The voluntary sector is under threat and needs more help from universities to ensure its long-term survival, the UK's first professor of voluntary sector organisation has warned.
Higher education institutions should be offering more courses and conducting more research on voluntary sector management, and even waiving fees for staff from voluntary organisations, according to Margaret Harris, chair of voluntary sector organisation at Aston University.
Speaking to The THES in national volunteer week, Professor Harris said there was a chronic shortage of management skills in the voluntary sector, which could only be resolved with support from higher education.
Traditional business school courses do not cater well for the training requirements of voluntary sector staff, who face distinctive and often complex organisational and management problems. Research is needed to develop specialist theories for them and to underpin courses tailored to their requirements, she said.
Universities should also consider cross-subsidising to help cover tuition fees for staff in small to medium-sized voluntary organisations, who are usually so badly paid they cannot afford to meet the costs themselves.
"Universities should realise that it is part of their responsibility from local through to international levels to help people in these organisations build their capacity. There is a strong argument that universities should be doing more, including cross-subsidising, to give them support," she said.
In her inaugural lecture last month, Professor Harris said expectations on the voluntary sector have been rising as financial support from local and central government has been less in the form of "arm's length" funding and more tied to services for government projects. Universities were uniquely placed to lend their resources to voluntary organisations, since they were the providers of much-needed training and research, and their support did not compromise the organisations' independent status or put them under pressure to follow government policies.
"If universities are about teaching and research that responds to the practicalities of the real world, they cannot afford to ignore or marginalise the third sector which looms so large in most people's lives. Nor can they expect those who work in the voluntary sector to tag along quietly on courses developed for the business and governmental sectors," she said.
Professor Harris said she would first be concentrating on building up research on voluntary sector management at Aston, but in the longer term wished to look into raising funding to help cover fees for voluntary service students.