for overseeing the development of the Social Economy Action Plan (launched by the EU Commission in December).