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Location: Home  »  Work and Education  » Unpaid Work  » Volunteers

Volunteers

Voluntary Work in Australia

The most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics publication on volunteering, Voluntary Work, Australia 2000 (Cat no 4441.0) provides information which showed that:

• Nearly one-third (4.4 million) of Australians aged 18 years and over did voluntary work in 2000, contributing 704.1 million hours of unpaid work.
  
• This was an increase since 1995 (the previous survey) when nearly 3.2 million Australians did voluntary work.
  
• There was a corresponding increase in the hours of voluntary work done. This is because more people are doing voluntary work rather than existing volunteers doing more hours.

There is wide variation in the number of hours performed by individuals.

• In 2000, 32 per cent of Australian adults volunteered, compared with 24 per cent in 1995.
  
• While most volunteers work for one organisation, one third of volunteers actually work for more than one.There is evidence that many people are involved in volunteering over the long term. 48 per cent had first volunteered more than 10 years ago and around 25 per cent had been volunteering for their type of organisation for at least 10 years.
• In addition to donating time, more than three quarters (10.3 million) of Australians made personal monetary donations in the 12 months prior to being interviewed for the survey.
  
• People were more likely to be volunteers if they lived outside a capital city. The volunteer rate was 28 percent for capital cities compared to 38 percent outside the capital cities.
  
• Overall, women were slightly more likely to volunteer than men (33 percent compared to 31 percent) but among people aged 55 years and over this pattern was reversed.
  
• People aged 35-44 years reported the highest rate of volunteering (40 percent). At these ages people are more likely to be married with children and their higher than average volunteer rate reflects family commitments. This was particularly the case for women.
  
• Sport/recreation organisations attracted the largest numbers of men and community/welfare the largest numbers of women.
  
• Fundraising and management were the most commonly reported activities. Women were twice as likely as men to prepare and serve food but men were nearly three times as likely as women to do repairs, maintenance and gardening and nearly twice as likely to be coaching and refereeing.
  
• Regular (weekly) voluntary work accounted for nearly three-quarters of all voluntary hours worked, indicating a substantial commitment of time, skill and effort on the part of volunteers. Almost half of all volunteers gave their time because it provides benefits to the community and a similar proportion volunteered because they found it personally satisfying.

On the value of voluntary work, the ABS paper Occasional Paper: Unpaid Work and the Australian Economy (ABS Cat no 5240.0), which was based on data collected in the 1997 Time Use Survey, found:

• The total value for unpaid volunteer community work around Australia, based on comparative wage rates, was estimated to be around $24 billion.
  
• The major share of volunteer work for both males and females was devoted to activities other than adult care.
  
• Females accounted for more of the total value of all types of volunteer work than males.
  
• Women who were not employed accounted for a higher percentage than employed women, but employed men accounted for a higher share than unemployed men.