CHAPTER 5 - COMMUNITY RADIO TOOlKIT
MANAGING YOUR
STATION
Managing community radio
Staff and volunteers
Roles and responsibilities
Managerial qualities
Human resources management
Motivation and stress
Marketing
Making friends
5
You may be in for a surprise. Running an RSL tends
to be a very intense experience. You run around like
a headless chicken before your broadcast, run even
faster while you are on air, and then you probably
have a long period to recover and review your
experiences. Permanent broadcasting is an entirely
different matter – like switching from running a
sprint to a marathon.
“You can spot the few dozen folk who have been
involved in running the pilot Access Radio stations.
They generally have a happy grin, and still retain
traces of a charismatic demeanour. But spend a bit
more time in their company and you spot the red
rims to their eyes, the occasional tic that betrays
too little sleep and too much caffeine. But it’s the
thousand yard stare that’s the real give away –
these people have been places and seen things
that no human being should ever have to see.
And still they smile.”
Anon
You must maintain a steady pace, and to do that you
must be aware of what your limitations are. There
may be a strong temptation to attempt to do more
than your resources will allow. In this chapter we will
explain how to get the most from your volunteers
and staff without anyone exhausting themselves or
burning out. We will show how you can get the most
value from your limited resources. We will look at
how the relationships within your station – between
volunteers, staff and directors – can be made to work
for you rather than becoming problematic. And we
will discuss how you can market and publicise your
station with your listeners and your community.
Many of these topics are covered in great length in
specialist textbooks. If you are new to voluntary
sector management, your reading should stretch
well beyond this Toolkit. But for now, this chapter
should offer you a useful overview of the range of
expertise a station manager is likely to need.
Key principles
Be part of your community
A community radio station should be managed by the
community, from the community and for the community.
In practice this usually means a broad-based
community partnership will form the board of directors
and/or steering group. But you can’t run a community
radio station purely by committee. So turning the values
and vision of the committee into efficient and effective
day-to-day management is the key role of the station’s
manager or management team. It is essential that
the manager knows as much as possible about the
community culturally, demographically and with
regard to local issues. This is an important point to
consider when appointing (or applying for)
community radio management positions (see p152).
There are also situations where community radio is
brought to a community by an outside agency. All
the ‘community’ criteria apply but they might evolve
differently. If you are from an outside agency in that
role, growing the community links might not be
your most pressing operational priority but that
does not lessen its importance. The task ahead of
you in sowing the seeds for grassroots support, and
ultimately management, is all the more important
for the fact that you are not of that community.
You are not running a radio station
You are actually running a community centre, a
training college, a refuge, a day-care unit, a
debating hall and a social club – albeit one which
just happens to make radio. You should be pleased
to be serving all of those functions – they add up to
the reason you exist. Your management team needs
to have or gain all the expertise required to fulfil
your role as a community radio station.
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CHAPTER 5 - COMMUNITY RADIO TOOlKIT
MANAGING YOUR STATION
Congratulations. Ofcom have recognised the brilliance of your license
application. You’ve got your key partners in place and you are ready to
replicate the thrill of your RSL broadcasts for up to 24 hours a day, seven
days a week.
VOXBOX 5.01
Broadcasting is only one part of the equation, and
the quality or popularity of that broadcasting may
be much less important than the quality and extent
of your service to the community. Having said that,
with your station serving so many functions, always
keep in mind your core functions – what it is you are
there to do. If activities are not funded, or not in
keeping with your basic objectives, you should ask
yourself why you are doing them (see p132).
Get your training right
Of all the tasks undertaken by a community radio
manager, establishing and maintaining successful
training schemes, whether formal or informal, will
probably be the most important. The formal training
you offer is likely to form a significant source of
income for your station, and a good partner college
may offer wider benefits of advice, support and
resources. The training you offer should fit the
needs of your volunteers and offer progression and
personal development to whatever level their
abilities and ambition allow (see Chapter 13).
Be firm and fair with your volunteers
The biggest difference between volunteer
management and other types is that volunteers are
there because they want to be involved, not because you
are paying them. They didn’t volunteer to be abused,
exploited or shouted at. On the other hand, they must
be aware of their duties and responsibilities. Be utterly
transparent about the relationship between the station
and its volunteers. They must know what they can
expect from you, and the station must be clear what
standard of commitment and behaviour is expected.
Both parties must know what will happen if such
agreements are breached (see p68-69).
Let community radio be your passion,
not your obsession
If community radio is not your passion, you probably
shouldn’t be involved at all. Typically community
radio staff and key workers are driven by their love of
the medium and inspired by the potential to change
lives and whole communities. But in the desire to
achieve so much, it is all too easy to do too much.
Staff and key volunteers will soon find themselves
invited to meetings and events every night of the
week. It is impossible to do it all. Community radio
stations around the country – including ours – have
discovered to their enormous cost that exhaustion
and burn-out are real risks, and can lose you the
very people who have the most to offer (see p66-68).
Know when to talk, when to listen, and when to act
Community radio is by its nature democratic. In
practice this doesn’t mean people electing the
steering group at the AGM then forgetting about it
for a year, it generally means people standing up
simultaneously and shouting at each other (or you)
about the ‘wheres, whats and whys’ of station
strategy and policy. Those voices need to be heard
and considered and then, if necessary, acted upon.
That does not mean that every opinion is equally
informed or that every idea is equally realistic, and
many will be incompatible with each other. The
management need to know when to mediate, when
to think, and when to stop listening and start acting.
Your management structures need to allow
someone the authority to take the final decisions
and to be clear about what happens to community
ideas when they are presented to the station. It’s
not enough to say ‘thanks for your input’ and file the
letter (see p98).
Bureaucracy matters
It is dull, but filling in forms to apply for funding and
monitor your activities, taking minutes at meetings
and distributing them, logging volunteer activities
and community contacts, filling in inland revenue
returns, and performing all the other bureaucratic
and administrative tasks involved in running a
community radio station is absolutely vital. The
temptation to not bother is always strong, and
always devastatingly destructive (see Chapter 6).
CRIB SHEET
Community radio managers need:
• To be part of their community
• A wide range of management and
community skills
• A firm hand and a calm head
• Good communication and diplomacy skills
• To be willing to do the dull stuff
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MANAGING YOUR STATION
Mixing staff and volunteers
While there are large variations within the sector,
most community radio stations are run by a
combination of paid staff and volunteers. Typically a
group may begin as a purely voluntary project, but
by the time it is receiving significant funding for
training or community projects, it will feel the need
to employ an administrator or project manager.
There is no official reason why a community radio
station couldn’t be run entirely by unpaid volunteers,
but our experience suggests it is impractical.
Applicants for full-time community radio licences
typically propose a staff of around three or four full
time positions. That’s three or four people who
between them may need to be project manager,
administrator, trainer, accountant, secretary,
community worker, youth worker, technician,
publicist, producer, diplomat, fund-raiser, social
worker, counsellor, painter, decorator, carpenter,
tea-maker, cleaner and, oh yes, broadcaster.
Management and administrative roles are not
always especially appealing to volunteers. They are
often selfless, thankless tasks. The staff are there
to enable the volunteers to train, to broadcast and
to serve their community, and get little of the glory
themselves. With perhaps somewhere between 50
and 100 volunteers, that is a lot of human resources
if used properly, and an awful lot of headaches if
not. The managers of a community radio station may
sometimes feel like the chauffeurs of a finely tuned
limousine, but more often they will feel like they are
herding hyperactive cats – an endlessly demanding
and sometimes wildly frustrating experience. This is
a lot to ask of an unpaid volunteer – especially if
they have other career or family commitments. For
a sustainable long-term future, professional
management should be considered essential –
although this is not to say that volunteers shouldn’t
be encouraged to be part of the management team.
The chemistry which develops between paid staff
and unpaid volunteers is a key component in the
success or failure of a community radio station.
The relationship requires mutual respect, mutual
awareness of responsibilities, needs and duties, and
perhaps most importantly, mutual trust. All of these
factors require your internal communications to be
working well.
If the respect, understanding and trust between
volunteers and staff break down, the station is in
deep trouble. It is vital that neither staff members
nor volunteers feel that one is ‘outranked’ by the
other. The role of each is different, and equally
important. Volunteers are the lifeblood of your
station, without them your existence is meaningless.
Volunteers become involved to help and support
your station, not to be bossed around (see p68).
It’s a common mistake to undervalue the range of
skills, abilities, contacts and general usefulness of
your volunteers. If you have a hundred volunteers,
then you can be sure they will include people with
professional experience in everything from
plumbing to PR. There might be an accountancy
graduate and an untrained, unemployed artistic
genius who would love to draw some pictures for
your flyers and posters. Often you won’t know
unless you ask, whether individually at point of first
contact or through your internal communications
such as a newsletter or notice board.
Managing a station is a 24/7 activity. You can’t pay
people to cover all that time, so you will be
dependent on volunteers to some extent to keep the
station running. This is also good for the culture at
the station. If the volunteers feel that the station is
theirs, a microphone is much less likely to walk out
the door, and if it still does, everybody takes it
personally, and there is outrage across the board.
When you are struggling with few resources it is
vital to have that goodwill. If you can build that
family sense of everyone working together, when
you can’t do everything or something goes wrong
your volunteers are likely to be forgiving. If
everything is very policy led and hierarchical, as
soon as anything goes wrong, they are very likely to
blame you and your structures.
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CHAPTER 5 - COMMUNITY RADIO TOOlKIT
CRIB SHEET
The staff and volunteer mix should be:
• A healthy balance
• Based on mutual trust, respect and
understanding
• A valuable mix of experiences and
abilities
• Lubricated by good communication
Staff roles and responsibilities
Generally the less appealing tasks involved in
community radio are the ones you have to pay
people to do. Top of the list is usually administrative
work – paying invoices and keeping track of
budgets, maintaining output monitoring systems,
and so on. Many community groups (not just radio
stations) will employ a part-time administrator long
before they employ a full-time project manager.
Once up and running, full-time community radio
stations will typically employ staff with
responsibilities broadly as follows:
• Station manager;
• Administrator; Finance officer;
• Radio trainer; Radio producer;
• Community participation worker;
• Volunteer support worker;
• Technician; IT manager and trainer;
• Business development worker.
Usually those roles will be combined into a smaller
number of positions, so one person might be
employed as technician and volunteer support
worker. Alternatively two or three part-time
employees with different roles could replace one
full-time specialist. You should also consider using
freelancers for roles such as training that are more
‘seasonal’ (see p167).
Mixing the staff and the board
You need to be completely clear about the
appropriate levels of involvement of the board. The
board’s functions should be:
• Representation of the community;
• Supporting staff/volunteers;
• Ensuring due diligence.
The role of a director is not to crawl all over the dayto-day
activities at the station, which is likely to cause
problems with authority and morale. And yet the
responsibility of a director to ensure due diligence
does entitle him or her to full access to the station’s
activities. It is a fine balance, but eventually returns to
mutual respect and trust. The board are all-powerful,
but should always remember that the secret of
wielding power is knowing when not to use it.
What a manager needs
A clear basis of engagement
Managers (even unpaid ones) need absolute clarity
about how they are expected to perform their
function. This should be broadly and clearly set out
in the terms and conditions agreed when an
employment contract is signed, although the finer
details may be agreed as a matter of ongoing
management policies. It must be totally transparent
to each member of the management chain exactly
what they have authority and responsibility for, and
to whom they are accountable. A good manager
needs all three, and needs to be able to distinguish
between them.
Authority
As a manager you need authority to take decisions –
in other words you need to have been given the
power or right to undertake the activities necessary
to do your job. You can’t run a station properly if you
need to approach the board for permission to buy a
packet of paper clips or give a colleague a day off.
This also works in reverse, decisions should not be
taken by those who do not have the authority.
Remember that the person who speaks with most
authority is not always the person who has most
authority. Be wary of the strident volunteers or
ambitious junior staff members who take it upon
themselves to act beyond their authority. If authority
is undermined or exercised badly, so too are
responsibility and accountability. Of course there will
also be times when station staff do need to refer
decisions up to board level. It is up to board and
management to clearly establish the appropriate
limits to authority, which will often depend on the
relative experience and capabilities at each level. It
is up to each station to decide where those limits lie.
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MANAGING YOUR STATION
Responsibility
If you are responsible for something, you are
obliged or expected to do it. This is different to
authority because it does not necessarily involve
freedom to decide what is or is not done. A member
of staff may be responsible for training volunteers,
but not have the authority to decide the curriculum
for the course. So the authority over training might
reside with the station manager and the partner
college, while the responsibility for it lies with the
member of staff.
Accountability
You are accountable if you are obliged to answer,
explain or justify yourself to those who delegate
authority and responsibility to you. In any voluntary
organisation, everyone from the newest volunteer to
the most senior member of the board should be
accountable to someone and know who that
someone is. In the case of the board, legally
speaking, that someone is Companies House and/or
the Charity Commission, and Ofcom for sticking to
the promises made in your licence. In a broader
sense the board and the station as a whole are
responsible to the community they serve, and your
‘promise of performance’ to Ofcom makes it clear
that this is not just some ‘good thing’ to be given a
token nod in passing but must be a structurally
clear part of how your radio station runs.
The great community radio manager
will also have:
Leadership
Most management is based upon structures,
ensuring that the group or station is organised in a
way that helps ensure efficient and effective
activities. Leadership ability is above and beyond
such formal structures. A good leader can inspire
others, bring out the best in their colleagues and
volunteers, and create a positive, creative, happy
working environment. A manager with poor
leadership skills might perform their tasks
efficiently enough, but will soon find it difficult to
maintain the interest of volunteers and staff, who
may drift away or under-perform at work. A great
leader with poor management skills may gather a
dynamic team around him, but the station is liable
to be pulled in many different directions or find
itself focussed to an unhealthy extent on that one
charismatic individual, which is obviously
unsustainable (see p24-25).
Control
You are in control of your station if you are aware of
everything that happens in your station, and have
agreed to (or sometimes dictated) the activities of
all your colleagues. It is possible to manage a
project – sometimes for a surprising length of time
– without really being in control of it. You can find
yourself, by luck or judgement, overseeing a team
who all have shared objectives and do their own
jobs well, leaving you looking great. But if as
manager you are not aware of how your colleagues
work, how they are making their decisions and the
processes they use, you could find yourself in deep
trouble when something goes wrong or one or two
colleagues are suddenly taken ill or leave their job.
You generally only find out how well controlled a
station is when something goes wrong. A good
station manager is in control of their station without
becoming a ‘controlling influence’ or ‘control freak.’
This is obviously a fine balancing act.
Maintaining control requires a wide range of skills,
including the ability to organise time, personnel and
resources, prioritise tasks, keep accurate records,
communicate well with colleagues and maintain a
cool head when all around you are losing theirs.
CRIB SHEET
A manager needs:
• Authority
• Responsibility
• Accountability
• Leadership
• Control
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CHAPTER 5 - COMMUNITY RADIO TOOlKIT
Line management
People involved in community radio often tend to be
quite egalitarian types. For the most part they don’t
like to pull rank and order other people around.
That is probably a very healthy attitude. The
atmosphere around most stations is of everyone
mucking in together, and staff will often do bits and
pieces of each other’s jobs on any given day. In
those circumstances it is easy to lose sight of who
has responsibility for what. Every buck has to stop
somewhere. The classic management chain (see
Figure 5.01) has the senior manager employed by
the governing body, or board. The board are legally
obliged to ensure good management and the
manager’s job is at risk if he/she doesn’t provide it.
There should then be a clear chain of responsibility,
if not command, all the way down to volunteers.
Everyone should be clear about what – and who –
they have responsibility for.
The classic management chain
Human resources management
It’s very easy for the management to become so
wrapped up in the progress and problems of
volunteers or hitting the next targets for funders
that they forget about their staff. But to be a good
community radio station, a project also needs to be a
good employer, a factor with even greater importance
if your lack of resources requires a greater call on
the goodwill of your station team. Larger community
radio stations might think about employing a human
resources (HR) manager, or investing in the services
of an HR consultancy firm of which there are many
specialising in the not-for-profit sector (your local
voluntary sector umbrella group should have a list).
Another source of HR support for your staff could be
a local business who might allow their HR team to
help you as part of a ‘corporate social responsibility’
partnership (see p187). At the very least, station
managers need to make themselves aware of all the
issues involved in this important part of management.
Human resources management skills include:
• Recruiting the best staff;
• Fulfilling your obligations under employment laws;
• Drawing up binding, fair and effective
employment contracts;
• Ensuring the health and safety of employees;
• Ensuring good systems of staff support,
supervision and appraisal;
• Drafting and enforcing equal opportunities policies;
• Establishing and enforcing staff disciplinary and
grievance procedures;
• Overseeing entitlements, benefits, pensions etc.
The practice of human resources management at a
community radio station should be no different to
any other voluntary sector organisation, and you
should look at specialist resources for detailed
guidance (see references at end of chapter).
CRIB SHEET
Human resources management
• Is just as important in community radio
as anywhere else
• Should be considered in much more
detail than we can provide here
65
MANAGING YOUR STATION
FIGURE 5.01
Governing Body
aka Trustees (Charity)/Board of Directors (Company)
Legally responsible and liable for the activities of the
station. Should offer expertise and support to the
steering group and paid staff to help the organisation run
efficiently and effectively.
Steering Group
aka Management Committee/
Executive Committee
Responsible for setting strategy,
policies and long-term objectives,
or any other responsibilities
delegated from the Governing Body
Workers
aka employees, volunteers
Responsible for managing own work
Senior Management
aka Chief Executive, General Secretary, Project Manager etc.
Responsible for all aspects of day to day management
Line managers
aka Project Leaders/Team Leaders
Responsible for specific aspects of day to day activities
Motivation and stress
It shouldn’t be difficult to motivate your workers
and key volunteers. Community radio changes
people’s lives for the better, and you can see it with
your own eyes and hear it with your own ears.
Nevertheless there will be times when things have
been running less than smoothly, tempers are
getting frayed, workloads spiral out of control and
morale begins to dip. With anything up to five years
of radio looming ahead of you, there are very few
end points in a community radio project – moments
you can sit back and applaud yourselves for a job
well done, evaluate your performance and plan it
better for next time. Typically a community radio
station might have several dozen projects running
simultaneously, consecutively or overlapping, and
inevitably it will often feel as if everyone is playing
‘catch-up’ for most of the time.
People can react to stressful workloads in several
ways. Some will do as much as they can, accept their
own limitations, and sleep soundly at night. Others
will look at their in-tray and think ‘I’ll never do all this,
so what’s the point of doing anything?’ In such cases
it is crucial that their line manager intervenes, either
with an inspiring motivational pep talk (or more
effectively, lots of little ones) stressing the employee’s
skills and talents and underlining how valuable they
are to the station. More practically, re-negotiate
their workload, or break it into smaller chunks with
attainable targets, so it looks less intimidating. Many
people work harder when they have less to do. Of
course, it is preferable to give people compliments,
encouragement and manageable workloads before
they begin to despair, not after.
The other response someone may have to a large
workload is perhaps even more dangerous: to try
and do it all. Many community radio workers and
even volunteers will be so motivated and enthused
by the project that they never leave work. Or when
they do, their thoughts (and radio) remain tuned to it
(see Voxbox 5.02). This is simply unsustainable – the
demands a community station can make upon you
are literally endless. The result is stress, exhaustion,
illness and eventually a letter of resignation. We
have learnt to our cost the harm which burn-out can
cause to individuals and stations.
“Don’t tune into the station all the time. It was
an addiction I fell foul of when I first got into
community radio. It made me very anti-social,
because even if I was at home and had friends
round, I would have the radio on, and wouldn’t be
engaged in the conversation. I’d be talking to a
friend with one ear on the radio and suddenly –
‘Hang on! What did he just say?’ Eventually
my partner threatened to throw the radio out
the window.”
Phil Korbel, Director, Radio Regen
CRIB SHEET
Motivation:
• Is essential to run a community radio
station
• Can lead to exhaustion, stress and
burn-out
Spotting stress and burn-out
Preventing stress and burn out is in your own
interest if you want to sustain a good staff team, but
it is also your legal obligation under Health and
Safety at Work laws. Stress affects different people in
different ways, and there are no hard and fast rules
for how people will react, but keep an eye out for
the following clues in your colleagues and yourself:
• Illness and absenteeism. Stressed people get ill
more often as their immune system is weakened.
Especially look out for regular headaches, back
or muscular pain, palpitations or chest pains and
stomach upsets, all of which are commonly
(although far from exclusively) stress-related;
• Sleep problems. If you can’t sleep at night for
worrying about the Myriad automation system,
alarm bells should be ringing;
• Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, or (less
seriously) irritability and a changing attitude or
demeanour;
• Low energy levels and tiredness;
• Conflicts in personal life and relationships;
• Changing drinking habits or intake of
recreational or prescription drugs;
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CHAPTER 5 - COMMUNITY RADIO TOOlKIT
VOXBOX 5.02
• Adrenaline addiction. People can get hooked on
the buzz which accompanies stress. If someone
seems to be deliberately seeking out demanding
projects and extra workload, ask yourself why.
Avoiding stress and burn-out
Just as different people react to stress differently, so
different people need different strategies to keep their
stress levels down. Here are some useful pointers:
• Avoid a stress culture at work. It is easy for a
pattern to develop at a station where the staff
work 12 hour days, come in at weekends, and
spend their evenings at community meetings. If
one or two employees act like this (especially
management) it can easily become seen as the
norm, rather than the exception, and others will
feel obliged to match up. Senior management
should set a good example by going home during
daylight hours. Occasionally.
• Take time back. If you know there’s going to be a
series of late nights or weekend work sessions
for a specific project, put a limit on them and
take back the time owed before you forget why
you did the extra hours – by booking in the time
off when you book in the extra shifts.
• Watch your flexi-time and
holiday records. If a member
of staff has built up 90 days
of flexi-time or has only
taken two days holiday in six
months, their line manager
should really intervene and
send them home. The term
for this addiction to being at
work is ‘present-eeism’.
• Have a laugh. Laughter
relieves tension which in
turn reduces stress. Make
sure your workplace is a fun
place to come in to each
day. Within limits, obviously
(and nervous laughter or
laughing at nothing doesn’t
count).
• Make the station as neat and comfortable as
possible. Not necessarily sofas in every room,
but try to reduce clutter and chaos, which is a
significant contributing factor to a stressful
environment.
• Manage your time. Time management is crucial
to a relaxed working environment. Make sure
your deadlines, targets and projects are spread
as evenly as possible through the year, and learn
to organise your days and weeks.
• Manage your money. If you can keep on top of
your budgets, cash flows and accounting,
everything will be much, much easier.
• Deal quickly and effectively with personal
disputes and arguments that develop between
staff or volunteers.
• Have a quiet space where staff can retreat to
work in peace or catch their breath over a cup of
tea or coffee. But...
• Reduce your caffeine. High caffeine consumption
increases the heart rate, as
does stress. The two together
are an unhealthy and unhelpful
combination. Caffeine also makes it
harder for you to unwind and sleep at
night. Remember many fizzy drinks
contain more caffeine than a strong
cup of coffee. Some smug staffers at
Radio Regen swear blind they’ve never
had as much energy since they
dumped caffeine.
• Leave work at work when
you leave. Maintain other
interests and find time to do
whatever makes you happy –
so long as it has nothing to
do with radio. Leave plenty
of time for a long soak in
the bath at the end of the
day.
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MANAGING YOUR STATION
• Compartmentalise. Do what you can in the time
you have to do it in – prioritising and planning your
work to maximise your efficiency. However
motivated and efficient you are, there is only so
much you can do, and if you start to lose sleep as a
result of that inevitably overflowing in-tray, you’ll
only get less work done. So put your work in a
mental compartment and make sure that there are
other compartments in your life that are important
to you – they might be the ones that keep you sane.
• Never give out your home or personal mobile
number. If you have an emergency staff contact
procedure, get a dedicated phone and have a
formal rota for shifts on-call. Make sure they
understand that emergencies do not include
such disasters as running out of sugar.
CRIB SHEET
Stress and burn-out:
• Can be seen coming
• Can be eased or avoided
Managing volunteers
In Chapter 10 we will go into detail about how to
support, supervise and help volunteers. Much of
this work will be conducted by support workers,
trainers, producers etc. But volunteers are so
central to community radio that their role, their
needs and their position needs to be firmly built into
your management structures.
In one fundamental respect volunteer management
in community radio is different to other areas of the
voluntary sector. Community groups generally have
management (including the board and paid staff),
volunteers and the clients who use the services
they provide. In most cases – think of a community
crèche or older persons’ centre – attracting
volunteers to serve tea or babysit toddlers is a
difficult task. Volunteer management textbooks
often work on the assumption that volunteers are
rare and valuable creatures who must be cosseted
and treasured, while there will probably be an
excess of potential clients/users desperate to
access the services the group provides.
The nature of community radio is that the benefits
to the volunteers – the experience, training, thrill
and fun of making radio – in some ways outweigh
the benefits to the ‘clients’, who in our case are the
listeners (important though they are). The result is,
hopefully, a long waiting list of would-be
volunteers. Which is not to say that you can ‘use
and abuse’ your volunteers because there’ll be
another one along in a minute. Volunteers ARE the
heart of your operation: no volunteers = no radio
(unless you are over-enamoured with the output of
your automation software). Treat your volunteers
well, nurture them and allow them to fulfil their
aspirations – but cotton wool need not be part of
your toolkit in doing so.
The driving ethos of community radio is that access
to the airwaves is a human right. But when there is
a queue, every volunteer who exercises his or her
right to the airwaves is preventing someone else
from exercising theirs. It’s also worth bearing in
mind that running a community radio station may
cost around £50 per hour. If someone is availing
themselves of such a valuable resource they should
be expected to act responsibly and behave decently.
If a volunteer is causing trouble on or off air,
obstructing the progress of the station and other
volunteers, or otherwise behaving inappropriately,
you must have systems to deal with this.
The best starting point for the relationship between
management and volunteers is a clear, extensive,
mutually-agreed set of rules and responsibilities,
ideally gathered into a signed volunteer agreement.
Rules and agreements
Creativity, self-expression and the airing of
alternative and unheard voices are all crucial to
successful community radio. Your volunteers need
to be able to express themselves in their own way
on air and off, but you do need to set boundaries. A
volunteer might make brilliant radio, represent
alternative sections of your community, draw in
large numbers of listeners, attend every volunteer
meeting and always wash her coffee cup, but if she
routinely swears on air or fails to lock the front door
when leaving the station she is a liability.
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One way to think of this is that the station provides
the volunteer with a blank canvas upon which they
can paint – but that canvas, even if it’s really huge,
is already bound by a frame. They can paint
whatever they like, providing they do not exceed the
limits. The frame itself has a lot of detail. Some of it
is behavioural – the standards of behaviour which
everyone at the station is expected to adhere to.
Other details are procedural – what the volunteer
should do if they can’t make their show or there is a
technical failure in the studio, for example. Much of
it will be about what happens on air, with basic
explanations of broadcast regulations and legislation
around libel, obscenity etc. and station policy on
those standards, which may well be more strict than
the legislation requires (see p109). The volunteer
should commit themselves to a certain amount of
time and activity, for example two hours broadcasting
activities and two hours of non-broadcast support
activities each week. You may also wish to include
an agreement about the content of whatever radio
the volunteer is making. You need some recourse if
you offer someone a show to present issues relating
to the elderly, and the volunteer decides to play 60
minutes of heavy metal instead.
You do not want your station to feel like a prison or a
school. You don’t want to treat your volunteers as
criminals or children – even if they are! So it is not
enough to say ‘here are the rules. Obey them or
you’re in trouble.’ Your volunteer agreement needs
to spell out the rules, but just as importantly it
needs to spell out why the rule is in place and what
will happen if it is breached. Clarity is the key and
consideration for others the touch-stone. Some
breaches of the volunteer agreement – such as
physical assault or vandalism – should probably
carry an instant ban from the station. Other
breaches – such as failing to turn up for a scheduled
show – might be best dealt with a ‘three strikes and
you’re out’ type of policy. Minor offences such as use
of offensive or inappropriate language might best be
dealt with through a firm but friendly chat.
CRIB SHEET
The volunteer agreement:
• Should be extensive, clear and formal
• Should specify the limits to volunteers’
autonomy and creative freedom
• Should explain what the rule is
• Should explain why the rule is there
• Should explain what will happen if it
is breached
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MANAGING YOUR STATION
Your DJs should remember that there's a queue of volunteers waiting to take their slot.
Volunteer induction
If you’re busy and recruiting a lot of new volunteers
at once, you might be tempted to print out half a
dozen pages of rules and regulations, thrust them
into the hand of a new volunteer and send them on
their way. But the volunteer may be reluctant to
admit to literacy, language or comprehension
problems, or more commonly just never get around
to reading them. So an induction session is vital –
this would normally encompass not only a line-byline
reading of the volunteer handbook, but if
necessary also a tour of the station, introductions to
members of staff and so on. The induction should be
formally organised and offer an opportunity for the
new volunteer to ask any questions about the station
and its policies. By the end of it the volunteers should
feel like they have joined a team, if not a family.
Besides the rules concerning behaviour and
broadcasting requirements, the induction should
also explain:
• What the volunteer can expect from you in terms
of support and training;
• An overview of community radio;
• An overview of your station and your stated aims;
• Equal opportunities policies;
• Health and safety policies;
• Details of any expenses or benefits available.
The induction is also a very good time to conduct
your ‘skills and needs’ assessment – where you find
out what the volunteer has to offer the station and
what they need from it (see p138).
Consistent policies
No sane person likes having to discipline
volunteers. They are not being paid, they are
generally nice people, maybe you even socialise
with them after work. The prospect of calling them
into the office and giving them a dressing down or
informing them that they have been barred from the
station is not a pleasant one. The temptation to let
lapses and breaches of the rules slip past is often
very strong. It is also very dangerous.
Community radio stations are like ants’ nests at
times, with volunteers bustling around each other
and working in close proximity. They talk, they
gossip, and they know more about what is going on
than many managers would care to imagine. One
consequence of that is that they know when
someone gets away with mischief and when they
don’t. If volunteers think they might get away with
swearing on air without reproach or consequence, of
course they are more likely to do it. And if one
volunteer breaks a rule or policy, others will soon do
likewise and station discipline begins to dissolve
along with your authority. It becomes much harder
for you as a manager to then clamp down once the
rot has taken hold. It should be clear that
disciplinary proceedings are hard and fast, not made
up on the spot by the station manager. If they even
sense that the latter is the case, they may become
angry and confused about any disciplinary action.
As a general rule, a community radio station needs
to balance the rights of the individual volunteer with
those of the group and the station as a whole. A
well laid-out set of policies and grievance
procedures should go most of the way to ensuring
this balance. Just be careful not to allow yourself to
become involved in a protracted quasi-legal dispute
with one disgruntled individual.
CRIB SHEET
Your disciplinary policies should be
• Consistent
• Consistent
• Consistent
Supporting the sinner
Having established a culture of good behaviour, it’s
important to remember that your duty to support,
care for and improve the lives of your volunteers
extends even to those who are in breach of the
rules. In extreme circumstances (violent behaviour,
theft, criminal damage to station property) you may
need to ban a volunteer for life, but this will be very
unusual. For most disciplinary lapses the
appropriate sanction should also include scope for
rehabilitation. To take a hypothetical example, a
volunteer may fail to turn up for her show on three
occasions in close succession, without letting
anyone know that she was going to do so. She has
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been given a first and second warning on the
previous occasions, and the station policy is that
she should lose her show until the next round of
schedule allocation in three months’ time. While
those three months are passing, it would be very
healthy if the volunteer can be given not less but
more supervision and training. Then when she reapplies
for her show she has a better grasp of
routine, a better understanding of the problems
caused by non-attendance, and because her skills
have improved, she will enjoy making radio more
and so be more motivated to attend.
Many breaches of station rules, on air and off, will
be the result of ignorance, which is a product of
insufficient training. This may be particularly true
with regards to your equal opportunities policy and
offensive language. The classic argument about
whether a comment is a harmless joke or a gross
insult is revisited on a regular basis in every
community radio station (and probably every other
work and social space). If someone exceeds what
you consider to be acceptable limits, explain to them
clearly where the boundaries lie – they may genuinely
not understand why offence has been caused.
There may be more serious cases too. It is probably
the case that the volunteers who are most likely to
break the rules of their agreement are also those
most likely to have a chaotic or abusive home life,
physical or mental health issues, substance abuse
problems, or other social or personal issues. If such
problems are interfering with their ability to make
radio, then you should help them to access the help
they need from specialist agencies or services (see
p135).
In this area, like so many others, you have to find a
balance you can live with. You want to offer a patient,
understanding and supportive attitude to one
individual, but you also need to run a safe, secure,
successful community radio station for everyone
else. You could offer opportunities for a wayward
volunteer to improve their behaviour but they might
simply refuse to change their ways. You have to know
when to admit defeat, recognising the point where
however much you want to help you simply cannot.
CRIB SHEET
Supporting wayward volunteers:
• Is as important a part of your job as
supporting model volunteers
• May often come down to education
and training
• Can only do so much and for so long
Marketing
Marketing is yet another task that you think can be put
off until the mythical day when there is money and
time to spare. Of course that day never comes, and in
the meantime your station is going unnoticed by many
of your potential volunteers, partners and listeners.
You need to market your station to maximise the
benefits it can offer your community. Marketing can
soak up as much energy and money as you have
available, but it can be effective even with very
limited resources. It takes many forms:
• Word of mouth. This is the most powerful tool a
community radio station has at its disposal.
Encourage your volunteers and listeners to tell
their friends. Network at local events. If you
attend a meeting, make sure everyone knows
who you are, where you are from and what it is
you do – wear the T-shirt!
• Publicity materials. There is a reason why every
radio station from the smallest commercial
operator to Radio 1 gives away window stickers,
T-shirts, balloons etc. – it works. Every car with a
sticker is a little moving billboard for your station,
every T-shirt is a walking advertisement. And the
cherry on top is that the people to whom you give
such freebies are even grateful for the privilege.
If costs are tight, look for a reciprocal deal with a
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MANAGING YOUR STATION
local print shop who may give you a discount or
gratis rate in return for on-air advertising or
having their logo displayed on the materials.
Alternatively one of your partners or funders may
be willing to sponsor promotional materials in
return for a ‘supported by...’ mention.
• Piggybacking. Talk to your partner organisations,
local businesses, agencies etc. about ways in
which you could get yourself mentioned on their
publicity materials. If an agency does a regular
show, make sure they mention it in their own
publicity. If you have specialist DJs on your station
who also play clubs and bars, persuade them to
get your station name and logo on the flyers. For
example, any school class on air brings with it the
families, friends and other carers of each pupil in
it – possibly another few hundred listeners.
• Advertising. While it may feel painful to pay for
newspaper ads, billboards or other commercial
advertising, sometimes it is a worthwhile
investment. In particular if a station is new and
needs a sudden influx of listeners or volunteers,
a well-placed, well-designed advertisement can
be highly effective.
• Outside events. If there is a local community
festival happening, you should be there – ideally
with a full road show, but if that is not viable,
host a small tent with your DJs or at the very
least set up a stall with publicity and information
about your station. Hosting special events in bars
or clubs – whether that’s a nightclub or a Darby
and Joan club – can help you reach different
audiences, and may even earn you some money.
• Branding. We will discuss on air branding in the
Programming chapter (p128) but it is equally
important in the material world. Your station
should have a recognisable logo and ‘house style’
on every piece of stationery, letterhead, web page,
promotional item, newsletter, banner, poster or
whatever. This will help people to recognise and
remember your name. This includes having some
control over the hand printed flyers of selfpublicising
shows – one of our ‘regulars’ thought
he was doing us a favour by printing off a few
thousand flyers for his club night with many
mentions for his radio show. But the inevitable
picture of a scantily clad young woman did little
for our equal opportunities policy.
• Media relations. Be on good terms with the local
media. You might be unlikely to get much support
from other radio stations (however sympathetic
they might be – see below) but local newspapers
and magazines are different. Build up friendly
relationships with local journalists. Often they are
over-worked and under-resourced, and if you can
present them with an interesting story for minimal
effort they will be only too happy to print it. If you
can provide them with a good quality, hi-resolution
photograph to accompany it they may well bite
your hand off. With smaller local papers especially,
you should always offer a human face for every
story. They won’t be interested in your social gain
statistics (however impressive you might think they
are) but they will be interested in the local volunteer
who has overcome a disability to complete an
accredited training course, or the missing cat
which was found after its heartbroken owner rang
your phone-in show. Such human interest stories
– which community radio stations generate on a
daily basis – are a fantastic source of free publicity.
If your local newspaper seems particularly
supportive and enthusiastic, try to persuade them
to carry your weekly schedule on their radio and
TV page, perhaps in exchange for you plugging
them. Many papers buy their schedules in directly
from an agency, but others have some flexibility.
• Website. Your website may be the closest thing
you have to a public face, so try to make sure it is
attractive, informative and easy to use (see p57).
• Your message. It’s worth having a snappy phrase
or two which you can use at every opportunity on
air and off to sum up who you are and what you
do. Ideally you want something that captures the
essence of community radio and your station in
particular – ‘making a better town by making a
better sound’ or something similarly cheesy.
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Launching
Be sure of your output before you have a launch
event, after all, why market a sound that doesn’t
show your true potential. Give yourself time to iron
out the wrinkles before you invite the town to tune
in. No one’s going to mind if you ‘launch’ a month
after actually going live. That said, don’t wait until
everything’s perfect – it never will be.
CRIB SHEET
Marketing:
• Is crucial to help you find listeners,
volunteers and partners
• Is not necessarily expensive
• Can take many different forms
• Is not something to do once everything
else is sorted out
Relationships with other radio stations
Few organisations can be as useful to you as other
radio stations, whatever their size or nature. You
should have excellent relationships with other
community radio stations – at least those far
enough away that you will never be competing for
the same licence or advertisers. The Community
Media Association is the hub of the network, and if
you actively involve yourself in the CMA you will be
able to meet and share experiences with a large
number of colleagues in the community sector.
Relationships with the BBC and (especially)
commercial stations may be more delicate. On the
one hand you are competing with them for
listeners, and to a small extent possibly even for
advertising revenue (despite Ofcom’s best efforts –
see p35). On the other – you have much to offer
them. Let’s consider each in turn.
The BBC is a public service broadcaster and its
remit goes beyond broadcasting to the public. The
BBC’s current Charter places a demand upon the
corporation to involve itself in local community
development work. There are few easier ways for
BBC station directors to do this than by involving
themselves in community radio groups, to which
they could offer training, supervision, resources and
endless wisdom. Radio Regen is currently
negotiating a formal mentoring system with the
BBC for our senior managers, which could offer
enormous value to our staff. As we go to print, the
BBC nationally is talking to the CMA about exploring
the many ways BBC local stations and community
radio stations can enjoy many happy collaborations
(see Voxbox 5.03). This goodwill might even outlast
the renewal of the BBC’s Charter.
Community radio stations are a great potential
source of new talent in all areas of radio production.
Commercial and BBC stations often struggle to find
recruits who aren’t identikit white, middle class,
media studies graduates. Community stations also
offer a route to grassroots community news –
providing stories which can otherwise pass under the
radar of large media outlets who are accustomed to
working to press releases from government, big
business, the PR industry and large nongovernmental
organisations (NGOs). So there is not
only a strong ethical argument for the mainstream
radio sector to work with you, it also delivers tangible
benefits to them – it’s right and it works!
At present it seems that whilst BBC stations are
already involving themselves in community radio
groups across the country, many commercial
stations are proving much more difficult to
persuade – particularly if the community station is
carrying advertising. Good networking, gentle
diplomacy and a growing awareness of the nature of
community radio should hopefully mean that this
will change in the not-so-distant future. Make
yourself known to larger local commercials, stress
your social gain achievements and the fact that you
are not trying to put them out of business, and you
may well find the reaction is: ‘That sounds great. Is
there anything we can do?’ Even the smaller
stations might come on board once they get used to
you and realise that your different sound isn’t going
to empty their share-holders’ coffers.
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MANAGING YOUR STATION
Out to launch: Wythenshawe FM takes to the air.
Finally, even in the belly of the most corporate
beast of a huge mainstream radio station, you are
linked to them by the little word ‘radio’. Small radio
is where a lot of their staff came from and all but
the most jaded cynic amongst them will feel an
empathy with a broadcaster trying to get by on two
bits of string and a used phone card. Even if the
station policy might not endorse helping you out,
don’t be surprised if the staff will do so under their
own steam.
“Radio Scotland has been one of our partners from
the start – they’ve given us training and support
and we’ve worked with them on a number of
outside broadcasts and so on. But now they have
commissioned us to produce a weekly 30 minute
programme that focuses on blind issues. For the
first time blind people in Scotland will have their
own programme they can tune in to, which is a
wonderful opportunity to raise awareness of the
issues for the rest of the population, and to
encourage equality, and of course it’s an
incredible opportunity for our volunteers to make
radio on a national platform. It’s a very equal
partnership, they haven’t been patronising at all.
They have been a wonderful resource for us and
we have provided them with talent and good
programming. This brings community radio to a
national audience, and hopefully other BBC
stations will take this up as well.”
Kerryn Krige, VIP On Air, Glasgow
CRIB SHEET
Other radio stations:
• May be nervous of you, especially
smaller commercial stations
• Can be extremely useful to you
• May decide you are extremely useful
to them
Further reading and links
General management
Just About Managing? Effective management for
voluntary organisations and community groups (4th
edition). Sandy Adirondack (London Voluntary Service
Council, 2005)
Managing Without Profit: The art of managing thirdsector
organisations. Mike Hudson (Directory of Social
Change, 2004)
The Good Governance Action Plan for Voluntary
Organisations. Sandy Adirondack (National Council for
Voluntary Organisations, 2002)
Managing Recruitment and Selection. Gill Taylor
(Directory of Social Change, 1997)
Planning Together: The art of effective teamwork.
George Gawlinski and Lois Graessle (Planning
Together Press, 1988)
www.commedia.org.uk/library/training/
html/rmp/contents.htm
Managing Volunteers
www.volunteering.org.uk
www.vde.org.uk
Marketing
www.mediaguide.org.uk
www.volresource.org.uk/briefs/market.htm
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VOXBOX 5.03
Presenter Jill Daley will be fronting VIP on Air’s
programming on BBC Radio Scotland.