Our Government Advocacy
The Centre for Volunteering conducts its advocacy in a number of different ways, together with many diverse organisations. One of the most direct ways is to make submissions to the State and Federal government when they invite feedback on their programs, policies and budgets. We’ve recently developed two advocacy proposals that involve feedback from our members on the Department of Social Services (DSS) inquiry into funding the community sector, and the Federal Budget.
As part of our advocacy work, we think it is important to explain to our membership the results of the advocacy that we do on their behalf. Our members generously gave their time to provide feedback on our draft submissions in both areas and we wanted to update you on progress.
2024-25 NSW Budget Analysis
The NSW Budget for the 2024-2025 financial year was released on Tuesday 18 June. We’ve summarised key parts of the budget we believe are relevant to volunteers, volunteer managers and volunteer-involving organisations.
Several budget measures will impact volunteering. We are pleased to note that volunteering is included as a potential focus area in the NSW Government’s Performance and Wellbeing framework.
Community Sector Funding
In 2023, the Department of Social Services opened an inquiry into the way that the community services sector was funded. A summary report of all the submissions received (including our own) was recently released by Social Ventures Australia on behalf of DSS. The report outlines the issues identified by the government, how the sector views them, and some potential solutions towards the next phase of the inquiry.
We have analysed this report to provide a summary of the key findings and give some context for how they may impact the sector.
Federal Budget
The Federal Budget for the 2024-2025 financial year was released on 14 May 2024. We’ve analysed the budget based on the core documents, as well as work by Volunteering Australia, to highlight the parts of the budget that we think are most relevant to volunteers, volunteer managers, and volunteer-involving organisations. We also made a pre-budget submission to the government, providing our recommendations for funding allocations to volunteering-related areas.
While it is good to see that some key parts of the volunteering sector (such as the Volunteer Management Activity program) are receiving continued funding, we would have liked to see more funding for volunteering activities and a whole of government approach to understanding how embedded volunteers are in the Australian community.
You can read a more detailed analysis of the relevant parts of the federal budget here.
Ongoing Volunteering Advocacy
We are grateful to our members for the feedback that they have provided on the draft versions of these submissions. As opportunities to provide feedback to the government arise, we will continue to seek your opinions so that we can best represent your views to the government and work together to develop a better volunteering sector in Australia and New South Wales.