Injecting some grassroots purpose

Charities like Rewilding Britain thrive on the passion of their volunteers to make projects on a shoestring happen. What can professional project managers learn from them about having a sense of purpose, energy and focus to make their projects a success? Dave Waller finds out…

There are thousands of grassroots organisations created to tackle a problem, whether it be representation, the climate or animal welfare. They may face a lack of resources, professional expertise or even office space, but their sense of common purpose makes them a success against all the odds. This motivating force is like gold dust for any project – and easily lost the bigger and more complex it gets. So, how can these grassroots activists be an inspiration to project professionals?

Rewilding Britain is a charity set up in 2015 to act as a catalyst for rewilding the UK’s landscape. Rewilding involves stakeholders across society – landowners, farmers, councils, government and individuals – proactively seeding the recovery of ecosystems, whether by planting groves or encouraging bees and butterflies to their backyard.

Keeping focused

Rewilding Britain has big ambitions and a strong public presence. Its Twitter account has 48,000 followers, findings from its research projects have influenced government consultations and it’s pushing for 30 per cent of Britain to be undergoing nature restoration and rewilding by 2030. Yet it’s doing all this with only a dozen, largely part-time, staff.

“The intent has been to remain small and agile, lean and mean, and to punch above our weight,” says Richard Bunting, who works on Rewilding Britain’s media outreach. “Some third-sector organisations find it challenging to be efficient and fast on their feet. As they become bigger, there are more people to discuss things with, and decisions take longer to happen.”

This choice to remain small presents its challenges when managing projects. The growing interest in rewilding has created a vast stream of enquiries from the public and the media, who, says Bunting, “tend to think we’re bigger than we are. The big challenge is managing expectations”.

The key lies in planning. Rather than jumping straight into “the doing” – something Bunting identifies as a common pitfall for voluntary organisations – the team took a step back and set targets to ensure it was clear on what it was doing and why, in order to tailor its resources accordingly. For Rewilding Britain, this took the form of a decision to focus its efforts on large-scale sites of 1,000 acres or more. Not only would this help the team make the most of its resources, but it is also where the largest benefits can be felt in terms of biodiversity.

“There are more opportunities than we can completely take advantage of at the moment, and it is really tempting to get even more involved,” says Bunting. “But that’s one thing we’re being strict about. Keeping things streamlined and efficient will prevent us being unfocused or overstretched, and allow us to focus our efforts on where we’re going to have the biggest impact.”

A sense of purpose to motivate

Heart n Soul is a Deptford-based charity supporting musicians and artists with learning disabilities. Within a few months of starting there as project manager, Emily Pain found herself standing on a dancefloor at the Beautiful Octopus Club, the organisation’s annual takeover of London’s Royal Festival Hall, awestruck by what her new employer had achieved. Hundreds of people were dancing to live funk, rock and punk bands playing on stages in every corner of the building. No one knew who had learning disabilities and who didn’t. No one cared. It was, she says, “a complete baptism”.

As to how the wheels stayed on this sprawling affair, Pain highlights the charity’s large volunteer force who support artists, welcome visitors and manage stages, all for the barest of expenses. Their motivation runs far deeper. “Nobody works in the charity arts sector for the money, that’s for sure,” Pain laughs. “But people really put all of themselves into it.”

Heart n Soul was imbued with a clear purpose right from the start. Back in the 1980s, bass player Mark Williams began assisting at a music workshop for people with learning disabilities. He found that participants’ output was limited less by a lack of ability or imagination than by other people’s expectations. This inspired a fresh approach: simply asking his participants what they wanted to do, and doing his best to make it happen. This presents some unique project management challenges. Not least the fundamental issue of planning. If you’re going to base everything you do on the ideas of people with learning disabilities, you can’t necessarily map out the full scope of the project up front. “We’re always starting a project and not really knowing where it’s going,” says Pain, amid concern that she may be ‘outing’ herself as “a project manager who wings it”.

Managing risk

This can-do spirit may be energising when an outfit is small, but it can become a challenge once the organisation has some clout. Heart n Soul can now call on backing from the Arts Council, the Wellcome Trust and other high-profile partners and funders. Hence it’s able to employ project managers with qualifications. However, running on a shoestring budget casts doubt over everything a corporate project manager would likely take for granted, from marketing to whether people will even show up to work. Yet while project management training and software tends not to make the list of must-buys for grassroots organisations, even the smallest are able to achieve remarkable impact anyway, simply through that strong sense of shared purpose.

NEST, a community initiative in Harwich, Essex, is a case in point. Six years ago, ex-firefighter Les Nicoll was on a routine house visit as part of his role as a safeguarding officer. He asked to pop upstairs, and saw that the family there had no beds, pillows or sheets. They couldn’t afford them, the woman he was visiting told him. The children slept on clothes on the floor. “I was absolutely incensed,” he says. “People shouldn’t be living like this. I saw there was a need and took practical action to stop it. Simple as that.”

Nicoll put a call out on Facebook for free beds and clean bedding and took them to the family the next day. In the ensuing years, with the help of a £10,000 Lottery grant and JustGiving, NEST grew into a volunteer-driven network that sources and delivers everything from white goods to clothes and Christmas hampers to the local community. At the start of the pandemic, NEST began a meal service, cooking hot meals twice a week and delivering them to the elderly. At the height of the pandemic it was cooking over 125 meals a day. It has also completed over 3,000 shops for the community. All drawing from a small pool of dedicated volunteers, managed via Facebook.

Keeping volunteers on board

Yet working with volunteers does have its problems. Without the right funding and support, the motivation to continually deliver on those passions can easily dwindle. “The smaller the organisation, and the more volunteer-driven, the higher the risk that the volunteer base will change, and you can lose crucial knowledge from the charity,” says Russel Jamieson, a project, change and PMO management professional. 

Several years ago, Jamieson worked closely with the Christchurch Community Partnership, an independent charity seeking to alleviate social isolation in local adults, as part of a study by APM’s Wessex branch on third-sector organisations. He noted that the six key people within the organisation all changed in a 12-month period. “Some changed jobs and moved away, others were disconsolate with the lack of progress and funding,” he says. “The stresses of being a voluntary organisation without support and a firm foundation can clearly take their toll.”

Back at Heart n Soul, its flexible approach to running projects has proven invaluable. One long-held ambition for many participants has been to run cooking sessions. “We don’t have any ovens,” says Pain. “So that foxed us.” Then COVID came along. Like many grassroots organisations, the charity had a new purpose: to adapt and stay connected with its people at a time when they needed the organisation’s support the most. They moved the Beautiful Octopus Club online, and Ono Dafedjaiye, the charity’s taking part assistant, found herself running a session from home called Baking with Beyoncé. “We had 80 people on this Zoom call baking along with Ono in their own kitchens,” says Pain. “It took a pandemic to mean we could do that. And it was amazing.”

How to inject grassroots purpose in your project

1. Examine why you’re doing things in the first place. If the answer is solely profit, you’re going to need a rethink. Even if you’re not interested in the bigger picture, the clever people you’re seeking to recruit will be.

2. Listen to your stakeholders. If your project is tied closely to the needs of the people it’s affecting, you’ll never stray far from your ‘true north’. And feeling the positive impact you’re having on people will boost the energy at those times when it naturally dips.

3. Consider not just what you’re doing, but how you’re doing it. If you feel you’ve strayed from your values, that may be because your project management processes create a fundamental contradiction. If you’re trying to have a positive impact on customers, for example, do you know how they really feel? And is your team feeling suitably positive and included too?

4. Be open to the unfamiliar. If, with all the above, you’re still yearning for purpose, shake things up. NEST was born of visiting someone’s house and being moved by poverty; Heart n Soul by volunteering at a workshop and seeing potential. Put yourself where purpose can find you. It will be worth it.

5. Help your project punch above its weight. With scarce resources, you need to spend your money and energy on the endeavours that will win over the right people to give you the influence and followers you need to help get your project out there.

by Dave Waller

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE SPRING 2021 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.