What Civilian Committee things just don't work

Civilian Committee
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Hello folks,

Without getting personal or undermining volunteers who give their time to the organisation, what aspects of civilian committee operation simply don’t work though people think they do. This is just a search for common thoughts across the country and I welcome input from staff but I’m not really looking at “what can I get my civ com to do?/what is their purpose” but more at “the civ com needs this to operate effectively”. I will of course start with a few points I’ve noticed over the last couple of decades:

  • Hierarchy - notionally, Squadrons look up to Wings, Wings look up to Region, Region are a law unto themselves. But this doesn’t seem to work. The dissemination of information is from National Chair to Region to Wings to Squadrons. I don’t believe much of that information ever gets out of the National Chair with the loss of motivation being that Regions never pass that information to Wings (if so, it’s not intact). I have received no official memos from Region in at least three years including the one telling me capitation was going to be increased nor when the nominations for Regional official posts were opening (secret society? Do I need a special hand shake?).

  • Further to that, this prevents people who are just squadron trustees but may have special skills from being able to share them. There’s no real reason why a Squadron treasurer from Exeter needs to become a Wing or Regional trustee just to handle 30-40 enquiries a year on Gift Aid or, perhaps even better, to maintain a guide on it. By the time they take on the extra responsibility the time to do this will have disappeared. I’ll admit this is a tricky one to manage but it’s compounded by several of the other issues listed. In fact if they had no Squadron they may perform this duty particularly well (thinking of the staff at the ACC).

  • Treasurer’s are not considered officials - by this I mean that every invitation, communication or notice is extended to chairs only. All Trustees have the potential to put in a great bulk of effort but directing it all through only one (busy?) voice isn’t useful. Some chairs may try to “protect” their trustees, be busy or just not be a very good communicator and redundant channels should be employed even if that is just both of the elected officials. We’re repeatedly told that Trustees share equal responsibility… so treat them as such.

  • People are obsessed with FREE - Wing and Region representations are generally older, wiser volunteers with a considerable amount of (potentially now out of date) experience. I still meet people at Wing level and above who think that custom spreadsheets that no one else understands are the correct way to manage our organisation’s simple finances because there’s no associated cost. If they ever saw the bill for hosting and developing Bader or SMS they would understand that simple commercial book keeping software was, by comparison, quite cheap! Some Wings turn over in excess of £100,000 and need a system allowing them to be appropriately accountable. £300 per year on software to help this is not a poor use of funds.

  • People say wrong and frankly stupid things because they’re out of touch with the generation of their Squadron commanders and Squadron treasurers. For instance, it is possible to give a person read only access to online banking without making them a signatory with some banks. Suggesting this sends people into a flap, even though it’s a great tool and specifically solves a lot of problems staff experience (up to and including not having a treasurer whilst increasing the audit trail strength by eliminating yet more cash and enabling direct bank transfers with named references). These people are often in senior positions.

  • There is no national civilian committee resource - a place where information is released centrally (see above), where national or regional trials, schemes and recommendations are posted, where things like standing order templates, gift aid templates and helpful guides can be posted and maintained. Instead all of this exists within Wings and Regions or even within email chains. If we want a bank form, we go to the internet. If we want an air cadet form, we either make it up ourselves (difficult if you’re new to a role) or get one emailed to us by someone we’ve never heard of. It’s not like there’s a lot to go on there.

  • There isn’t actually a mechanism to fix this because anyone who is experiencing these problems is experiencing a the problem with the mechanism they’re trying to fix.

I’ll stop there though I have a few more! I’m interested in other people’s experiences, especially if you are a Wing or Region trustee. I’m not sure fixing some of the above is really that hard (and it’s definitely not bound by law) but the architecture of this side of the organisation doesn’t allow people to have a defined support role unless you’ve been around for 30 years or more or have lots of money, by which time the window of enthusiasm and relevance has been missed.

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Scrap civ coms altogether. Outdated concept and just not required in the modern RAFAC. Delegate financial responsibility to OC squadrons and hold all funds at wing level with a trustee board made up of sector commanders to oversee distribution of funds from the account for the squadron. Have 1 nominated wing treasurer, being a suitably qualified CFAV or appoint an actual accountacy firm to oversee, with oversight from the civil servants. Job done.

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And then we’d loose our excepted charity status and be the same as the ACF (at grassroots at least) . . .

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Couldn’t disagree more. Where it works the Ctee provides vital non-public funds for the Sqn and assist a great deal. As for your other points, they wouldn’t work as potential beneficiaries of a charity, can’t be trustees and Civil Servants can’t oversee a charity.

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Ultimately the majority of your points boil down to poor communication, and low/non-existent growth aspirations within the Corps.

Ultimately we as CFAV are all stakeholders of our Wing or Region, or heck the Corps Charitable body. In theory as stakeholders we should be able to attend the Civ Comm’s AGM as an observer.

In my mind Wing And Regional Charities should be providing the finances to further develop the cadet experience, and setup new squadrons.

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Intereestingly you raise a good point here - the Corps Charitable Body.

I have met the trustees of the new Air Cadet Charity and I found them to have a very poor understanding of the organisation, its current problems and its needs. I also found them to be surprisingly ignorant about how the Civilian Committee/Trustee structure works which seems worrying as we are the one that supplies all their money. I felt that the trustees should be joined by… a group of delegates who know things. Given that it now awards money to even lowly squadrons rather than just HQAC, it does need full breadth advice.

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I think you hit the nail on the head here - the civilian committees are being asked to do too much at the moment due to (see my original post). With no central guidance on banking practices, dealing with bank closures, accepting card payments and teaching people how to be book keepers in 4hrs, these are the real reasons no one wants to do the job.

There are plenty of people who understand the need for a DBS and will do that willingly. They will even fill in a Form 60. But given that every single squadron does roughly exactly the same thing, it’s surprising there are 1300 ways of doing things. And the people at the top (Regions and Wings) can’t even agree how to operate. > No national policies! <

So thanks for that!

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Those units which haven’t had a completely functioning civ comm for multiple decades have little to no learning to pass onto new committee members when they do manage to recruit. This perpetuates the ineffective civ comm experience, losing more onto the Sqn CFAV (fundraising, social events etc)

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Just imaging if we were the scouts and their Trustee Boards had to also be responsible for management and maintenance of their accomodation. . . Oh wait.

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There’s a good example of how not to compare unlike organisations but there are some things you can take from it. The Scout organisation in the UK has over 300 staff in the UK. If you look at their structure, even fundraising is co-ordinated by paid staff. They have commercial arms which make profits in excess of £3 million - roughly twice what the Air Cadet Charity receives. It does this without burdening Scout groups or divisions which reduces complexity/cash handling for roles such as Trustee or Squadron Commander. In each of the key areas, including trustee support, there is a substantial PAID staff pool (bear in mind they’re only about 2.5 times the size of the Air Cadets). Whilst there are local volunteers as first ports of call, there is an authority at the top of each pillar with authority.

If you compare that to what I said in the original post and what is shown here: - there isn’t really anyone at the top of the civilian committee structure. Well there is - one person: the Corps Chair and they aren’t paid nor have they received any training consistent with the rest of their team because they don’t exist (it does but it’s the old boys club rather than a recognised arrangement).

The rest of the structure is missing with Regional Committees being administratively useless (I’m not saying that their volunteers are useless but it’s a committee of co-opted Wing Chairs and nothing else) so it can’t coordinate fundraising because it’s funded by subscriptions so doesn’t need to because operationally they don’t do an awful lot. Regions don’t/can’t recruit externally and it has have no better skills or accountability than a Wing itself which increasingly will be directly responsible to the Charity Commission rather than its parent Region) and generally has more funding.

Websites are a great example of how this doesn’t work. Take a look at the Scout group’s website. It’s fabulous and has information about and to help volunteers, trustees and parents and links to a commercial operation - it’s much better than anything the RAFAC has not because it’s written by paid staff or because someone paid to do it but because someone had the authority to do it.

In our organisation, we have web developers but they work for the Civil Service and provide work for the uniformed staff, specifically those at HQAC. This makes perfect sense because there’s no structure in the Trustee side to coordinate needs and ideas and make those requests and the uniformed side don’t see any of the above as a problem as “it’s nothing to do with [us]” which is the get out jail free card used for every civ com failing.

Even if we don’t have an external website and use an area on sharepoint, no one coordinates that location, no one manages a team of volunteers who maintain that area and, to be completely honest, I’ve never met a Wing or Region Trustee who knows what sharepoint really is or how to use it. I’m sure that’s a hurdle that could be sorted relatively easy if point about not needing to be in the organisation for 30 years before someone takes you seriously was relaxed.

Add to that my fourth point: FREE which is one of the biggest problems in this. The scout organisation is expensive. I’m not saying it’s too expensive, but if you want something, you pay for it. Squadrons, Wings and Regions are totally obsessed with keeping costs down which stops investment in solutions.

Take a look at this and find the equivalent for us (you can actually find part of this but it’s not where you think):
https://www.scouts.org.uk/volunteers/running-your-section/programme-guidance/administration-and-management/

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Not sure I wholly agree. We have a professionally developed website, it sits under the RAF website. Fair enough as that’s where people would start to look.

The Scouts have a stand-alone website as they are not parented by any other body. They have a head of digital on a fairly large salary. They are also a lot bigger (over half a million IIRC).

If you want to see how green the grass really is, get a bunch of scout volunteers in the room and ask them about Compass.

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When talking computer portals, Compass is a dirty word in my parents house.

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The wonderful thing is you’re really hitting my point very clearly. The Air Cadet organisation is one organisation and their civilian committees are another. One is somewhat organised though potentially resource constrained. The other is just a mess that everyone conveniently forgets exists unless they need something for them - which they do, all the time. They’re provided with no resource of any type (resource is only taken by Wings, Regions and ACC), guidance or leadership which is largely because there is no leadership model.

I did look at the website and it is quite specifically like that - You can join as a cadet, you can join as an adult volunteer (specifically staff). It doesn’t even acknowledge that civilian committees exist, let alone provide any resources for civilian committees to use or encourage people to join it.

So again, thanks. I’m glad you support.

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Agreed that is a gap in how we go out to the wider public, would be keen to hear how other volunteer groups address it.

I’ve seen local ads for volunteer trustee events run by the council, but nothing we’re involved in (it is mostly health/education/welfare type organisations from what I’ve seen, no Scouts or Guides either!)

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There’s a vast gap about how we go about it within the organisation! In fact I would disagree with much of the terms of reference in ACP 11 for the roles of Chairs and Treasurers. If I read that as a parent just looking to help out my squadron for a year or two, I would be severely put off by that. In fact I would be put off by ACP 11 in the first place. ACP 10 is a bit of a waste of space too.

For example, given that the best a civilian committee can realistically do when organising fundraising off squadron is call someone and arrange a date and maybe a copy of their insurance (ie the rest is all done by the OC on SMS/Units including getting any permissions from WHQ or RHQ even down to asking cadets to turn up!), the fundraising role should be downplayed a little more than it is. Most fundraisers I see are squadron events which means the parents are giving their money to the Squadron rather than external people. It would be much easier to simply increase the subs!

Asking the Chair to have a role in engaging the community is also not realistic. The squadron commander and their staff are the ones with the fancy uniforms and branded livery - they are the ones that are recognised in their locality and are also the only people who carry any real authority. A Chair or any trustee can do work on that if they have a working relationship wtih their OC just because they’re friends and want to help out. But when it comes down to it, the community needs to know the OC because they’re the one who will turn up!

I’m not trying to be a revolutionary here (though someone needs to be) but if you put the treaurer’s role as:
“Count money, record it against a category on the Form 60, take money to bank. Copy values onto Form 60. Present bank statements, cheque/paying in books at meetings. Reimburse staff for personal expenses” I would without a doubt expect you to get more people willing to be treasurers! Even better you’d probably get a trustee to help them! Not that page of drivel in ACP 11. In fact the local authority school governor’s Terms of reference for the Finance and Resources committees are about a paragraph long and these are for budgets in £ millions!

Just to remind you of real world Civ Com stats nationally (again - secret figures never published so these are from memory):
Just over 50% of squadron civ comms are quorate
Which means probably, at a guess, around 1/3 of the country’s civ comms are effective at best.

When I first got involved in a squadron, there were 8 people on the committee and 8 of them did precisely nothing (yet their meetings still lasted around 2hrs 30 minutes). When a new committee member joined and was willing to take over an official role it took this (retired) committee over 12 months to bother to add them as a signatory. Even then it was the new member who got the paperwork, took it to a meeting to be filled in and then returned the paperwork to the bank. A full house is no guarantee of activity.

But to get back to the point - there’s no one to complain to or make suggestions to about eg. ACP 11 and its TORs because a complaint to Wing will stall at Wing, a complaint to region will stall at Region and a complaint to the Corps Chair will fall on agreeing ears but they have no resource to deal with it as they are one person with no money personnel (not quite like Santa Clause who, having no committee of his own has all the committees in the country!). All of this really goes back to

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Addendum: other organisations don’t have to deal with civil service requirements and a mixed/confusing funding model, nor do they have to pretend they’re part of the military even though they’re actually just a children’s youth club. That’s why they are more successful. Their trustees generally have better support from their uniformed side equivalents.

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ACP11 is antiquated and out of date …
At a recent meeting (a little over a week ago) with our OC, Sector Commander and Wing Chair, the subject of ACP11 was brought up and the question was asked about when it is to be updated.
We were informed it is in the process of being updated, something we were told 6+ months ago, and they were waiting for it to be added to share point. In addition, it will no longer be called ACP11, but will now be titled CAP1
I shall not hold my breath waiting for it to be -
A) published
B) civ coms informed it has been published

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What does CAP stand for?

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I think that’s a typo - CCP - Civilian Committee Publication or something of that ilk.

@Ms-Dee, the latest version of ACP 11 as CCP 11 was agreed to be released at that recent meeting of Chairs but… you’re right. Since it all falls on one person to do this, the National/Corps Chair, it has yet to happen. The Corps chair is a wonderful person and if you ever get chance to meet them, you’ll realise they are skilled, forward thinking, pleasant and supportive. But that doesn’t resolve the reality that there’s only one of them.

A) will happen. You’re absolutely right that B) will happen but in a sort of inverse Rhodesia solution format to avoid a barage of requests for further information about why the GP Fund is now called the Air Cadet Charity (which will be the only significant change). No one has had a change of heart and decided to put updated, relevant information in there. The most useful part of ACP 11 is infact the Constitution which is more in line with what people really need to know!

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Is it still Stuart Ensor OBE, or are you talking about someone else?