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Attitudes towards community responsibility

Recent years have seen a change in attitudes towards community responsibility. The majority of citizens now believe that taking care of oneself is the best route to raising standards for everyone. [1] Increased personal mobility, globalisation, advances in technology and the time and energy deficit have meant that traditional geographical ties between communities are looser. As a result individuals experience less of a sense of responsibility for those in their local community.

What are the implications?

• An increase in policies around citizenship and active citizenship and volunteering as the government tries to re-engage the public in their communities.
• Volunteering increasingly on the Conservative agenda as a way of addressing societal breakdown.
• Changes to policies around local governance.
• The potential for a decrease in local community volunteers as individuals feel less of a sense of responsibility for those in their community - the community is often a gateway into volunteering. (See numbers of volunteers).
• A shift from traditional geographical communities to more temporary communities of convenience where individuals choose to reside.
• Stronger bonds to where people work and socialise, and as a result looser ties and responsibility to community and family. (See family networks).
• The emergence of a ‘responsibility gap’ – where more vulnerable people may fall outside the care or responsibility of their family, community, VCOs or other governmental institutions.
• Growth in online communities as the internet facilitates communities that are built in different ways. (See virtual communities)

Moving forward

Changing attitudes to community responsibility may impact on numbers of volunteers.

• How much do you know about why volunteers choose to volunteer with you? Are these reasons changing?
• Can your organisation keep volunteers who move away from your area still engaged in your work, perhaps in different ways?
• If levels of volunteers decrease, what marketing and recruitment strategies can your organisation put in place?    
• Do you have the systems and processes in place to manage a more transient team of volunteers?

Changing attitudes to community responsibility may impact on traditional support structures and changing need for your services.

• How can your organisation be relied upon as a source of support as geographical community ties change?
• What role does monitoring and evaluation play in your strategic planning? How could an understanding of changing need help you to develop more effective services in the future? You could think about this in two ways:
• Opportunities to improve: Should you need to change how you work or be more responsive?
• Opportunities to innovate: Should you serve new or different users?

Want to know more?

This driver is a stub and will be completed soon.  Here we will link to external documents and resources for further reading.

References

1. HenleyCentre Headlight Vision, Planning for Consumer Change, 2006 [back]