Australia

Sustaining volunteer engagement is ultimately a balancing act. Volunteer management must utilise resources in the most effective way to address organisational needs while supporting volunteers in meaningful roles that allow them to not only flourish but to also have positive and rewarding volunteering experiences. Success happens when this win-win ratio is achieved.

As leaders of volunteers, we typically try to achieve a great deal with limited resources, tight budgets, and unforgiving timelines coupled with a lack of understanding about our role. So how can we achieve more with less and simultaneously increase the engagement of our volunteers? In this feature article, Christine Stankowski presents an option to do just that by applying what the business world calls a “process improvement framework” to the volunteer management process. This fresh approach, Stankowski believes, will increase volunteer retention, boost satisfaction and engagement, increase productivity, and improve problem solving. 

Voluntas is a pilot project underway in New South Wales, Australia, that aims to test whether early intervention when conflict begins among volunteers can lessen the burden of destructive conflict. The pilot uses the services of volunteer facilitators trained in mediation to assist and intervene when there are difficult conversations to be had with and between volunteers.

The Voluntas committee is made up of mediators, HR professionals, and volunteer management experts to address an important unmet need in the volunteer sector: affordable conflict management services.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, authors Steve Lancken and Zeynep Selcuk explain the pilot and some of the questions it raises, such as: 

• What services are available to manage conflict and disputes?
• Can early intervention avoid expensive processes or loss later in the conflict cycle?
• Are volunteers more likely relate to volunteer facilitators and mediators?
• How does conflict impact volunteer engagement?

Voluntas’ experience will provide insights into some of the challenges in relationships that occur when volunteering.

Lutheran Community Care SA/NT (LCC) is an Australian community services organization that utilizes a formal model of volunteering. In response to changing trends in volunteering and the desire of new volunteers for more flexibility, the organization has experimented successfully with more informal types of volunteering. In this feature article for e-Volunteerism, Rachel Friebel, the Volunteer Administrator at LCC, explores the model of “micro-volunteering” – related to but different from other informal volunteering – and the potential it offers organizations, the volunteering sector, and the community at large. Friebel explains why micro-volunteering can attract wider community engagement. 

Barwon Health, the largest and most comprehensive regional health services in Australia, concluded several years ago that its 1,000 volunteers were ready and able to improve the health of their community. So in February 2014, the health service implemented a Volunteer Training and Development program that provided volunteers with opportunities to expand their healthcare knowledge, participate more concretely in the health service's mission, and ultimately build an empowered, healthy, and sustainable volunteer base for the future.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, Barwon Health’s Lyn Stack writes that “by investing in our volunteers through health knowledge, we utilise their support to directly improve the health and wellness of our community, while also providing volunteers with opportunities to increase confidence and decrease fear of entering the health sector.”  Stack describes how the program has expanded in two years to include Australia’s first Volunteer Health and Wellness Calendar, a Healthy Living Ambassadors program, and a national public awareness campaign to help volunteers expand their own health awareness to others. “By sharing this program,” Stack writes, “we can empower all volunteer leaders to invest in and reward their volunteers through the power of knowledge.”

Volunteer stress is an important topic. While there are a good number of studies looking at this in terms of implications for the volunteer’s health and well-being, this quarter’s Research to Practice reviews exploratory research that analyzes the issue from an organizational perspective. Gathered from a sample of attendees at the Australian National Volunteering Conference in 2013, the data provides insights into sources and causes of volunteer stress, organizational responses, and desired organizational support.

And there’s good news: according to this exploratory study, a “wide range of volunteer stressors” appear to be “firmly within the purview of organizations to manage and ameliorate.”

On November 5, 2014, for the 15th consecutive year, volunteer management professionals around the world will celebrate International Volunteer Managers Day (IVMDay). This global event acknowledges the people who lead volunteers, salutes them for their essential role in creating dynamic volunteer opportunities, and works to raise the profile of the volunteer management profession. While still evolving, IVMDay is growing in visibility, with more and more celebrations taking place in many countries.

But just how did it all begin? What mechanisms have kept the show rolling for 15 years? And just what might the future hold?

Join e-Volunteerism's Andy Fryar and members of the International Volunteer Managers Day Committee as they present and review the evolution of this important annual event.

Intrepid Australian volunteer and traveler Louise Rogers writes:

Don’t you love travelling? The preparation…the journey…the reflections…the recollections…and ah!...the experiences to be had?

I’ve had an amazing journey over the past 25 years, working in the voluntary sector in Australia and, in particular, the field of educating those who work with and lead volunteer effort. I’ve travelled through this time with many colleagues and friends, accumulating some wonderful experiences and being part of incredible changes in the volunteer world in Australia.

Now in the first flush of retirement, I have the opportunity, indeed the privilege, to reflect on those adventures – the challenges, the achievements, and the lessons learned along the way. As I look back, the landscape is barely recognizable. Like every other area of our lives, volunteerism is responding and adapting to rapid social, cultural, and economic changes.

Join Rogers in this special e-Volunteerism feature as she reflects on a quarter century in the volunteer world. You may find yourself nodding and smiling in recognition.

Over the last 10 years, a number of formerly thriving national Volunteer Centres in English-speaking countries have faltered, forced to find avenues of new funding or to merge with other organisations. But what about the fates of local and regional Volunteer Centres? How have they fared?

Using the development of volunteering infrastructure in Australia as a starting point, writer Annette Maher considers the pressures on Volunteer Centres everywhere – national, regional, and local. She considers their struggles to meet the needs of volunteers and their organizations, and to advocate for the field of volunteering in a world that is rapidly changing. In this feature story, Maher also examines such universal issues as the formalization of volunteering, professionalization of volunteer management, the benefits and dangers of government funding, and the need to collaborate. 

For nearly a decade, Susan J. Ellis, the publishing editor of e-Volunteerism, has been encouraging (read: nagging) Andy Fryar, the journal’s manuscript developer, to write about an innovative volunteer program that he oversees in Adelaide, South Australia. After nearly 10 years of resisting, Fryar recently concluded, “I find myself completely out of excuses!”

In this feature article, Fryar presents a rather unique structural model for volunteer engagement and the innovative method of volunteer recruitment employed at the Lyell McEwin Regional Volunteer Association, a 750-strong, health-based volunteer involving agency based in Elizabeth, a northern suburb of Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia. Fryar has been chief executive officer of the Lyell McEwin Regional Volunteers since 1997, growing the organization from a workforce of around 180 volunteers to its current 750 members. Though volunteering at Lyell McEwin Hospital began in fairly typical hospital fashion, Fryar explains why the Regional Volunteer Association today is an outstanding example of new and innovative ways to run a volunteer program – in hospitals and other volunteer-dependent organizations. And he thanks Susan Ellis for 10 years of nudging and nagging to tell this story.