131 – Volunteerism in Australia Part 1 – A National Strategy with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson

October 10, 2024

Episode #131: Volunteerism in Australia Part 1 – A National Strategy with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast, Tobi invites Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson onto the show to talk about volunteerism in Australia, focusing on the development and implementation of Australia’s National Strategy.  

Zac and Sarah share insights on the volunteer ecosystem, challenges faced by volunteer-involving organizations, and the significance of the newly developed national strategy. They emphasize the importance of a cohesive approach, involving all stakeholders, backed by comprehensive research. This strategy is designed to inspire other nations by showcasing a collaborative effort to strengthen volunteer support and engagement! 

Volunteerism in Australia – Episode Highlights

• [02:07] – Diving into Volunteerism in Australia 
• [03:24] – The National Strategy for Volunteering 
• [11:22] – Spotlight on Sport Volunteering 
• [17:02] – Understanding the Volunteering Infrastructure 
• [24:30] – Funding Sources for Volunteering 
• [25:58] – Challenges with Grant Funding 
• [27:30] – Government and Corporate Support 
• [28:32] – National Funding and Volunteer Management 
• [32:50] – Cost of Living Impact on Volunteering 
• [37:00] – Trends in Volunteering Commitment 
• [41:44] – Developing the National Strategy for Volunteering 
• [50:41] – Conclusion and Future Directions 

Helpful Links

• VolunteerPro Membership Community 
• Volunteer Management Progress Report  
• Volunteer Nation Episode # Episode #122: Rethinking Community Involvement with Ruth Leonard   
• Volunteer Australia 
• Australia’s National Strategy for Volunteering  
• Australia’s National Strategy for Volunteering Action Plan  
• National Standards for Volunteer Involvement  
• Volunteering Australia’s YouTube Channel 
• 2024 IAVE World Volunteering Conference  
• Connect with Zac on LinkedIn  
• Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn  

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #131 Transcript: Volunteerism in Australia Part 1 – A National Strategy with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson

Tobi: Hey, everybody, Tobi here. Before we get started with today’s episode, I wanted to just let you know that the conversation So that we had to split it into two parts. So, this week you’ll hear part one and next week you’ll hear part two. I had a fantastic conversation with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson of Volunteering Australia. 

We talked about volunteerism. in Australia and the national strategy that they have developed and are now implementing across the country in what they call their volunteering ecosystem. It is a fascinating conversation. It’s an inspiration for those of us in other countries that really need to think about our infrastructure and what volunteerism really deserves in terms of attention, support and planning. 

And so, I hope you enjoy it this week, uh, Episode 131, Volunteerism in Australia, a National Strategy, Part One. Enjoy. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and I have got a treat for you. We are beaming our guests in from almost exactly around the world. Sarah, you’re almost exactly in Perth on the opposite side of the earth right now. Zac, you’re a little bit closer. 

Zac: A little bit.  

Tobi: Brisbane, no. Yes.  

Zac: That’s right. Queensland. Big pointy bit of Australia.  

Tobi: Yes. The other coast, the eastern coast versus the western coast. So, we’re spanning an entire continent today, multiple continents. It’s really exciting. And I wanted to bring my guests on, and I’ll introduce them in a minute. To talk about volunteerism in Australia because they have a fantastic strategy. It’s had a tremendous amount of work done on it. And the way that Australia goes about setting up infrastructure to enable volunteerism is, is quite unique, quite well thought out and something I think that the rest of the world could learn a thing or two from. 

And, you know, I first learned about this. Geez, back in 2016, 2017, I spoke at the National Conference, and then the next year, I traveled around. the country speaking at state and territory conferences and just started to learn more and more about this infrastructure and meet volunteers of all kinds. And it was just a wonderful visit or couple of visits, I should say. 

And for a long time, I’ve wanted to talk about this. And recently, you know, the, the national strategy, and we’ll get into this, was really, wasn’t written this year, but the action plan is getting going this year, and it’s a phased in process. We’re going to talk about it. It caught my eye again, because I’m on y’all’s volunteering Australia newsletter list, and I thought, you know what, now’s the time we got to talk about this. 

So, you know, we’re going to talk about the national strategy for volunteering in Australia. We’re going to talk about the structure of volunteerism in Australia. We may talk trends, we may figure out, are we more alike than different? I don’t know. We’re going to find these things out. So let me introduce my guest today. 

Zac Reimers is National Strategy Director for Volunteering Australia. Australia’s 10-year roadmap to make volunteering the heart of Australia’s community. He is, so he is, he is the head of this national strategy. Prior to his current role, Zac supported volunteers at the state level through Volunteering Queensland, where we first met Zac, I think, where he worked as their policy advocacy and research lead. 

He is a lifelong volunteer, first joining his local youth council at age 11. I think that’s pretty good, pretty cool. You’ve got, uh, decades of volunteering under your belt now. And since 2011, he has built a career in volunteer leadership, successfully engaging thousands of volunteers for some of the largest cultural events in Australia. 

So welcome, Zac.  

Zac: Thank you. Great to be here.  

Tobi: Awesome. And Sarah Wilson is Strategic Partnerships Director at Volunteering Australia. Sarah has expertise in volunteer involvement and not for profit strategy and governance. She previously served as the policy manager for volunteering ACT for nearly a decade. 

That’s in Canberra, in the capital, I believe.  

Sarah: Yes. Yeah. Correct. Yep. 

Tobi: But now she’s in Perth in Western Australia. It’s a long way from Canberra. It is a very, very long way. Yeah. She holds degrees in arts, psychology, and law, and is currently competing Pleading her Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Clinical Psychology at the University of Western Australia. 

How cool is that? She is also a passionate volunteer in animal welfare and mental health. And I remember reading a different bio of yours, Sarah, where you said you swim with sharks for fun.  

Sarah: I don’t even know how I picked up that hobby and now I’ve just, it was almost an accident. 

I was in Hawaii actually, um, and we thought, oh, it’d be fun to go out and do this little shark dive, shark diving trip with some, um, conservationists out there. And it’s only meant to be sort of sandbar sharks and Galapagos sharks, so little, little ones. Um, and then we had a tiger shark, and we were just snorkeling. 

There was no gear. There was no, like, I think we’re all just wearing swimwear. There are no wetsuits or anything. And we hung out with this tiger shark in the water for about half an hour. And it just, it was huge. I think it was eight feet or something like that. I think that’s huge in, I’m not that familiar with the conversion from meters to feet. 

I just got hooked and I got addicted. So, I got scuba qualified. And now whenever I get the chance, I try and get out there with the sharks. Oof. You know, I visited Perth. We were talking before we jumped on. When my husband and I first got married, we went to Perth because he had a conference to speak at. And we went out to Rottnest and just did it, just rented bikes and rode around. And then we left and like the next week someone got chomped by a great white, white.  

Tobi: So, there are big sharks where you live now? 

Sarah: Very big. But you know, part of the, obviously I’ve come here for university to do my PhD and my master’s, but Canberra was a very strong pull to make the move.  

Tobi: Yeah. So, Zac, tell us a little bit about, do you have any hobbies that are kind of interesting?  

Zac: Nothing on the level of, swimming with sharks or, uh, although I think that’s maybe part of why you’re such a good, uh, sort of diplomatic negotiator, Sarah is, maybe it’s good practice. Um, my, my partner and I, we have a one-year-old toddler, so most of my hobbies these days You know, getting something off the shelf, reading the same book repeatedly, rolling a ball. That’s been what I’ve been really into lately if you look at how I’ve been spending my time.  

Tobi: Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. That’s awesome. Well, hey, let’s get started. I want to get into this and kind of pull it apart a little bit so that again, I have, I don’t, I have a not so hidden agenda here that I would like to see other countries really start to develop. 

If anywhere, I mean, here in the U S we don’t have anything like what you have in Australia. Our volunteering infrastructure is really sort of knit together by different, you know, nonprofit associations, both small and more national. But we really don’t have, we don’t do a lot of advocacies to our government around volunteerism. 

The research that’s done is done by, at the university level, by folks who decide they want to study volunteerism. We don’t even get volunteering data on volunteering rates except maybe once every other year. So, the infrastructure is impressive, I think. And I want to get started, but before we do that, tell us a little bit about each of you about the work you do specifically. 

And, you know, I’ve kind of introduced you and talked a little bit about what you do, but maybe give us a little bit more detail. And then also, secondly, part, part two of that question is, why do you think volunteering is important in today’s world in particular? And Sarah, do you want to kick us off? 

Sarah: Yeah. So, I mean, my role with Volunteering Australia, um, as strategic partnerships director is very new. Um, so I previously was working directly with Zac on the strategy for the last year as we developed the action plan. And now as the action plan’s been launched, we’ve recognized that, you know, that it’s a huge opportunity for us at the National Peak Body to bring more partnerships into the organization to really amplify the work that we’re doing. 

Because as you say, there’s Tobi, the infrastructure in Australia is pretty good. Um, and what we’ve recognized is there’s just this huge opportunity to leverage it. So, my role is really looking at how we do that better to support volunteering and volunteer managers and, and the right infrastructure as well. 

I’ve only been doing that specific role for about a month, but within that, um, I look after sport volunteering. So, I’m on the sport volunteer coalition here in Australia, and corporate volunteering as well, which is something that I think is important. Probably in the U S is much more advanced than it is here in Australia, but we’re getting more and more interest from corporates and even government departments around how employee volunteering can sort of amplify what they do and give back to community as well. 

So very exciting, but I think working for a national peak body is always interesting and different. And Zac and I both have job titles, but that doesn’t mean we’re not doing a thousand and one other things every day as well, because that’s just the nature of working in not for profit. I mean, I think for me, reflecting on the question of why volunteerism is important in today’s world, I often, you know, I always talk about wearing different hats and things like that. 

And I am a passionate volunteer and I’ve been volunteering for most of my life. And I just think I’m so lucky that I get paid to a job that I love. I’m at university doing a PhD studying volunteering, which I love. But volunteering is still unequivocally the most meaningful thing that I do with my time. 

And there is just something about doing something for others. And I do a lot in the animal welfare space as well, where we’re talking about essentially a population of animals that don’t have a voice. There’s just something about being a part of that, that. It’s just innately human, um, and something about that experience that I just don’t think you can get in other ways the same way you get through giving time, expertise, talent, whatever it happens to be to a role or to a project or even as a one off and just feeling that pure, I guess.  

Just the experience of being their fathers and doing things for other people with, I say with no benefit, but we all know how much we individually do benefit from volunteering. So, it’s just something that I love, and I love, I love opening people’s eyes to the possibilities of what they can do and how they can enjoy their life more through volunteering and giving back at the same time. It’s sort of a gift that keeps on giving.  

Tobi: Absolutely. And I should point out to folks that sport volunteering in Australia is quite different than sport volunteering here in the States, at least. Here in the States, it’s mostly parents of kids who are coaching and helping their kids’ sports teams, you know, little league baseball, their soccer team, et cetera. 

But in Australia, as I understand it, volunteers are supporting, you know, large leagues of, you know, like, it would be like if our National Football League, if it was all run, the stadiums and the tickets and all that were run by volunteers. Is that a correct understanding of this, the, the situation or the context for sport volunteering or part of it anyway? 

Zac: We definitely have. That, you know, parent and kid connection that you mentioned before, but I think the other part that we have in sport volunteering is we’ve had a long history of supporting volunteers supporting sports at the club level. So maybe not quite the sort of stadium operations, you know, but organizing the grand finale – there’s a lot of volunteers involved in stuff like that, but I would say the real bread and butter of Australian sports volunteering is people who might often get into sports as a kid where a sporting nation, you know, the Olympics and Paralympics just wrapped up and we’re very competitive in that. 

And part of it is because it’s normalized to be involved in sport in some way as you’re growing up in Australia. And a lot of people then continue that association past childhood If not as an athlete, then as the treasurer or secretary of the club, uh, packing up the gear, maintaining the grounds, coaching a team, all that stuff. 

So, at the local level, that’s where I would look to for the sort of mass of Australian sporting volunteers, um, rather than at the absolute upper end where it’s more. professionalized at the highest level. Got it. Got it.  

Tobi: Zac, tell us a little bit about what you do, and part B of that question is why do you think volunteering is important in today’s world? 

Zac: Yeah, well, I am the director of the National Strategy and while you were listing Sarah’s resume before, something we haven’t mentioned yet is she was my immediate predecessor as the director of the National Strategy for volunteering as well. So, Sarah led the development. And then we’ve had a handover. 

And then I’ve been director while Sarah’s returned to studies, focusing on stuff we’ll talk about a bit later, the action plan and, and what we call the establishment of the national strategy. So, I’m focusing on the national strategy, promoting it, supporting people to be part of it. That’s a big part of the role, um, hosting events, workshops, creating resources, whatever we can think of to support other people participating in the strategy. 

Because there’s no view of exclusive ownership of the national strategy. It’s not, it’s very importantly not volunteering Australia’s strategy where we work. It is the national strategy and it’s for everyone. And our role is to support other people by being part of it and seeing the opportunity they must contribute. 

In terms of why I think volunteering is important in today’s world, if we think about today, something that comes to mind for me is I think there’s this overall somewhat long-term trend of moving away from our attachments to stuff and more of our attachments to experiences. So, if we think about entertainment, you know, fewer eight tracks and CDs and more streaming services, things a bit more flexible, things are more on demand. 

If we think about socializing, socializing is kind of on demand. And I think there’s this overall move towards experiential things. Being very important and volunteering is at the core of that. Volunteering is the ultimate experience. Volunteering is a core experience through all human history. Uh, we’ve called it by different names, and we’ve supported it in different ways over the years. 

But I think that’s part of why it’s so important today. And especially in a time where the connections we have with other people have necessarily taken a different form. You know, like we are three people talking online right now, looking at each other in little boxes on a screen, but volunteering is, at least for me, when there’s that feeling of being closest to a community or, you know, to, to someone else and especially seeing the, uh, change or the benefits that come out of the volunteering and they’re immediately in front of you. 

Tobi: Yeah. It, I think it’s a force multiplier. When you get an organization that have some expertise and resources that they’re, you know, marshaling resources, you know, doing the work to gather the resources and to bring together people who have expertise, but then also being a convener of the community and bringing the community in. 

And its own lived experiences and understanding and connections that and social capital and community capital that that the organization may or may not have an understanding, a more basic understanding of the community’s needs often as well. And it just becomes a force multiplier. that can’t happen otherwise, I don’t think it when done well, I should say when done well. 

Zac: And it’s a symptom of, you know, what is community that’s kind of hard to quantify. If I’m looking for a symptom that I can look at of how strong a community is, I will probably look at how much volunteering takes place in that community as being the best expression of that.  

Tobi: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Tell us a little bit more just to give us a baseline of what is the infrastructure because I think it will be helpful to the audience to know how this national strategy for volunteerism in Australia. Where it comes from or who it’s benefiting and who was convened. But before we get to that, what is the, what’s the infrastructure? 

Like Sarah, you mentioned, you know, volunteering Australia’s the national peak body. I think most people listening don’t even know what a peak body is. Break it down one on one for people that don’t have any idea. I’ve never been to the country. I don’t know, uh, how volunteerism, what the infrastructure looks like. So, either of you.  

Sarah: I don’t, I never know if a, if peak bonding is an Aussie thing, we’ve got lots of them here, but as a national peak, um, and I’ll, I’ll hand to Zac in a minute, who’s got a really good analogy for the infrastructure piece, but predominantly we do a lot of policy and advocacy. So interestingly, sort of picking up on your point, that’s not something that maybe happens in the US as much. 

We really exist to advocate for the interests and priorities of volunteering in general, but specifically volunteers, volunteer involving organizations, and then the broader infrastructure around that. So, we now use a term that we coined. Called the volunteering ecosystem. Some people love it, some people hate it, but just to recognize that it’s not only volunteers and, and VAO’s, it’s also governments, its academia, it’s local councils. It’s, it’s everyone, you know, it’s. If you don’t know, if you’re not a volunteer, you know, a volunteer or, you know, someone who has volunteered in the past. And so, our role really is less about service delivery and more about representing those interests, producing national infrastructure in terms of technology and resources and things to support volunteerism. 

And also, just to make sure that there is that national voice and of course, celebrating volunteer and recognizing the power that it has through things like National Volunteer Week, um, and even the international celebrations as well. So primarily that’s what we do at that high level, but we work very closely with the rest of the infrastructure, and I’ll hand it over to Zac who’s got some more interesting things to say about that than I did.  

Tobi: One other thing on volunteering Australia, you also administer the national standards. Did you develop those in, in a similar way as, as the national strategy? Did you bring together Working groups or stakeholders.  

Sarah: Yeah. I remember I was working at volunteering ACT when we first developed the national standard. I think it might’ve been before Zac’s time with VQ. Um, and we developed. 

Zac: It was before my time, yeah, back in the day.  

Sarah: So, we developed them, um, through a similar process with, so our foundation members at Volunteering Australia are all the state and territory peak bodies. So, you’ve worked with both, Tobi, and we actually convened sort of a working group in 2015 and said, you know, we should put something together for the sector. And that’s what turned into the national standards. And since then, they’ve been something that we’ve volunteering Australia. You know, quote unquote owns them, but it’s the state and territory peak bodies that really help organizations to implement them. 

They do train on them. They help people align their programs with them. And we just let a refresh with the states and territories in the last year. So those standards have been refreshed. Reflect more contemporary understandings of volunteering, um, and then on the forward agenda and part of the National Strategy Action Plan is to make sure that the standards align with the strategy as well, just to make it easier for organizations who are implementing them. 

So they’re a very handy tool that, you know, certainly very good volunteering programs in Australia use it as sort of a guiding. document, I suppose, for their own programs.  

Tobi: Yeah, I’ll link to them also, as well as your website and the, the national strategy, et cetera, but also the standards in very thoughtful. It’s nice to hear about refreshments because technology’s just changing everything. Zac, tell us a little bit about the infrastructure in more detail.  

Zac: It’s kind of a funny thing for me because so often we fall into this trap of thinking about where, where our gaps are, or we don’t have enough infrastructure, or we don’t have enough volunteers or anything like that. 

But now explaining it and thinking of an audience who might not have access to what we have that we sometimes see is, you know, we wish we had more, more support. You know, it does give you a sense of perspective in terms of the, if, if someone hasn’t come across the term peak body, you can think of it as like a representative group, um, usually for a, a type of activity in this case, volunteering, maybe a demographic. 

It’s a little bit like a union, a little bit like a lobbyist, uh, researchers do training. The point is to represent the needs and to build you up and support you. So, in Australia, our volunteering infrastructure falls into three levels. And I think the easiest way for other people to think about it is like the levels of government. 

So, you might have a municipal or county government, a local government. And at our end, in terms of volunteering, we have what are called volunteer resource centers or volunteer support services. They tend to have a more local focus on a, on a region, a community or a city or a town. And then if you go up to the next level, you know, like in governments, you might have a state or province government. 

Uh, we have, uh, state and territory level, volunteering peak bodies. We were talking before about volunteering Queensland. There’s one, there’s a representative for each state and territory in Australia. And then at the national level, um, we have volunteering Australia. And so, as you go through those different levels, the focus tends to be at the level that they represent. 

So, a volunteer resource center might have a lot of boots on the ground in one specific community. It might even, it might not even be a whole city. It might be half of a city, like the Northern side of a city. And they really, really focus on that. And they might do a lot of, um, meeting, greeting volunteers, referring volunteers to organizations. 

And then if you, if we skip a level, go all the way up to national might be more focused on national level. Policy advice, research, strategic initiatives, and then at the state and territory level, state and territory level, it’s in between, and they tend to do a bit of both, focusing on that state level. So, yeah, perhaps we’re quite lucky to have as much as we do, but we are always looking for opportunities to make it stronger. 

Tobi: I mean, we have state service commissions, and some of them get involved in volunteer engagement. They may or may not, and sometimes they give grants. They’re run by AmeriCorps, or they’re funded by AmeriCorps, I should say, not, not run by AmeriCorps, uh, which is a federal agency that runs national service, which is sort of stipend, um, AmeriCorps, RSVP, et cetera. 

We have different programs, senior programs, and young people, young adults, usually people getting ready to go to college who want to do some national service, and they get stipends. But it’s, we don’t really have a body that’s doing real advocacy at the level you’re doing it.  

Zac: And a non government body as well.  

Tobi: Exactly.  

Zac: Like an outside perspective for government to give them advice.  

Tobi: And the partnership with government, I mean, how does funding flow? Tell us about what funds this volunteering ecosystem?  

Sarah: It’s sort of a, it’s a bit of a mix, so I mean, most, um, in terms of the peak bodies, including us and the volunteering resource centers, it tends to be, um, some degree of government funding. Volunteering and usually with respect to their government with that council or state or federal, um, and then grant funding as well. So usually that’s more for projects and things. So, a lot of us rely on that core funding from government, which is interesting, as you say, because we do a lot of advocacies sometimes to say to the government, we don’t agree with your approach. 

That’s why partnership is so important because, you know, they are funding us, but they’re also trusting us to tell them. What they need to know, because we’re the ones with the expertise. And then there’s a lot of corporate investment in volunteering, not as much as we’d like to see, um, and usually more for specific programs, but we are seeing, I think, more and more interest, um, and investment. 

And then we also have kind of, I suppose, revenue raising streams, for want of a better word, where some, Parts of the ecosystem do train and events and things like that and attach a bit of a cost to it. And usually that’s just to cut the cost for the cost to put things on, but it’s kind of a, a bit of a mix of different sources. 

And, you know, unfortunately, and I think this is true for much of the world, uh, it’s not always necessarily guaranteed and it’s never enough. And that’s part of the advocacy that we do is really trying to get governments and any funders to understand the true cost of, we always say, just because volunteers, Work for free doesn’t mean volunteering is free. 

It comes with a cost, um, and you know, we, we talk about that all the time and saying that we should be paying for the true cost of a service, even if volunteers are assisting to deliver that with no remuneration for themselves. Um, and that’s still something that we’re prosecuting. And I don’t know exactly if there’s anything else from the funding perspective I’ve missed. 

Zac: Nothing you’ve missed, but something that comes to mind for me is, as you go through the different levels, if we think of the volunteer organizations, especially the small to medium ones, if they’re not in a position to fundraise for themselves or to have a corporate sort of sponsorship or partnership, A lot of the ways they might try and get money or the funding is available to them is through grants and that is tricky because grants are necessarily competitive. 

You know, it could, it could put us in a situation where if I’m applying for a grant, that means you don’t get it or vice versa. If they, cause there’s usually, they usually receive more applications than they can dispense funds. And so, it’s good to see the support coming out. That’s one of the common ways for governments, especially to reach. 

At the organizational level and provide support is they’ll have a grant that focuses on we want to support volunteers in this way. Let us know what you would do in this arena of volunteering. Um, what would you do to support the volunteer experience being better? What would you do to get better outcomes from volunteering? 

Give us your best ideas and we’ll, and there’s a grant for it. And that can be a catalyst for a lot of great stuff, but it can also put some Yeah. And so, there’s a lot of sorts of push and pull factors. We’re never going to have a funding solution that ticks all the boxes. And perhaps it’s more prevalent in Australia than in the U.S.  

Sarah: I think I might mention on that just because I think it’s interesting, um, particularly for international listeners is we recently had a federal government productivity commission inquiry into philanthropy, um, because our federal government wants to double philanthropy by 2030. The report is very long, but the executive summary is great. 

And one of the things that we successfully were able to do through our advocacy with our state and territory counterpart is actually get them to consider that philanthropy is giving them. money, but it’s also giving of time. And so volunteering and the strategy feature really heavily in that report. 

But one of the things the report highlights is that in Australia, 90 percent of fundraising dollars go to 10 percent of charities, which isn’t, I’m not saying that disrespectfully of those wonderful charities, um, but it does mean that there are quite a few that operate with little to no money at all. 

And we need to figure out how to make that more equitable because quite often those really tiny ones in community are the ones that are. So, they bring really niche services, programs and support for very, very vulnerable community members that get overlooked just because they don’t have their own infrastructure to support fundraising in the same way. 

Tobi: Yeah. Yeah. But there’s also national funding for volunteerism. Does that occur on a regular basis and what type of government agencies, you know, we have our AmeriCorps and they do volunteer generation fund grants, but not always. And it’s a very specific type of grant, but I think you have more sort of baked into the national infrastructure. Tell us just a little bit about that.  

Zac: We have some, yeah, ongoing, recurring, like funding streams and, and they’re often set up to run for five years or more. And so, there’s a grants package that runs every year or two years. And a lot of that happens through your local elected representative. You’ll meet with them; you’ll talk to them, and they’ll identify candidates to move on to the next round of the sort of grant process. 

We also have the volunteer management activity, uh, sort of fancy name for basically money to support fewer barriers, like people removing barriers for volunteering and getting more people involved. And that has undergone some changes. Currently, a lot of that volunteer management activity is administered at the state level by the peak bodies, not by government groups. 

And that is used to fund projects that support volunteering. But yeah, there’s, there’s always some level of funding provided. It is difficult to quantify exactly how much is provided for volunteering, because while there usually be one, you know, federal or state level government department that focuses on volunteering and will often have a name like Communities or social services or families or something like that, volunteering impacts pretty much every other government department as well. 

So, you’ve got sport, you’ve got art, you’ve got veterans affairs, you’ve got the environment, you’ve got, you know, all of them. And so, there will be funding that reaches volunteers and benefits volunteers through all those other streams. They’re not, the headline isn’t funding for volunteers. It’ll be funding for education. And then incidentally, it happens to support a bunch of volunteering happening. And, uh, those are a bit harder to sort of collect and put it all into one bucket.  

Tobi: Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I think so many nonprofits, at least here in the States, are always asking, where can I find funding for volunteers? Well, in your program grant applications, don’t you include, like, as part of your line-item budget, isn’t there cost associated with having volunteers work in your program? You know, it just seems like a no brainer, but folks don’t seem to think about it that way. 

VISION WEEK BREAK 

Hey, everybody. Tobi here. Hey, have you decided or planned or even thought about what you’re going to do in 2025 in terms of growing your volunteer efforts at your nonprofit? If you’re kind of fumbling around, not sure what to do, worried maybe a little bit about what the future might bring, there is nothing better than planning to stop that worry. 

It’s the best antidote. to stress, confusion and uncertainty. Just get a plan in place. And the good news is during Vision Week 2025, our strategic planning boot camp You will be able to come up with a plan in five days. That’s right. We’re going to teach about an hour a day for five days. You will have homework to work on your plans. 

We will have a pop-up community to support you all the way through. And on Friday, you will have a completed plan if you do the work and we’re here to help you do that work. And so, I’d love you to join us. It’s November 18th through 22nd. You can join the waitlist right now and we will let you know you’ll be the first to know our waitlisters when the doors open for registration which will be opening in a couple weeks. 

Actually, they might even be open now. Who knows? Go to volpro.net/vision to get more information. Hope to see you there. Tell us a little bit about the challenges of volunteerism in Australia right now. What are, what are folks experiencing? You know, we talked about funding, the push and pull, a little bit of competition when there’s not enough resource to go around, very, very small nonprofits, you know, squeaking by with what they can. 

Tobi: What are some other things that volunteer organizations are struggling with?  

Sarah: Well, I mean, I think, and this is probably the same in, in the U. S. and many other countries, cost of living is the big-ticket item at the moment. Um, it’s a big priority for our government just in general, let alone in terms of volunteering. 

But I think it was really interesting because a couple of years ago when we were sort of on the precipice of that COVID ending, and I say that, I don’t mean in the sense that COVID has disappeared but we sort of got through that wave of lockdowns and things like that and returned to what we now call new normal. 

I remember being in a couple of regional communities doing consultations and even back then people were saying that the cost of even just driving 30 kilometers, 40 kilometers to a volunteering role was becoming, Unfortunately, a luxury when they were struggling to put food on the table for their family, and it’s not so much that people want to give up their volunteering, but it is a choice. 

And when you’re putting things on the chopping block, unfortunately, volunteering must go if you’re not meeting your basic needs. And that’s something that is really affecting not just volunteers, but also the organization. So, the increase in terms of the cost of keeping the lights on, the cost of delivery services, the cost of having Human to human connection has increased for organizations as well. 

So, we’ve got this tricky supply and demand issue exacerbated by the cost of living combined with a long-term decline in formal volunteering in Australia. That’s been happening for a couple of decades now. So, it’s kind of a perfect storm, which is why the national strategy has come at such a pivotal time. 

And it’s not to say that volunteering isn’t still happening. We have seen an increase since the height of COVID in volunteering rates through research we’ve done. Um, but it is a really challenging time, I think, for everyone, not to mention the increase in demand for services. So, we’re seeing in Australia that the cost of living is impacting people. 

People who might have never, ever gone to a food bank are now relying on food banks for their weekly groceries. Families that have two full-time working parents with children are living in tents because they can’t afford a rental or find one. And so, these people are increasingly turning to charities for help that rely on volunteers. 

And oftentimes volunteers are becoming service users instead of being able to continue in their role or wearing jewel hats, which is becoming, I think, a big problem. And it’s, you know, certainly going to continue to impact the everyday Australian, I think.  

Zac: And that’s the, that’s the double whammy to sort of think about. We talked earlier about volunteering being like a multiplying effect for good, but What you just mentioned there, Sarah, is when it there’s through someone not being able to contribute as a volunteer and needing to discontinue that there’s a multiplying effect with a negative impact in that if someone was volunteering their time for a service that helps address homelessness, and then they themselves become at risk of becoming homeless, it’s not just that the group has lost the capacity of that volunteer, they’ve potentially gained a client. 

And it’s in fact, twice as much, twice as much of a gap as it was before. So yeah, the, these challenges are very pressing and the competition for people’s time, the demands for people’s time and resources is, is tough. We mentioned before that volunteering is not free, although it’s time willingly given that volunteering itself is not without cost. 

And there are different estimates, but, you know, it’s always worth keeping in mind that if you’re volunteering, it’s not even that you’re not getting paid. You’re spending. Yes. A few bucks an hour to volunteer. Yes. On your transport or the uniform or gear that you Bought that you wouldn’t have otherwise, or potential opportunity costs. 

And , yeah, Sarah mentioned that there’s an increasing number of people who are at a breaking point where volunteering is, cannot be a high enough priority considering that the other needs that are rising in tricky times.  

Tobi: Yeah. We have this similar reduction sort of trend in formal volunteering, uh, in the U.S. I don’t think there’s been enough research here to point to. The economy as a driver of a downturn in volunteerism. But I’ve been kind of tracking on Google trends. That’s sort of my marker on how many people are going on Google and just putting in volunteer opportunities near me. And in, I think January 2023, it was at an all-time high in the history of the internet, at least in the U S uh, and, but it’s been dropping since. 

And it, of course, it dropped during COVID, but it bounced back up and then it dropped again. And so, I’m just kind of curious. Of course, we have a presidential election that’s just garnering tons of volunteerism, but that’s quite spontaneous. And you know, it’s only going to be going on for a few months, a few more months. 

There’s an end date. There’s an end date. I’m just hoping that folk’s kind of start to translate that into other types of volunteering, but it’s very, quite different. And, you know, it’s sort of like, Disaster response, volunteering people kind of responding emotionally. They want to help, but they only want to help for that period. And then they’re done.  

Zac: Well, Tobi, you, you mentioned Google trends. Like this is something I just happened to be looking at yesterday in Australian searching for the word volunteer. There are these huge spikes where it’ll, it’ll be searched 40 times as much at this time, the adjacent months, and they are all connected to major disasters in Australia. 

We have a lot of fires and floods, as I’m sure many people know, and when there’s a huge flood that takes out, you know, a massive part of a state, massive part of a country, or a huge bushfire, searches for the word volunteer and go through the roof and nothing else even compares.  

Tobi: Yeah. Do you find, this is another trend I’m hearing a lot from, um, A lot of folks are members in our community, folks I’m training, et cetera, when I’m out and about. That there’s a trend towards a preference in episodic or shorter-term volunteer commitments. Are you finding that as well in Australia? 

Sarah: Yes and no. I think what people are looking for is the flexibility of if I do commit to an ongoing role that requires X amount of time. Can I come and go from that as I need to, but still keep the commitment. 

And I think that often people either perceive it to be this black or white, and you’re doing four hours a week every Tuesday, or you’re not welcome, which is not true at all. But sometimes people think if I can’t make that commitment, I won’t bother. Um, and sometimes. There is, I think, one of the things that we found which was quite interesting. 

So, we’ve been doing some research with the Australian National University for quite some years now, including pre COVID. We do a wave, um, with them every year and it’s a nationally representative survey. Um, and our colleague, Jack, our, he’s our research fellow. He crunched some of the comments and the qualitative data that came out of that. 

And one of the interesting things was that people were perceiving that they felt obligated, but they were worried about stopping volunteering. Or even taking time off because of the perceived need and just seeing how important volunteering was. Um, so I think that desire for flexibility is there. 

And I think there may be a perception that people perceive they want short term or episodic, but really what they want is just to know that volunteering will fit with their life in a way that they need it to. Um, and that it won’t be a problem if they do have to take a, or want to take a month off, or have Children during school, grandchildren during the school holidays or something like that, that they must care for. 

Tobi: Yeah. I mean, I’ve asked people directly, why don’t you volunteer? And they’ll say, because I don’t want to sign my life away.  

Sarah: Yeah.  

Tobi: You know, and I, you know, give, give people opportunities that have a beginning, middle and end y’all they can re up, you know, and if they’re enjoying it, let people tip dip their baby toe into that water and then they’ll cannonball in later when they figure it out. 

Zac: Something I know Sarah and I have each said in meetings is, um, stop asking people to marry you before the first date, you know, like how many, how many application forms say on them, like, Oh, are you signing up for a six month commitment or a one year commitment? You know, people need, yeah. 

And, and asking at a time when they have the least information to go off on what their place is within this team and how they feel about it, you need to give people the benefit of having a taste, a bit of an experience, and then building from there.  

Tobi: I mean, I, I say, you know, you’re, uh, you’re asking people to sign a prenup before you even got on deck. So well, let’s talk about amidst all these challenges, you’ve still got a very aspirational plan. It’s a 10-year plan. That, that’s, you know, unheard of lately in the world of strategic planning, a 10-year plan. I mean, people are, you know, planning a year, two years, three years, maybe. Tell us a little bit about the history of the National Strategy for Volunteering in Australia. 

What, how long has it been around? Because I know this isn’t the first one. How did it start? And how does this strategy that you’re working on now differ from what’s happened in the past? Yeah.  

Sarah: Yeah. So, um, we did, there was a. strategy developed in 2011. Um, so that was the predecessor to this one. It probably wasn’t as robust a process in that it was done quickly. So, there was still, it was done by government, um, and led by government and still done with community, but on a shorter timeframe. Um, and what happened was that after that strategy was created, there was a change in government here and it just wasn’t implemented, which often happens when there’s a change in government priorities change and it sort of just sat on a shelf. 

So even in the development of the new strategy, when, um, our partners at. The Department of Social Services went looking for documentation around the 2011 strategy. There wasn’t much to be found. So even though it exists, and you can still find it, it was never actually implemented. And then Volunteering Australia had been asking for investment in international strategy for many years. 

And we sort of didn’t. Get much interest in that until I think COVID really was the catalyst where probably for maybe the first-time outside emergencies and natural disasters, there was this really obvious gap that was being left by volunteers not being able to go to the workplace and it was at that time that the federal government through the Department of Social Services announced they would fund Volunteering Australia to lead the development of the strategy. So that was the time when I moved across from volunteering ACT to take on the role, um, and do the, the consultation. Um, and it was interesting because we did it very, very quickly. 

From beginning to end, developed the strategy, co designed it with the ecosystem in about 10 months. And at the beginning, people were sort of saying, it’s not enough time, you know, we need to do all these things. And the more I got into the process, the more I realized, the faster, the better. Because it would never be perfect. 

It’s always going to change. If we’d done a strategy a year prior before COVID had really hit, it would look very different to what it looked like even a year later. And so, we sort of started just saying, you know, it’s better to have something than nothing, and the sooner we have something, the more we can work on it. 

And one of the principles of the strategy is that it will be ever evolving. And as things change, we’ll update it to reflect that. So that co design process was done across Australia. So. I had lots and lots of online conversations, but we also did go around the country and go to as many places as we could to have face to face conversations with people to get their views and their aspirations and sort of bring all of that together. 

And one of the things about our strategy that I think is different, unique and special is that it’s. Entirely evidence based. So, at the beginning of the project, we set up research working group and a couple of other working groups. So, we had a volunteer management one and a corporate volunteering one as well. 

And we also had a council, and these working groups were there to bring expertise and through the research working group and our partnership with the ANU and a couple of other universities. We actually created the volunteering in Australia research, which people can find on our website, and it looks at both the volunteer perspective and the volunteer involving organization perspective. 

We also produced 22 research papers, which are all on the national strategy website as well. Um, and so all that evidence was used to build out. The evidence base for the strategy. So, there’s not a single claim or sentence or anything in that entire 90 something page document that didn’t come from a consultation or from actual contemporary, usually Australian based research, which is helpful because it means that we’re not just saying something we think we know that it’s reflective of really robust research that’s been undertaken.  

It includes lived experience. So, we had a lot of conversations with volunteers and managers of volunteers, um, around the practical realities of volunteering, as well as peak bodies, academia, government departments, everyone you can think of, and brought all of that together into the strategy that we’re working on that people now see today. So, it was very fast and dynamic. Um, but it was, I think, a really enriching experience to be able to hear from the ecosystem and then build and weave their views into, yeah, the 10-year strategy that we have today.  

Tobi: Yeah. I think it’s fascinating that, well, partly I love the perspective of it’s owned by everyone. 

So, you were the convener and the facilitator, and you got funding from the government who was the sponsor, basically, but it’s owned by everyone. The responsibility to take it on is owned by everyone. How difficult was it? To, and, and we’ll talk more about the details of the strategy, but to bring together and really decide on these core action items or core principles, you know, it’s just, I look at that and I go, how can you get, you know, an entire continent to agree, you know? 

Sarah: Well, it’s, it’s interesting you  said that and it’s, um, so we. We had done this, we’d done this four-phase approach where we did sort of a discovery phase, which was just about big, broad conversations. Tell us about the current state of volunteering. We then moved into, um, a visioning phase where we started to talk to people about what’s the vision for the future? 

What do you want to see in 10, 20, 30 years’ time? Um, and then we did a build phase and that build phase, we put together what we call the core design team. And Zac was actually on the core design team. But in his role of volunteer in Queensland, we brought together about 20 to 30 people from across the ecosystem. 

And we sat them in a virtual room and said, okay, you now need to make sense of six months’ worth of consultation and the biggest research agenda you’ve ever seen and turn it into a strategy. And I think, you know, one of the questions that you had sort of posed to us was what was most surprising about the process. 

And I think one of the things that, still to this day, I think is such an, just a resounding compliment of the ecosystem and the people that are involved in volunteering is that even though people came to us with their own aspirations and their own priorities, it was actually really easy, not easy, but it was, people agreed that a certain set of priorities were going to be the most useful for the most people in the ecosystem. 

And even if their number one priority didn’t make it in, they could still see how the rest of it would influence and benefit and impact their communities and their work. And so even though it was this, you know, huge volume of information to get through, and it wasn’t necessarily easy, as the core design team, we sort of teased it out and said, okay, well what are the things that are going to make the most impact for the most? 

And then how do we sort of bring that together into a coherent strategy? And then we did then put that back out for feedback. So, we had a kind of test and refined phase where we invited people to comment on what we had identified back then as I kind of remember the name we had for them, but they’re what did turn into the strategic objectives. 

And again, most people were sort of like, they had the ability to critically reflect and say, do you know, this isn’t my number one priority, but I can see how Is so wonderful for the people I work with all the people around me and really recognize, you know, almost their own privilege sometimes in that they didn’t necessarily need to work on some of the, the really basic stuff, but I could see how the ecosystem needed that. 

I think it was this turning tide and I’m sure there’s lots of people who would agree who have been part of this process where I feel like for the first time in our history as an ecosystem, we came together around this unifying agenda. And that’s probably been the most rewarding part of the process to see us actually feel like we have this identity as an ecosystem and we’re all working towards the same goals and same outcomes. 

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It’s fantastic. To see people really being able to work towards the mutual welfare, you know, of everyone. It’s not, I hate to say, not feeling like the culture in the U. S. lately, but there is such an impetus for that. People want that. I mean, at core, people want to be able to work together towards You know, a mutual goal. I think human beings are in our spirit, in our DNA, collaboration is in our DNA. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have survived as a species. I mean, it’s obviously locked into our DNA that we need to work together on something. Sometimes people clan together for some pretty poor reasons and destructive reasons. 

It’s really great to see this coming together. And, and thanks for sharing the iterations that have kind of come through. And, you know, I do believe I, and I do appreciate also and believe, you know, evidence based because there’s so much opinion in our field about how things should be. 

Right? And unless you have data to back it up, it’s just, you know, your best experience and it’s really only reflecting your personal experience. So, I love that there’s data, um, there’s research involved. Well, let’s take a quick pause from our conversation with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson about Australia’s national strategy for volunteering. 

And when we get back, we’ll get some advice from people, too. We’ll talk a little bit more in detail on the structure of the strategy and maybe I’ll ask my guests to give you a little advice if you’re getting inspired out there, folks. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague who might need a little inspiration or you’re trying to talk into helping you pull off something like this. And join us next week, same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Take care, everybody.