State of Volunteering

Current Trends and Issues

With over 30 years of experience in the sector, The Centre for Volunteering has observed a number of trends emerging over recent years. These suggest:

• Today, a wider range of organisations want to engage volunteers.
• Many volunteers are less willing to make long-term commitments and prefer short-term, project-based roles.
• Increasingly, corporations are involving their staff in volunteering as a strategy to enhance staff development and their corporate reputation.
• The Government is directing social security recipients - including long-term unemployed people and recent immigrants - towards volunteering; ensuring that these volunteers, and the organisations for which they work, are benefiting from this volunteering is a considerable challenge.
• Indigenous Australians and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds seem to be under-represented in statistics for formal volunteering. Little concrete information is available about informal volunteering, and other forms of good citizenship, for these groups.
• We know many organisations are unsure how they can engage and manage potential volunteers from several demographic groups, including: "baby boomers" approaching retirement; professionals and skilled volunteers wishing to contribute their expertise; corporate volunteering teams; and people seeking short-term volunteering engagements.
• Some well-established organisations are experiencing difficulties recruiting sufficient and suitable volunteers to meet their needs.
• ABS statistics on formal volunteering indicate that people in NSW, and especially metropolitan Sydney, are less engaged in formal volunteering than people from other parts of Australia.
• Managing volunteers is increasingly complex due to changing legal requirements, changes in the insurance industry, and changing expectations and motivations amongst volunteers.

Facts and figures that illuminate these issues are scarce. However, The Centre for Volunteering is committed to undertaking research to increase our knowledge in these areas. This knowledge will be made available to the not-for-profit sector and will underpin our services and activities.