Exploring Democracy in the English Voluntary Sector: report of a pilot workshop held with Voluntary Action Leicestershire – July 2024

This report details findings of a pilot workshop held in July 2024 with Voluntary Action Leicestershire (VAL), funded through the Open University Business School (OUBS). The workshop was informed by a variety of literature that focuses on the voluntary sector’s role in democracy. It sought to begin to understand the different aspects of participative, representative, and deliberative democracy that exist in the sector, and to explore the assumptions – and related criticisms – of the voluntary sector’s role in democracy more generally. It addressed three specific questions with the participants: 1) What does democracy mean to you? 2) What’s the position of your organisation in democracy, in relation to the external context? 3) What’s the position of your organisation in democracy, in relation to the internal context?