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Dear Participants, This is, to an extent, an interesting and potentially useful discussion on volunteer expenses and I am glad there is participation from a range of sources, though sad there are few actual participants. As the Chair of a Regional Voluntary and Community Sector Forum, with degrees in Social Policy and a D Phil on the voluntary sector, I hope I can provide helpful input as well as gaining useful information. I will comment on themes in this message, rather than dealing with the contributions chronologically. 1. Since dealing in ivory is illegal, Tim should not, for this and other reasons, get his ivory tower. 2. The voluntary and community sector is diverse and confusing. All charities are voluntary organisations (there is no statutory requirement that they should exist). But not all voluntary organisations are charities. Voluntary organisations can contain paid and/or unpaid workers but generally speaking, you can tell a voluntary organisation by the existence of an unpaid executive/management, trustee committee. That is to say, the committee members are not paid a fee or hourly rate for their time. They may receive expenses, but committee members cannot also be paid workers of the organisation of which they are trustees. As participants have noted, payment for expenses is the responsibility of the organisation and there is Charity Commission guidance on this. How the expenses are paid, and when, is for agreement within the relevant organisation. 3. The value of vol. organisations is considerable. I'm surprised Linda didn't mention the Howard League. Welfare for older people is an obvious area of activity. Age Concern, for example, undertakes such work as 'good neighbour' and 'handy person' schemes, hospital and home visiting, car runs for hospital and other health appointments and income maximisation through welfare benefit checks. The list is considerable. Tim talks rightly of the "countless hours [volunteers] put in" but then suggests this is both "inefficient" and giving rise to "real benefits". I'm not clear what his line of argument is, here. 4. The central point in the discussion is government policy and the relationship of the vol. sector vis a vis government. It is important first to clarify that vol. organisations work for some element of the state, which is comprised of all its constituent individuals and organisations of whatever sector, as opposed to government, whose task is coloured by the complexion of the political party in power and geared to the direction of the state. On this basis it is possible to make the following comments: a)Government democratic accountability via the ballot box is recognised as flawed and the present government has undertaken a search for ways to counter this democratic deficit; b)The communitarian project, developed from Etzioni's writings, has been realised as a positive requirement to involve the voluntary and community sector, for example in development schemes at the community regeneration level and via local Compacts for working with local authorities. At the regional level, the vol. and community sector works together with Government Offices for the Regions and with the Regional Development Agencies and Regional Chambers. New Deal, Sure Start and other development initiatives also involve the vol. and community sectors. Within the Black and Minority Ethnic communities it is coming to be recognised that working through the vol. and community sector is the most likely way to redress the democratic deficit; c)Since the government as opposed to the state is the elected central element, there is no space for the vol. and community sector within it. Lobbying and invitation to participate in Select Committees were two of the few legitimate means by which the sector could attempt to influence (but scarcely 'work within') government. The communitarian project has changed this, but the notion of working within government for change bears further examination. Billis and Glennerster (1998) developed the theory of comparative advantage, which I adopted and developed a little in my own thesis. By analysing and comparing the objectives of government and the voluntary sector, it is apparent that the two sectors are not totally compatible. Further, the theory of comparative advantage holds that four states of severe disadvantage may be experienced by individuals in need such that they are unable to benefit from state welfare arrangements. The 'comparative advantage' which vol. sector organisations have, by virtue of what Billis and Glennerster call their "distinctive ambiguous and hybrid structures" benefits the disadvantaged individual potential service users. d)The concept of customer choice was noted by, I believe, Malcolm Todd. Choice is available when a service user has been able to select from state, vol. and community, or, indeed, private sector provision. I believe this offer of choice reinforces democracy because in the democratic process we have the right to choose, although not the right to have our candidate chosen. It is not, incidentally, the funding of the vol. and community sector which 'hollows out the state' but the creation of quangos, which take their portion of funding but are accountable only at arm's length, and from government, not the citizen. 5. On a final note (though I have by no means covered the ground) I would agree with the legal principle that, if one volunteers to do a task, such as mowing a neighbour's lawn, one has no right to exact payment. But volunteers, particularly within voluntary organisations, are providing a universal rather than an individual good and, perhaps the more powerful argument, are carrying out, at least partially, government policy. To this extent, what impedes their undertakings has to be rectified by government. An objective of the Social Policy mail list is, I would imagine, to develop and improve social policies, and they have provided a platform to help bring about such changes. I reject the suggestion that only those who do not volunteer are 'normal' (whatever that term may mean), but hope that informed discussion and, perhaps, some improvements in policy may be outcomes. Dr. Rosemary Suttill, Chair, Yorkshire & Humber Regional Forum for Voluntary and Community Organisations; Executive Committee trustee; volunteer worker with other voluntary organisations