Charities and social enterprises should follow TeachFirst and Frontline in creating opportunities for young ambitious graduates.
Charities and social enterprises must do more to open up the career paths for young people looking to move into the social sector, the leader of a government review says today.
Dame Mary Marsh, who was asked to examine skills and leadership in the social sector, has said that trainees, apprentices and graduates should have entry routes make clearer and more available to them.
"This is a critical time for charities and social enterprises, which need to develop their skills and leadership to enable them to deal with challenges and respond to opportunities," said Marsh, who also runs the Clore Social Leadership Programme. "We must ensure we open up positive opportunities for young people to start their working lives in rewarding roles where they can contribute to social action and change."
Marsh's comments reflect a key recommendation made in the review – that the non-profit sector should implement a national graduate development programme and establish a TeachFirst equivalent for young graduates looking to move into the social sector. The review states that "getting a foot in the door of the sector can be tremendously hard" and that "career pathways are incredibly unclear".
The recommendation represents a trend of different professions looking to TeachFirst as a model to attract graduate talent. Frontline, a new programme designed to encourage graduates to move into a career in children's social work, will begin recruiting 100 graduates from September 2013 after securing significant funding from the government, as well as financial support from big corporates.
The national graduate development proposal is only one of many in the review. It highlights "eight critical areas where there are skills and leadership needs", with recommendations on how both the sector and the government could respond. Three conclusions connect these areas. They are:
• Each of us has an individual personal responsibility to contribute actively to our own continuous development.
• Responsibility for developing and "growing" people and making the most of potential has to be led from the top of organisations of all sizes, and should include organisations' governance.
• There are some urgent specific skills gaps, many of which come from recent radical shifts in opportunity and the changed financial context.
The eight critical areas where charities and social enterprise can enhance skills included the need to improve the digitally fluency of social sector workers. In a survey of the UK's top 100 charities, 61% said that levels of digital literacy within their organisation are not very good, poor or very poor.
"As we shift towards an increasingly connected world, digital is becoming the preferred means of engagement by the mainstream"' said Richard Tyrie, a member of the working group and founder of Good People.
He added: "In a time of significant resource constraints, digital offers am opportunity for major efficiencies and increased donor engagement which could yield up to £7bn per annum by 2017. However, a failure to embrace digital opportunities could pose risks for social sector organisations, as they become increasingly disconnected from the expectations of stakeholders".
The full response from Dame Mary Marsh and her team has been published on a new website, launched by Skills-Third Sector. Keith Mogford, its chief executive, emphasised that the response highlighted how important it was to retain talent within the sector, rather than solely attracting new faces.
"The challenge now," he said, "is for organisations to work in partnership to develop practical, well-grounded solutions, like the Skills Clubs that we're currently developing with employers, where staff, experience and knowledge can be shared between organisations to help develop the talent that will ensure a strong and robust sector. This will ensure that we are not only encouraging new entrants into the sector, but also that we retain and support the talent that already exists."
Posted by Joe Jervis
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