The Community Organisers programme looks set to meet its recruitment targets, an interim independent evaluation has found.
The Community Organisers programme is a Cabinet Office programme which has been run by local infrastructure body Locality with £15m. It aimed to recruit 500 trainee community organisers, who would be employed full time in host organisations to undertake 51 weeks of training and development. The trainee community organisers were then expected to recruit and train 4,500 volunteer community organisers.
In 2012 Ipsos MORI and NEF Consulting were commissioned to carry out an evaluation of the programme and have just published an interim report. A full report will be published in the summer.
Between October 2011 and June 2015 14 cohorts of trainee community organisers are being trained through residential courses, e-learning modules and meetings with supervisers. By the end of their 51-week course they were expected to listen to 500 people in their patch, recruit nine volunteer community organisers, and identify between three and five projects.
Three-quarters of the trainees expect to meet the target of identifying three to five projects. For cohorts four to eight, under half said that they had recruited the target of nine volunteers. This increased to more than two-thirds for cohorts nine to twelve. Some trainees have exceeded their targets meaning that the overall target should be met.
The report notes that some trainees have struggled with the target of listening to 500 people with almost 60 per cent of survey respondents saying that they expect to achieve this target.
Some 70 per cent of trainees rated the residential training as good or very good and a midway follow-up course was introduced.
Progression funding, in the form of a grant of up to £15,000, was made available to enable trainees to continue for a second year. For the first ten cohorts 60 per cent have taken this up. There are also a small number of third year progression grants now available.
The report found that the different recruitment approaches of host organisations meant that “those trainees recruited with the most to learn have not always been able to make significant progress in the community in the 51 weeks available, particularly when compared with more experienced recruits”.
It also noted that the success of the trainees in recruiting volunteers was affected by the mix of skills available in the local area. The report said: “In areas where local people have a range of abilities relevant to community activity - including project management, IT, communication and relationship building skills – it is much easier for trainees to encourage projects and begin building a network."
