132 – Volunteerism in Australia Part 2 – A National Strategy with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson

October 17, 2024

Episode #132: Volunteerism in Australia Part 2 – A National Strategy with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson

In the second part of this interview, Tobi discusses the implementation and future of Australia’s National Strategy for Volunteering with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson. They cover key challenges such as adapting to post-COVID realities, managing inflation, and addressing volunteer management issues like funding and recruitment.  

The discussion highlights the importance of inclusivity, cross-sector collaboration, and strategic planning. Detailed action plans and governance frameworks are examined, along with the significance of volunteer leadership and community engagement.  

Volunteerism in Australia – Episode Highlights

• [00:29] – Recap of Part One: Volunteerism in Australia 
• [01:29] – Challenges Addressed by the National Strategy 
• [03:12] – Future-Proofing Volunteering 
• [06:29] – Inclusivity and Accessibility in Volunteering 
• [13:13] – The Action Plan: Phases and Implementation 
• [19:54] – Accountability and Measuring Success 
• [22:53] – National Strategy and Volunteering 
• [23:36] – Celebration and Recognition 
• [25:31] – Advice for Local and Larger Organizations 
• [26:00] – Cross-Sector Learning and Collaboration 
• [27:53] – Future-Focused Volunteering 
• [28:21] – Skilled Facilitation and Leadership 
• [29:03] – Practical Advice for Volunteer Managers 

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 #132 Transcript: Volunteerism in Australia Part 2 – A National Strategy with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson

Tobi: Hey there, Tobi popping in for a quick note before we start our episode this week. You’ll recall that last week we started part one of volunteerism in Australia, a national strategy with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson from Volunteering Australia, where we had a fantastic conversation about how they have built a national strategy for their volunteering ecosystem. And this week we’re going to talk in part two about how they implemented that strategy or how they are implementing that strategy and some recommendations for you if you are inspired to start planning at that level as well. 

So, I hope you enjoy this episode, and we’ll get right to it.  

Okay, we’re back with our conversation about Australia’s National Strategy for Volunteering with Zac Reimers and Sarah Wilson. It’s been a real eye-opening conversation, very inspirational. I think if we could get this kind of strategy going in many more countries around the world, I think we could, as a, as a planet, boost volunteering by quite a bit. 

What specific challenges in the volunteer sector does this strategy aim to address, particularly in the wake of COVID 19? We’ve talked a little bit about some of the, you know, one of the impetus or that the federal government might’ve had been, hey, we’ve had a massive drop in volunteering and it’s impacting our ability to deliver services. 

When nonprofits aren’t there to hold the safety net. Then it falls on the government to do so. So, it’s in the government’s best interest sometimes to have the third sector do its job, right? And be resourced to do its job. But what were some other challenges that the strategy was hoping to address?  

Zac: Sarah, I’d like to have my take and then see if you agree, because while the strategy was being developed, I was a bit player. I would tune in from time to time, but Sarah was the person, you know, living and breathing every day. For me, One of the best things about the national strategy is because it takes this 10 year view, although it was created out of the wake of the onset of COVID 19 and the lockdowns, it’s not defined by COVID 19, you know, and, and we’ve had this period of, uh, inflation and cost of living pressures, uh, And that’s a challenge, but the national strategy is not defined by cost of living or inflation. 

So those feed into it, you know, and there are these perennial challenges in volunteering. If you ask anyone who manages volunteers what the challenges are, they’ll probably talk about how they need more funding. They need to get better at recruitment, and they need to get better at retention and engagement of volunteers. 

And they need more time, you know, those are the things that will, that will come up. For me, what the national strategy represents somewhat uniquely is that it looks more towards the future. And I think one of the challenges that it tackles is, you know, is a lot of our stereotypes of volunteering and a lot of our default ways of going about things. 

Some of them are built for yesterday’s volunteering or certainly not for tomorrow’s volunteering. I think in some cases, our approach to volunteering is kind of defined by this period when people were signing up to lifelong commitments with, um, member associations. Like, uh, you know, in, in Australia, we have these big groups, like the country women’s association and, and, you know, chances are, you know, someone who is, and usually a little bit older who’s in the country women’s association, but you see that A little bit less and all these big institutions that had higher membership in the 1950s through to the 1980s that set the tone for some things that still echo today in our approach to volunteering. 

And so, for me, the challenge is adaptability. How can we take what is great about our current setup of volunteering and the institutions and the infrastructure and the consistency. But also, be ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow, meet the challenges that might be facing young people more than others, and think about flexible volunteering, uh, short term volunteering, volunteering outside of the organizational structure. 

Which we often call informal volunteering. So, yeah, I think it’s this kind of larger, almost existential challenge that the national strategy seeks to address. We’ll want a better future for volunteering, but what, what is it and how do you get there? That’s the challenge.  

Tobi: I feel like we’re experiencing as a sector around the world, because I have this fantastic, and I’ll link to this episode with Ruth Leonard. She lives in Manchester, England, and she’s written a book on volunteerism, and one of the chapters is a really critical look at all the assumptions, including basic stuff like, is volunteerism a good thing? 

Inherently good, right? We had an interesting philosophical discussion and then calling out some of the assumptions and even the assumptions of informal versus formal volunteering, some of the vocabulary we use. So, I feel like there’s a little bit of some self, you know, I don’t know if it’s in the wake of COVID. 

Or it’s that we’re getting to a point where we’re recognizing that old models aren’t working like they used to. That we’re a smart, educated group of folks around the world working in the sector. That we’re just starting to look at it, look at it and say, hmm, maybe it’s time to take a little bit of a step back and have a rethink. 

You know, and I love that your strategy is 10 years out because it really, like, really sparks your imagination, like, what’s happening 10 years from now, you know? Sarah, is there anything else in terms of challenges you wanted to add to Zac’s analysis of, of what the strategy is hoping, hoping to solve for? 

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I think the way that we designed the 11 strategic, strategic objectives is that in a way they’re the 11 challenges we’re trying to solve. Um, so by achieving those 11 things, then, you know, hopefully we, we see this overall outcome. I think one of the things that was interesting and inspiring and gave me a lot of hope for the success of the strategy is that the thing that I realized over the year of doing consultations and developing the strategy was that. 

There weren’t many times I heard something I didn’t know, and I don’t mean that disrespectfully. I mean that to be an asset in the sense that we all knew what needed to change. We just needed something to bring it together. And what I realized was that there is this phenomenal potential out there in our volunteering ecosystem in Australia, that if we harness that potential, it’s limitless.  

And the reality now for us is just that there are some systemic things in the way that stop us harnessing that collective potential and a strategy provides kind of the impetus for us to be able to overcome some of those barriers. So, things like, you know, one of the things Zac and I being policy and research nerds love is that we have a strategic objective around making volunteering across portfolio issue in government.  

We want, at a federal level, but also at a state and territory level, volunteering spans every government department, but it’s always situated within social services and we want to change that narrative to say, okay, but volunteering as Zac said before is it’s arts, it’s environment, it’s animal welfare, it’s mental health, it’s aged care, it’s everything in between to actually get people to understand that volunteering is so ubiquitous that it’s invisible. 

And it happens. And I think in Australia, you know, we, people often talk about Australians having tall poppy syndrome. Um, we don’t necessarily, I think there’s an interesting.  

Zac: Should we explain what tall poppy syndrome is?  

Tobi: Sorry. Hold up. What is tall poppy syndrome?  

Zac: Tall poppy syndrome is basically the, the tall, if you imagine a lawnmower coming through, the tall poppy gets cut down first. 

Tobi: Ah, so don’t be so proud.  

Zac: The more, the more that you talk yourself up, the more that you. Bragg, the more the big note yourself, you might be the first one who gets sort of metaphorically cut down in that way. And so it’s, it’s said to be part of the Australian character that, and this might be part of the reason why some people will avoid the term volunteers, because they might feel that the word volunteer kind of means to. 

And so, if you ask them, are you a volunteer, they’ll go, oh no, I’m just, I’m just an ordinary guy living in the community. And then they’ll go and do a couple of hours of volunteering. So yeah, tall poppies syndrome.  

Tobi: Got it.  

Sarah: I think that’s a really, that’s an interesting research project in the identity of volunteers in general. 

But I think in, in Australia it would be quite interesting. And so, you know, from an inclusion and accessibility perspective, and that is, you know, one of our strategic objectives is around that. And to your point, I think Tobi, I mean, I don’t really like the term. informal volunteering because I think it infers a hierarchy that suggests it’s less important or less valuable. 

And I, maybe that’s just my interpretation of it. And I don’t necessarily have a good alternative, but I think that part of what the national strategy is aiming to achieve is to make volunteering more expensive, more inclusive.  

A lot of people said, oh, you know, we need to change the definition. I don’t know that we need to change the definition as much as we just need to get people to have a collective language around how we all describe it. And I think particularly in Australia, like we’ve seen rates of formal volunteering decline, but that’s also as our multiculturalism has increased. So how much of that is a true reflection of the rate of volunteering declining or just volunteering the way that me as a white Australian perceives volunteering in a formal lens. 

So, some of those things I think are the long-term challenges that we need to work through because when it comes to things like funding and support and infrastructure, if people aren’t even calling themselves. volunteers and what they do volunteering, their left cyclists will apply for a grant or get involved in the broader ecosystem and how do we go to them on their terms and actually make them feel a part of it and want to work with us so that this collective agenda is something that we do all share and it’s not just kind of the more mainstream part of the ecosystem that’s progressing it. 

Zac: Yeah. Especially for something that has as formal a name as the National Strategy for Volunteering. Yeah. That is one of the, yeah, that’s one of the, it’s one of the ongoing priorities is making it, you know, translating it to be accessible and to really highlight all the time. It’s not just a piece of paper collecting dust on a shelf. 

It’s something that offers practical benefits to you. And so, we like to highlight how other people have used the national strategy so that someone is reading it. If you just ask them, do you think the national strategy for volunteering is for you? Some people might be turned off by that language or just not see themselves there. 

They might not see their involvement in volunteering as being part of an overall strategic initiative. But if you say to them. Well, a group just like yours or a volunteer just like you use the national strategy to get better at this, you know, to achieve this outcome. That is when you might see them, then like get, get involved again when they can see the practical applications in their life. And so that’s, that’s a big focus for us is not just talking about it as this highfalutin theoretical exercise, but the national strategy needs to be living, breathing thing that happens.  

Sarah: You said earlier before the break that we might get some tips. And one of the things I wanted to mention, cause I’m sure we’ll talk about the action plan soon is that we did something very deliberately with the design of the strategy itself. 

Anyone in the ecosystem, whether they’re a government department, they’re a volunteer involving organization, they’re a tiny community group in a regional community, um, you can take those 11 strategic objectives and use them to kind of assess and audit your own program or process. So. You know, focusing on a volunteer experience is the first strategic objective where you can ask yourself, are we doing that? 

How are we doing that? Use the evidence from the strategy to say, do we do these things? How do we do them better? And so even if you’re not part of the, you know, the broader work we’re doing at Volunteering Australia and in terms of, you know, You know, the federal level policy stuff, you could still take those 11 strategic objectives, even as a corporate with your employee volunteering program and say, okay, are we confident that we’re not exploiting our volunteers? 

Are we confident that we are inclusive and accessible? Are we taking a community led approach to our volunteering? And that community led approach in that community might be the, the service users that they work with. And so, in that way, it is a practical document. Even if you don’t yet see yourself as being part of the bigger picture, you can still take it away and use it on your own. 

Tobi: So, let’s talk about action plans. Zac, you’ve been working on that. The current action plan breaks down the phases and then the current, I know, I know we’re at the hour and I know you all have other things to do. So, I’ve just got a couple more questions, but let’s talk about that action plan and how the phased in approach is going to work as well. What’s the action, how is the action plan different than the national strategy and how does the action plan fit into the longer phased out? Decade of work, which is blowing my mind.  

Zac: I mean, Tobi, the first thing is I’ve always got time to talk about the action plan. It’s been the main thing on my mind for over a year now. So, I’ve always got time to talk about the national strategy and the action plan.  

Sarah: Zac thinks of two things, the action plan and his son.  

Zac: So, in terms of how they differ, the national strategy already provided a sort of blueprint of what its implementation could look like over the 10 years. 

And it was, it was done in a practical way. So, in those 10 years, if you break it down, the first year. is what we call the establishment phase. So that is, what was the reception to the national strategy? How are people using it? Where are we? And let’s get ready for where we need to go next. Um, and it’s sort of laying the groundwork. 

Now that the national strategy is out, let’s make sure there’s some momentum. Make sure people get involved. So that’s the first year. The remaining nine years are split into three lots of three. And each is defined by an action plan. And so,, we’ve come out of the first establishment phase, and now we’re into the first three-year action plan, which launched recently. 

And so that action plan takes us through 2024 and through to 2027. In terms of how it differs, the national strategy is the overall strategic document. You know, it, it defines the challenges. It defines the opportunities, the goals, the research insights, and it provides quite a lot of detail on what could be done. 

And then I would say the action plan talks about what will be done. You know, and the act is an important thing to keep in mind is that through that first-year establishment phase, in fact, from the day the national strategy was launched, which was, uh, in 2023, people have been using it. So, this is one of the great things about this co ownership model. 

No one has to apply. To volunteering Australia to use the national strategy. It’s there for them to use. This means that we’re always discovering ways that people have used the national strategy because they didn’t need to check in with us. You know, they can just go and use it. So I’m always stumbling across, someone’s used the national strategy for a full year and now look at all this work they’ve done. 

That form of action that people are doing, just using the national strategy, maybe collaborating with others, maybe doing their own thing. The bulk of that is outside of the action plan. The action plan is one specific set of actions, initiatives, tasks that are co designed, like the National Strategy was, to address the priorities for that three-year period specifically. 

And so, it has 22 actions. The focus is on having actions at the national level, so they’re mostly being enacted by national bodies, including us at Volunteering Australia. The network of the state and territory volunteer and peak bodies, there’s government departments and agencies involved. There’s a fantastic not for profit called Justice Connect that is involved. 

And all those actions represent commitments that are being made. By these groups of what they will do within this three-year window, and in some cases it’s to deliver something tangible that will provide benefits straight away. And in some cases, it’s to lay the groundwork for later. So, Sarah mentioned strategic objective 3. 

1. Make sure there’s a cross-portfolio view of volunteering, make, make volunteering across portfolio, uh, government agenda. One of the actions that the federal government has signed up for is to scope out what would it look like if we had a consistent approach across the whole of the national Australian government for volunteering?

What would that look like? And so that is one of their commitments that they’ve made is that they will do that work. And then as you can imagine, in the second action plan, in the third action plan, fulfilling those other remaining years, the national strategy will build on that work. Okay. Now we know. 

What the federal government said it would look like if they all work together across departments on volunteering. Now let’s do it, let’s start that. Let’s do some of that. And then let’s bring it home at the end of the 10 years. But that is for future action plans to do. get the feel for, well, what are our priorities right now? 

How can we respond to today while still being in keeping with that overarching framework that came out of the national strategy, which, you know, by the time we’re working on the third action plan would have been like six years ago. So, like six or seven years ago. And so, um, Having this phased approach allows us to have these, like, universal truths in the National Strategy document, but then also these timely responses in the three year action plans, and to also guarantee a certain level of progress through these commitments, and then everything else, people can pick it up and run with it and get benefits from it, and they can decide what the National Strategy looks like for them. 

Tobi: It’s nice to see some big players stepping up with some ambitious goals.  

Zac: Actually, there is another important point that I need to make about the action plan, which is that the action plan balances those commitments I mentioned before, and then pretty much all of them have a corresponding set of like supporting actions, which is, what if you’re in that wider audience in the volunteering ecosystem? 

The group’s making commitments, you know, you can. Uh, you can count them all. You can list them all. The national strategy and the action plan need to be for everyone. The groups you know about and the groups you don’t know about and the individual volunteers. And so each key commitment, each action has next to it all these supporting actions you can take where you get guidance on, okay, I’m not the group that’s ready to make a three-year national level commitment here and now, but I want to be part of it. 

I want to contribute. I want to have influence. I want to be part of it. Here’s the opportunity. And those are listed throughout, which, and I think that’s just as important as the commitments that are being made themselves.  

Tobi: So how does the, since it’s owned by everyone, how does accountability happen and how are you going to track success? 

Zac: We have these documents that accompany the action plan called the monitoring and evaluation framework, the model for shared accountability and the governance blueprint. And so again, all these fancy names. Early on in the piece, when I first came on board with Volunteering Australia, Sarah broke it down for me really easily, which is the action plan says what is happening, the monitoring and evaluation framework basically asks how is it going, the model for shared accountability is, you know, who’s doing what, what am I doing. 

And then the governance blueprint is the oversight. So, you know, is it going well? Is it achieving its goals? That sort of thing. So, there is a whole outcomes framework that’s been designed with lots of different possibilities in terms of how to measure progress. It’s very open and adaptable, but it also provides some clear guidance, and the national strategy will be measured and evaluated in different ways. 

We’ll be looking at the national strategy, as well as the outcomes of these specific actions in the action plan. And so, yeah, there’s lots of different ways to look at it. There are key indicators in the monitoring evaluation framework, uh, in terms of the who’s doing what, one of the beautiful things about the national strategy is that like I mentioned before, we’ll always be discovering uses of the national strategy we didn’t know about. 

I think we will never have complete control or understanding of what has been happening, how it’s been used. And we shouldn’t seek to have 100 percent complete control or understanding because that would defeat the purpose. But what we do in the model for shared accountability is we kind of break down the ecosystem. 

And as you know, volunteering is this complex thing. So many people are wearing multiple hats at the same time. I’m a volunteer, but I’m also a volunteer manager, but I’m also this, and I’m also that. We provide these overarching roles, and you can investigate what we list as the opportunities or Responsibilities for each of those sort of template roles and then you can use that to inform what the National Strategy means to you. 

And that’s really what it’s all in service of is helping people find their place in the National Strategy for volunteering.  

Tobi: It’s interesting because you could do this. It’s very akin to strategic planning on an organizational level, but it’s on a macro, huge macro level, but it’s just like, you’ve just kind of expanded it. 

It’s just scaled. You’ve taken like a strategic planning process. It’s done well on an organizational level that’s community informed. That has KPIs and accountability and has who’s doing what and has a timeline and all that, and you’ve scaled it to a macro level. So, I’m seeing how, where this all comes from. It makes sense to me.  

Zac: Well, and I’ll tell you how I think of it, which is, it’s like asking, you know, who’s responsible for the national strategy? Who’s responsible for volunteering? Yeah, we all are. We’re all involved in volunteering. And the national strategy looks like volunteering itself. You know, what do you do when you want people to be involved in volunteering? 

You create opportunities that meet the needs and meet their motivations. You encourage people to get involved and you support them. And it’s the same thing with the national strategy, create these opportunities for people to get involved, sort of make the Give the invitation for them to get involved and then support their engagement, just as you would if you’re managing a team of volunteers and you’re engaging, you know, your team over time. 

Tobi: Yeah. I hope you’ve got celebration and recognition as part of your plan, right?  

Zac: Maybe now is a good time to start on some of that celebration.  

Tobi: Absolutely. I mean, you’ve got to start calling people out and, and in a good way, like appreciating, recognizing, acknowledging the work thus far and, and, you know, celebrating those wins small and big. 

VISION WEEK 2025 

Hey everybody, Tobi here. 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 and 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 wait list right now and we will let you know. 

You’ll be the first to know our wait listers when the doors open for registration, which will be opening in a couple of weeks. They might even be open now. Who knows? Go to volpro.net/vision to get more information. Hope to see you there.  

Tobi: So, at this point, I’m sure some of our listeners are getting all excited about this and thinking, how can I do this? 

I mean, even if you did it on like a local level, even using some of your principles on a local level, the process on a local level, or for some of you listening who work in larger organizations and have a larger reach, what are some pieces of advice you might give our listeners who are so inspired?  

Sarah: Zac at our conference when we launched the national strategy coined this term and I still use it all the time and it doesn’t make sense in the English language, but he talks about cross sector learning something, which is basically a nice way of saying plagiarize. If you want to do this, contact us and we will send you the materials. Like we, there is, if the process that we took is something that you’re interested in, if you want advice on it, we’re always happy to give you what we did, because why invest it, why invest all of it. time and money into creating something and then having it sit on a shelf in terms of the actual process that we went through in that sort of phased approach. And I think one of the things that was really sort of affirming to me, having been the person that led the development, was that there is the will, but people are just, you know, like Zac said, looking for the opportunity to come together and have those conversations and, and really be a part of it. 

And from the beginning, we were so, you know, co design has and will always be a big part of this, because as Zac said, everyone’s responsible for volunteering. For us, it was how do we make sure that people feel heard? And how do we make sure that they see themselves reflected in the final document? And, you know, recognize how their involvement made a difference. 

And even, you know, even though like volunteers built this strategy, managers and volunteers built this strategy, government representatives built this strategy. And even though a lot of people did it through their paid role, although some didn’t, they still found time to give us their experience and their expertise and to contribute, you know, the research papers that we created, those academics just did that, you know, in addition to their, their day job and their own research to amplify the impact of volunteering and trying to give back to the sector. Um, and I think that, you know, never be afraid to ask the question. I’m notoriously bad for just sliding into someone’s DMs and saying, can I talk to you about this? And I’ve never had someone say no to me. You know, people are keen to be involved. 

I think there’s a lot of fear though, that it’s going to be negative. And we always tried to not take a deficit approach. So oftentimes people do want to talk about the problems. And I would always try and say, okay, I want to hear that. But how do we, how do we. alter that narrative and change that rhetoric to be future focused and forward facing and turn it into something that we can leverage and use. 

And, you know, really taking people on that journey I think was one of the most important things because now we have people out there being ambassadors for the strategy and, and talking about it in their own circles and communities, which is what we need for everyone to get on board with something that is meant to be for everyone and owned by everyone. 

Tobi: Yeah, I mean, that’s skilled facilitation for you and skilled leadership. So congratulations. You know, it’s really, it is, it’s taking, because of course we want to commiserate. That’s not moving forward, really. And you know, and we can all feel each other’s pain, but in the end, that doesn’t really move us forward. 

It’s important to acknowledge it, of course. But also, you know, I love that you’re really taking people with you. And, you know, that takes a skilled facilitator. I think a lot of times people want to get together, want to create together, but they don’t have a convener or a facilitator or a safe space. And obviously you’ve created safe spaces for people to come together. 

Zac, what advice do you have for folks that are now inspired to even, even on a local level, even with just your local volunteer manager association or on a huge macro, you know, countrywide level, what advice do you have for folks?  

Zac: Yeah, I completely agree with Sarah. You know, if, if the national strategy for volunteering in Australia, if you think there’s value in it, have a look at it. 

You don’t have to take the whole thing. Look at what works for you. Maybe just pick out one thing and, and use that as your starting point and then, and then build from there. Take inspiration from other initiatives in volunteering in your area as well as internationally. One of the best things about volunteering is. 

We don’t really see ourselves as being in competition, you know, even in some cases when in a theoretical way we are but we Always want to like lift each other up and see mutual success. And that goes for strategies as well. Also, when you’re doing the work, be ready to listen, be ready to, to hear what people need. 

And like Sarah said, make sure that people can be involved and see themselves in the final product. Imagine the person that you think is going to have the hardest time getting involved or is going to be the most critical and dismissive of whatever strategy you’re working on. 

And then think about how we can take away some of those barriers, and how can we speak of the value it has for them? And if you write it for yourself, then You might produce something good, but you might have a hard time inspiring others. So be ready to listen and make sure that you take in all that input and perspective and feedback and make it representative of the collective because volunteering is so often of the collective and the community. 

Tobi: Could not have said it better. Fantastic. Okay. One last question. And I, as I wrap up, I always ask my guests this question. What are you most excited about in the year ahead? Sarah, let’s start with you. 

Sarah: Thought you were going to start with Zac and I was still mentally preparing an answer there. And he also told me his answer, which is in the back of my mind too. 

I mean, I think, you know, for me coming into a newer role with Volunteering Australia that’s looking to amplify this through partnerships, I’m just really looking to see how we expand what we’ve been doing out more broadly. So, one of the things that, Volunteering Australia have signed up to this, um, you know, working to set up a community of practice for employee volunteering. 

Um, and that’s something I’m really excited about because it helps us work better with businesses and departments and, you know, anyone that has employees and wants to be involved in that way. And I’m also most excited about the action that’s around measuring the volunteer experience. Um, which is also something volunteering Australia are leading because, um, it’s just something that is so it’s, it is the heart of the strategy, this volunteer experience pace. 

And I said, I mentioned before on the, um, sport volunteer coalition, which is run by the Australian sports commission, which is a federal government department through the department of health. So, it is a government run initiative. So again, a partnership approach and you know, the work we’re doing there is all around focusing on the sport volunteer experience the next year. 

And so, bringing that together and seeing how we can collaborate on some of those initiatives just gives me a lot of hope that this is just the starting point of something that I think will be phenomenal in the next 10 years. And just seeing the energy and enthusiasm we’ve had and carried throughout this process. 

And, you know, Zac has kept morale high over the past year with the action plan. I think it’s just, the world today is, can be a very scary and disheartening place. You pick up your phone and you’re faced with bad news every second. And I think volunteering is a way for us to. disengage from some of that and just see that there is good in the world and there’s kindness in the world every single day. 

And that we can, we can be a part of that, whether that’s in our own lives or through something like the national strategy. And so I just, I just love that we get to continue this journey around this forward agenda where we all come together and celebrate something that is so innately important. human and meaningful and makes people know that they matter and what they do matters. 

And that’s just something I’m so passionate about. That’s what my research investigates. And yeah, just seeing where it goes from here, because it’s just been up and up since we started this process two, three years ago.  

Zac: Sharks didn’t make the list, Sarah. Swimming with sharks, but you said all these beautiful things instead. I feel bad for the sharks.  

Sarah: I went swimming with the whale sharks up at Exmouth about a month ago. So, I have had parts of my shark fix for the year.  

Zac: It’s just recently happened. That’s why you’re not as excited about it for the year ahead. But being a PhD student, you shouldn’t really get too excited about having a holiday. Cause I don’t get, I didn’t get holidays for four years.  

Tobi: All right, Zac. You have the last word. What are you most excited about in the year ahead?  

Zac: Well, the thing I was most excited about just happened recently, which is the launch of the first three-year action plan. So, I’m excited to see people, you know, deliver those actions, get involved and, and see the benefits. 

I’m also excited to see my colleague Sarah speaking at the World Volunteer Conference, which is coming up later this year. And, and, uh, you know, talking about tall poppy syndromes before I think Sarah left out a plug for her own speech there. And, you know, I’ve got a, I’ve got a toddler at home and he’s just starting to say some of his first words. 

He hasn’t got the V sound yet for volunteering, but maybe Tobi, maybe if you ask me in a year’s time, maybe he’ll say, vol, you know, volunteer. We’ll, we’ll see. You must check in with me.  

Sarah: Will he be volunteering at the Woodford Folk Festival this year, Zac?  

Zac: He’s already attended his, he’s already attended his first, uh, you know, my background. A lot of my volunteers at festivals, he, we’ve already brought him along as a six-month-old. And so, yeah, he’s coming up to his second one that he’ll be going to. And I got involved in volunteering properly in events at 11, and we’ll see if, uh, we’ll see if he beats my record.  

Tobi: So, Sarah, I’ll link to the World Volunteering Conference. I think it’s at Abu, where is it, Abu Dhabi? Is that right?  

Sarah: No, this year it’s in Busan, Korea.  

Tobi: Oh, Busan. Right. I don’t know why I thought Abu Dhabi. Well, the previous one was Abu Dhabi.  

Sarah: Abu Dhabi last year. Yeah.  

Tobi: Yeah. So I’ll link to that. I’ll link to the episode with Ruth Leonard. You might be interested in that, hearing some of our discussion about sort of a critical take on volunteerism and volunteer management. 

How can people learn more about your work? Of course, we’ll put all kinds of links, anything to volunteering Australia, the national strategy, the action plan, all of that, the standards. Um, but how can people get in touch with you, learn more about your work? What’s the best way?  

Zac: There’s the Volunteering Australia website, there’s the National Strategy for Volunteering in Australia. 

If you search for either of those, you’ll find them, or like Tobi said, she’ll put the links in. In terms of me, Zac Reimers and Sarah, Sarah Wilson, you can also just, I’m speaking on Sarah’s behalf here, I’m volunteering her to do something, but you can also just look us up and ask us questions directly. I know a lot of people, um, talk with Sarah through like LinkedIn, just write in, just ask the question, just speak out. We are very happy to chat about volunteering. Any excuse will do.  

Sarah: And on the National Strategy website, there’s also a, um, forms to just join our subscriber list, which is where the news about strategy comes out first. Um, and it’s just a good place to stay connected because that’s how we announce when we’re doing events and those things. 

And, you know, they’re always online, so not necessarily always a friendly time zone around the world. But, um, we do record those and send video links out afterwards. And those videos are all on our YouTube as well. So, plenty of ways to get in touch, um, through either of our websites or just reaching out to us directly on LinkedIn or via email. 

Zac: And you can follow Volunteering Australia on your social media platform of choice.  

Tobi: Excellent. And I will post your LinkedIn profiles. And your socials. All right. It’s been interesting. Thank you so much for spending so much time today and really walking people through and your generosity for helping share, you know, open-source planning with others around the world. 

I think we really do need to pull together, especially now. And yeah, there’s a lot of difficulty in the world, but I think volunteering is one of the answers to those difficulties. I agree. And I would expand that to community engagement, going to be what changes things. Basically, the only thing that ever does. 

Sarah: I’ve said, I’ve said it before and I’ll, and I’ll say it again, you know, volunteers will say it. Volunteers will save the world. We already are. We’re already doing it, but we will. And, and organize and, and, you know, leaders of volunteers who make that happen, who are, who are heroes in our community and who never get the recognition that they deserve. 

Recognizing volunteer management as a profession, the bedrock of the national strategy, because it’s something we’re so passionate about, because we know that without those leaders of volunteers doing what they do every day, volunteering would not be nearly as impactful as it is.  

And it’s just such a profound, I think, experience to be involved in any part of volunteering infrastructure, Zac and I. could talk about this for more and more hours, as I’m sure you could, Tobi, because it’s just something that we’re so passionate about. And yeah, if there was a church of volunteering, I’d be a minister, I think, because anyone who will listen, I’ll preach to them about the virtues of volunteering. 

Tobi: Preach, sister, preach!  

Sarah: And you know, if someone listens to this and they don’t or haven’t, I mean, I’m sure they would have volunteered before, but do it because it just will change your life. You know, it changed mine, it changed Zac’s. I’m sure Tobi, it changed  

Zac: If you’ve gotten to this part of the podcast and you’ve never volunteered, I think you need to acknowledge that you, you are at least curious. And, if you’ve listened through all this, then you owe it to yourself to have a go, please.  

Tobi: With that. We’re going to call it a day. Good afternoon or good morning. I think you’re still in the morning over there.  

Sarah: Good morning for me.  

Zac: Afternoon for me.  

Tobi: You just hit the midday mark and I’m in the, uh, hitting bedtime at this point. But thank you everybody for joining us for this episode of the Volunteer Nation. I hope it’s given you a new way to think about planning, new hope and aspiration for what we can do.  

And we truly come together and have some skilled facilitators and very smart people leading the process. If you liked 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 uh, join us next week. 

Same time, same place in the volunteer nation. Take care everybody.