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17.08.2020

Collaborative governance in non-profit organizations

Four key collaborative principles to support the work of Covid-Solidarity volunteers

A Belgian association - that was created at the beginning of the lockdown to help frail and elderly people - has brought together almost 9,500 volunteers in a few weeks. In order to facilitate the remote collaboration of these thousands of people, Laurent Ledoux put his expertise in collaborative governance at the service of the association. Let’s take a look back at a solidary collaboration.

Related topics:

  • Collaborative governance
  • Coronavirus
By: Marielle Thomas
Contribution: Marine Lhomel, Laurent Ledoux

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Going back to a few months ago…

The health crisis begins and lockdown is instituted. The side-effects of this decision has a huge impact on elderly who are now more isolated than ever. Some people decide to act. Among them, Olivier Rousseaux, Head of a digital marketing company, who, together with his colleagues, launches a hackathon day to develop an application aimed to connect isolated people with volunteers who could help them. In a few days, 60 volunteers who do not know each other, get together and organize themselves to set-up the Covid-Solidarity.org online platform.

The main objectives of the platform

First

  • Connect callers to volunteers to do their shopping;
  • Relaying information about its self-help system via all stores, radio and TV to reach callers;
  • Create a call-center of 200 volunteers to help people connect and navigate the application.

Then

  • Offer a caring ear and direct people to specialized associations.
  • Acting directly in nursing homes to help understaffed staff, whose workload is increasing due to the new health standards to be respected and the impossibility for families to come and visit. In mid-April, volunteers intervene in dozens of nursing homes.

A few days after the hackathon, Cécile Vainsel, Director of administration, Town Councillor and societal activist, and Laurent Ledoux, Co-Founder and Partner of Phusis, specialized in collaborative governance, join the platform launched by Olivier and named Covid-Solidarity.org. While Cécile tries to establish relations between the platform and the political world, Laurent supports its organizational deployment by favouring a functioning by circles of competences. In what follows, we will try to identify the fundamental principles of collaborative governance that have contributed to the effectiveness of Covid-Solidarity.

The 4 fundamental principles of collaborative governance that have contributed to the effectiveness of Covid-Solidarity

4 collaborative governance principles
Purpose

A purpose and values-based decision making

Covid-Solidarity was founded on a simple but powerful statement: “We cannot leave frail or elderly people whose lives are in danger alone. By acting quickly, we will help saving lives”. The purpose of Covid-Solidarity could therefore be formulated in the following way: “Lives are saved thanks to the action of volunteers”. The values inherent in this purpose guide the decisions: solidarity, altruism, speed and efficiency.

Frail or elderly people whose lives are in danger cannot be left alone. By acting quickly, we will help saving lives.

Working in circles

A circle has a precise role with its own perimeter of decision and action. The people who belong to the circle, in this case volunteers, have clearly defined roles and participate autonomously in decision-making and actions. In practice, three circles have been defined:

  • The Technical circle, responsible for the development of the website and the matching applications between the applicants (elderly people, nursing homes, …) and the volunteers;
  • The Operations circle, in charge of the management of people matching, as well as the management of the call center, gathering 200 people and open every day between 8am and 8pm;
  • The Marketing, Communication & Legal circle, in charge, as its name indicates, of marketing, communication and legal aspects.
  • Finally, each of the leadlinks in these circles is a member of the Anchoring circle, which brings together the three circles, as well as three additional roles: Olivier Rousseaux as Leadlink, Vinciane Patigny (from Phusis) as Facilitator and Laurent as Mentor.

Total transparency

Transparency plays as much a role within the platform as in its relationship with the outside world.

Within Covid-Solidarity, this transparency is also reflected in the communication of information with a very precise goal: allowing everyone to have the level of information necessary to act and make decisions according to what they encounter in the field. The decisions, the questioning, the orientations, the feedback from the field, the media actions…. Everything is accessible to everyone via Slack, Whatsapp, Asana (management of shared projects) and a shared Google Drive, to bring everyone up to the required level of information and serve autonomy.

Compared with the outside world, it is above all about having first-hand information to understand what is really happening in reality and try to act as quickly as possible. The information collected, by Cécile Vainsel in particular, allows Covid-Solidarity to answer two fundamental questions (What happens in nursing homes and with isolated people? What are the real needs?) and to develop, in record time, an effective service offer to help nursing homes. In doing so, Covid-Solidarity identifies two major challenges: on the one hand, nursing homes face big difficulties linked to the lack of medical means and caregivers. On the other hand, residents of nursing homes are less affected by Covid than by loneliness. Deaths are said to be mainly caused either by diseases other than Covid, or by the famous “sliding effect”, which implies that elderly people without major health problems let themselves die from lack of contact.

To respond to these problems, Covid-Solidarity deploys a team of non-specialized volunteer citizens to meet a triple objective:

  • To offer residents a dignified end of life made of listening and attention;
  • To relieve the management of the nursing homes and their teams;
  • To allow citizens, whoever they may be, to feel useful by committing themselves to keep company of our seniors.

The typical main tasks that volunteers can carry out are to:

  • Distribute meal trays and coffee to the elderly and have time to help them eat;
  • Take the time to talk to them and/or put them in touch with their family via the internet;
  • Organize the visit of the parents, welcome them, equip them, and brief them on hygiene instructions;
  • Fill out the administrative forms for Covid testing procedures;
  • Doing the shopping and/or doing some housework and cleaning.

In a few days, Covid-Solidarity sets up a reserve of 3,000 volunteers, including 500 volunteers throughout Belgium to go to rest homes despite the risks.

Subsidiarity through trust

Trust between all stakeholders is an essential prerequisite for collaborative governance to work well:

Between volunteers – Within Covid-Solidarity this has established itself in a rather natural and almost inevitable way, because the strongest cement between the people joining the project is probably the willingness of the volunteer to be worthy of the trust of others. Orders and any forms of pressure would be counterproductive and would lead, in almost all cases, to the withdrawal of the volunteer who would pay the price.

Between Covid-Solidarity volunteers and the people or institutions they help – Volunteers advance, from their own pocket, money to pay for the shopping of the people they help. They must therefore be confident that they will be reimbursed. Similarly, although volunteers have no special qualifications to work in a nursing home, directors choose to trust them because of their maturity, their capacity for empathy and their willingness to help.

Thanks to the involvement of many players, trust has “paid off” and has thus facilitated relations between the platform and other societal stakeholders, such as benevolent listening associations whose action is relayed by Covid-Solidarity via its call-center.

Are these four factors sufficient?

They are fundamental and absolutely essential. In order for this collective of several thousand volunteers to function in the long run, we must add a major element: the notion of the intrinsic equality of each individual.

This equality of consideration among volunteers gives each action the same weight of importance: it is just as essential to read a story to an elderly person and accompany him or her to the toilet as it is to answer a radio interview to make the collective known.

Note that Olivier Rousseaux, Laurent Ledoux or Cécile Vainsel, among many other Covid-Solidarity volunteers, also take on leadership roles in their professional lives. However, in this collective, they are also present in the field. For example, Laurent spends several Sundays in nursing homes distributing meals and taking time to discuss with residents; Cécile and Laurent collect visors made by volunteers on 3D machines and distribute them directly to the nursing homes that need them. In doing so:

  • Exemplarity is there: it proves the equality between individuals.
  • The values advocated are embodied.
  • The raison d’être is foundational: it focuses the collective sense.
  • Trust allows autonomy.

Stay in touch with Phusis

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Phusis and its partners offer you ready to use support to enable your managers and teams to set up a collaborative governance.

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