Scaling back not scaling up – an interview with the UK Paraclimbing Collective
As your organisation becomes more established, it’s not uncommon to find more and more opportunities being presented and a growing demand from your community. This, however, does not always correspond with more funding or capacity in your team. In this interview we talk to Molly Salter from the UK Paraclimbing Collective about how they made the decision to scale back on their work to look after their voluntary team.
This article is part of a series exploring themes of resilience in organisations working on inclusion in the outdoors. Including interviews with leaders who have scaled back, paused their work, closed, sought out new partnerships, pivoted and brought on new leadership.
You can find more articles here. This article is the fourth in the series.
Can you tell me what the UK Paraclimbing Collective is?
UK Paraclimbing Collective, or UKPC, is a volunteer run organisation made up of disabled paraclimbers. Our Charity was initially set up to try to create a space for disabled people to climb together that wasn't focused around being part of the GB Paraclimbing team. We wanted to provide something that was more relaxed, more sociable and open to people who maybe wouldn't be eligible for, or interested in, that type of competition programme. We run social events at different climbing walls and basically try and make climbing as accessible as we can for all disabled people. The idea came together in 2021 and we officially became a charity at the end of 2022.
How did the organisation grow from there?
It was set up by a group of friends that felt that there was a gap, and so was initially very small and London focused as that was where they were based. Then we had volunteers who wanted to set up socials in their own areas, so it grew across Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol and Southampton. It kind of got really big in what seems like no time at all, going from four to nine socials in one or two years. Also, within our first year of being a charity we had our first competition - both ropes and bouldering (climbing smaller walls with soft mats for protection rather than ropes) - and we’ve continued having a bouldering competition each year since.
When did you realise that the growth wasn’t sustainable for you?
Some of our team members began to struggle with capacity, because of our disability or health conditions, which can be difficult to manage on their own, as well as balancing voluntarily running UKPC on top of their usual day to day work or studying. There is a lot that goes on in the background too, such as keeping compliance up to date, doing DBS checks and inducting volunteers, running our social meda and community platform and responding to enquiries. I think that the team as a whole were showing signs of struggling with capacity, compassion fatigue and not feeling as enthusiastic about where we were going.
On reflection, we probably left it too long before addressing it. We decided we needed to have a meeting to talk about what was going on, because people were struggling to commit to doing their allocated duties within the organisation. Within that meeting, everyone was really honest about where they were at and whether they felt able to continue, and one of the members of the team decided they couldn’t continue being involved.
What options did you consider at this point?
We talked through closing the organisation and what that would look like, and realised there was actually quite a bit of work involved with closing down! So then we looked at whether we could scale back. Can we reduce the load of what we're doing? We took some time to look at what and who we are as an organisation, what we wanted to achieve, and considered how we might be able to achieve that if we scaled back. We also looked at how we could get other people involved to try and support us with this scale back change and to take on some of the responsibilities of the team member who wasn't able to continue. We ended up bringing in two new team members.
We talked through closing the organisation and what that would look like, and realised there was actually quite a bit of work involved with closing down! So then we looked at whether we could scale back. Can we reduce the load of what we're doing?
Through this, we realised that the important things were to provide a space for disabled people to climb and have opportunities to be social and be active. So we decided to step back from the consultancy side, and focus on our socials in London and Bristol.
What were your worries about scaling back your work?
Our concerns were that we weren't going to have as much reach as maybe we wanted or hoped for, and that meant we wouldn’t be able to reach as many disabled people through our work. When things started getting bigger, we had all these wonderful ideas of how we were going to reach out to people and try and improve some of the obstacles within climbing. Having to be realistic about what we can do and focus on our community was really important but was also hard to acknowledge.
Did you get any feedback from the community when you made this decision?
There was both understanding and silence, so it was difficult to gauge how it was impacting our community. In hindsight, we could have done more to explore that and find out what that meant for our community, but it’s hard when you don’t have much capacity. Talking to a few individuals, it did mean that they weren't accessing climbing as much as maybe they wanted to, which was upsetting to hear. We did offer to support people to run their own socials but while there was a sadness within the community that their socials were closing, there was also not the availability of volunteering to carry those on or take up socials in new areas.
What have you learnt from the process?
It's quite surprising how much work is involved in trying to recruit new people to the team! We had to think deeply about what it was we wanted from them, what their tasks were, what we wanted them to do, and put together a role description. It was very helpful to go through that process, thinking about what we needed from them in terms of personal skills and practical skills. We then had to work out how to go about recruiting people, where to advertise, how to shortlist and ‘interview’. We received support from All The Elements with this process which was really helpful.
Is there anything you’d do differently if you did it again?
I wish we had noticed and been able to recognise sooner what was going on in the first instance when the team was struggling. We’re now 18 months past that discussion, and we're actually considering things again in a similar sort of way. However, I think now we've been through the process, we recognise the signs a bit more easily. It's actually been really helpful to have more of a continuous conversation of: Is this working? Is this not working? How can we move things around to make sure that we're not burning ourselves out and we're looking after each other as a team?
I wish we had noticed and been able to recognise sooner what was going on in the first instance when the team was struggling. We’re now 18 months past that discussion, and we're actually considering things again in a similar sort of way.
The first time around we didn't get enough feedback or members' voices involved in the conversation about what was going on. What’s different this time we've created a survey for our members to find out what their experiences of our organisation are, what the good things are, if there's any barriers, whether from our organisation or personal to them. This will help us try and understand what our members want and what their challenges are, in the hope that will help us see where we can make changes that will benefit our community and us as a team.
How can people find out more about your work?
You can visit the UKPC website, follow us on Instagram @uk.paraclimbing.collective and Facebook UK Paraclimbing Collective.
Do you have any calls to action for the community?
When you see a local competition ask them if they have a para category and if they do, let us know! If not, encourage them to have one.
Help keep us visible, share our social media posts.
Download our Intro to Accessibility for Climbing Walls’ guide and encourage your local climbing walls to do the same!
If you’ve enjoyed this article you might also enjoy reading the other articles in the series, including “Taking a break as solo founder – an Interview with Queer Out Here” and “How to know when it’s time to close - an interview with Women’s Trad Fest”.
