Volunteering Code of Practice

Comhlamh is a Irish member and supporter organisation open to anyone interested in social justice, human rights and global development issues. One of these issues is volunteering and Comhlamh leads an initiative called Volunteering Options (http://www.volunteeringoptions.org/) which includes a comprehensive website, a volunteer’s charter and a Volunteer Code of Practice for Sending Organisations -

I was recently asked to review the experience of a number of signatories to the code (VCoP) to see what lessons could be learnt and opportunities idenified - both for the code and for the signatory organisations. The structure of the VCoP review mirrors that of the existing audit approach that has been adopted – building on the investment already made by all signatories to the code.

A set of questions – drawing on the VCoP; the Self-audits; Donor perspectives & my own experience - formed the basis of the review which was conducted as a series of one-2-one interviews with the volunteer coordinators from the participating organisations:



The answers from the participants allowed for a “point-in-time” assessment (audit) PLUS an opportunity assessment in relation to opportunities to strengthen the overall organisation’s management processes. By extension, these opportunities can be categorised to allow the lesson learnt from the review to be consolidated and shared among Comhlamh members.

When looking at programme quality, we focused more on “ways-of-working” and this was categorised for the purposes of the under four headings:
Organisation: Assessment of VCoP Principles against organisation requirements (e.g. strategy; resourcing; planning; etc.)
Volunteer: Assessment of VCoP Principles against volunteer responsibilities (e.g. use of Comhlamh Volunteer Charter)
Programme: Assessment of programme (proposals/plans) & policies/procedures for alignment with CoP principles
Partners: Assessment of VCoP Principle against in-country partner responsibilities (e.g. within MoUs; etc.)



Undertaking an exercise like this also allows us to try and learn about the broader Development Agenda of sending organisation. Via the identification of broader development items based on the "Application of CoPs" assessment.

You can learn more about Comhlamh by reading their strategy document here

eCommerce for Success

The "eCommerce for Success" programme provides incremental & applied learning approach for both your own personal development as an entrepreneur and for the development of your business, combined with an interactive, participative programme that allows you to build on your own business ideas and experiences


The programme helps you to understand how visitors to your website will behave and how to design your website to influence that behaviour, helping you to develop strategies and tactics to encourage these visitors to become customers


The incremental learning builds on earlier sessions of the programme and drawing on your own business…

…to define what it is that you need from the internet to develop and grow that business…

…helping you to match your available resources (time; money; 3rd parties; equipment & facilitates; etc.) to your eCommerce plans

Throughout the programme there are practical session on how to get the best return for your investment in eCommerce (the internet & your website)


You will be provided with tools & working papers that we use to build your own eCommerce plans – for both you (personal development) and for your business (enterprise development)


And we draw upon research, from Ireland and Internationally – including research that you undertake as part of the assessment of you and your business' capacity to deliver on these eCommerce plans


What participants said…

Business Fights Poverty - Blog Action Day

I have recently joined an interested social networking site called Business Fights Poverty, which as they say themselves is "the free-to-join, fast-growing, international network for professionals passionate about fighting world poverty through good business"




Blog Action Day is today, 15 October 2008 - and is an annual non-profit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Its aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. This year the focus is on poverty.

To learn more about how you can become involved try this link or visit the main site at: www.businessfightspoverty.ning.com

Fund-raising & Resource generation strategies for NGOs

I have recently been working with a number of NGOs and Not-for-profit organisations in the area of fund-raising and broader, resource generation activities. During these projects I was able to successfuly use more traditional marketing tools to help identify firstly "what is the product that these organisation offer the Irish market place (i.e. what is the value to the Irish customer/ supporter/donor)?"


Once we were able to define this "product" it was possible to use more traditional business and marketing tools - such as identifying the USP [Unique selling point]; Market segmentation (identifing target markets and potential niches); preparing both a product-based marketing mix (Product; Price; Place; Promotion) and a service based mix (marketing mix plus People; Process; Physical Evidence and Packaging).

This is a great example of using proven business technique for the benefit of non-traditional businesses (i.e. Irish NGOs) and helps these organisations to try and make best use (i.e. best return) for the limited financial resources.

What is Knowledge Management?

"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know." [Donald Rumsfeld; Former US Secretary of Defence]

Knowledge is the inherent wisdom that people have, coupled with the facts that people can gather from the internal and external environment.

• facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education;
• the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject;
• what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information;
• awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

The common thread through all of these definitions is that knowledge is gained through the capture, understanding and interpretation of facts, as gathered and assessed through human intervention.

John Poindexter explained the role of Knowledge Management in his presentation to the International Risk Assessment & Horizon Scanning (IRAHS Symposium, Singapore) in March 2007. “Sense-making & path-finding” outlines the Poindexter model :

So the primary source of knowledge (interpretation of facts) is people. And is often the case, particularly in services, the knowledge on how to deliver these services resides within people.
Knowledge management looks to harness this “people knowledge” so that it can be accessed and shared across the organisation

And to paraphrase Donald once again “…because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Principles of Performance Management and Personal Development in an organisation

I recently completed a review of a performance management and development system within a public sector body. As part of the project I undertook a review of the relevant literature and was able to identify a set of core principles that under pin performance and personal/team development within a public services organisation.


These principles are equally as applicable to any not-for-profit organisation as they are based on aligning performance to the service that is being provided to the customer/ beneficiary.

UN Certificates

I was a member of the response team during Hurricance Mitch in Honduras and ever since I have been eager to maintain my skills in the are of Emergent Response. Having completed a number of training courses on the themes of emergency and security - situations, awareness, preparedness, response, logistics, etc. I was delighted to be selected for the Irish Aid Rapid Response Corp

(http://www.irishaid.gov.ie/Rapid_Response_Initiative.asp) .

As part of this I completed further advanced training in the United Nations Training School Ireland (UNTSI) based in the miltary camp, Currach Co. Kildare. Following on from this I completed the UN c ertificates in Security Awareness.

(http://www.military.ie/army/org/dftc/milcol/index.htm#untsi) .