Sustainable Staffordshire activity management plan for 2008
Summary
In 2008 the Community Council of Staffordshire has taken responsibility for organising the activities of Sustainable Staffordshire, a pioneering voluntary body whose mission is to help community groups, families and individuals reduce consumption to a level that the shared environment can sustain in the long-term. This is achieved by those with proven expertise giving their time to advise those who want help and started in 1990, thanks to the leadership of the Staffordshire County Council.
Although there is a growing demand for the help its members provide, especially as people perceive the effects of climate change, finance has to be found for supporting services, such as administration and literature, to enable this voluntary work to continue.
We are hoping to raise support for up to 100 days of Sustainable Staffordshire’s activities in 2008 with the help of voluntary donations from the public. This costs about £150 per day or approximately £20 per hour. Donors who ‘give an hour to the environment’ (or as many hours as they choose) will become both members of Sustainable Staffordshire and the Community Council of Staffordshire, which confers on them the right to have a vote that can help determine the future direction of this and other Community Council services to the public of Staffordshire.
Establishment & maintenance of databases
To re-establish Sustainable Staffordshire within the Community Council, three databases are required to enable its activities to be managed effectively, with the potential need for a fourth:
- The ‘experts’ who are prepared to give their time to help others – which will contain a record of the areas of expertise of those on the list and the time that they are prepared to commit, it will also be used to provide a track of how often they have been used and an assessment of their performance
- Financial donors – which will record contributors and contributions and provide data to produce an annual summary account of the source and application of all funds
- Assistance cases – which will match requests for help (e.g. to visit community groups, attend local events, take part in meetings or provide written briefing) to the available time of appropriate experts and track the outcome – hopefully satisfied recipients might go on to become ‘experts’ or financial donors
- Supporting organisations – this record would include outside bodies and individuals that can support our work (e.g. organisations who have taken part in ‘Green Roadshows’, such as the team from Keele University or members of SBEN, who supply services that will help to deliver our experts’ recommended actions)
Physical resources
- Access to database, spreadsheet and word-processing software and paper records that will be held at the Community Council’s office
- A stock (1,000 items, minimum) of three types of promotional and record gathering literature (probably in the form of double sided A4 ‘flyers’) each containing some basic information about Sustainable Staffordshire:
- To advertise our service (and related Community Council activities) and take the details of requests for assistance
- To solicit financial donations
- To recruit and take the essential details of potential new experts and others who can offer practical support, such as the supporting organisations, mentioned above
Leadership, administration & service delivery
1. The Management Team will continue to act as the steering group for Sustainable Staffordshire: to lead development, promotion and service delivery but also to inform and make proposals to the Board of the Community Council via and with the guidance of the Chief Executive
2. the
initial panel of ‘experts’ will consist of those members of the current
Management Team, who already undertake such work, plus those who have indicated
in the recent survey that they are prepared to help
3. Creating and providing basic maintenance of the databases is possible to deliver on a voluntary basis, working with Community Council staff, and two of the current Management Team have indicated that they are willing to begin this task (which probably needs at least 1 man-day/week starting in the first quarter of 2008), however, matching requests for help to ‘expert’ time available or referring enquirers on to Community Council or other more appropriate services is likely to be too time consuming to be accomplished successfully by volunteers on anything other than a temporary basis
Development plans
- To make ‘Sustainable Staffordshire’ more effective will probably require the dedicated services of at least one permanent and preferably full-time, executive member of the Community Council team with access to administrative support either paid or voluntary.
- Such a person would be expected to be proactive in seeking out community groups with the potential to become ‘more sustainable’, especially those that the Community Council is already in communication with such as entrants to the Environmental Village Halls Competition and those communities which currently are organising car-sharing schemes
- The value of this development project has been estimated as £50,000, the cash-flow element of which is approximately £32,000
- It is hoped that at least £15,000 of this might be raised via voluntary public donations (see ‘Summary’ above) and the remainder from public grant schemes
- The value of volunteer time will be calculated on the basis of £20/hour
- The value to the community and the environment will be measured by its contribution to achieving LAA Sustainable Development Outcomes
Paul Newman
January 08
