Philippa Stevenson: Volunteers take on new look

Where have all the volunteers gone?

Many of us take for granted that "they" - some vast army of volunteers - are ever willing to turn out for everything from annual charity collections to tree plantings.

According to two people who should know - Baptist Action spokesman Bruce Edwards and Auckland City Mission head Diane Robertson - recruiting volunteers to the ranks has become increasingly difficult.

I went in search of some facts and figures at Volunteering Waikato, one of nine loosely affiliated centres nationwide that co-ordinate a flow of volunteers to community groups and agencies.

It was an enlightening, and humbling, experience.

Volunteering Waikato, which turned 10 years old this month, got off the ground in 1993 as the Hamilton Volunteer Centre through the gutsy efforts of former manager Pam Townshend and its present patron Glenice Gallagher.

It says a lot about the organisation, and the nature of volunteering, that its latest manager is an immigrant who spent 17 years as a business analyst with a staff of 150 at a South African corporation.

She has since studied for two years at Waikato University for a degree in sport and leisure.

It's not hard to imagine business-suited Sue Chapman treading the corporate corridors.

Of course, even when she did she persuaded her South African company to let its staff do voluntary work for an agency helping neglected and abused children.

Her job now - one of five paid positions, most of them part-time - seems tailor-made for a "suit" with a conscience.

Miss Chapman doubts volunteering is getting less popular, but she does believe it is changing.

Figures are hard to pin down. In the decade of Volunteering Waikato, the number of volunteers through its doors has doubled. Of course, that is partly a result of people's growing familiarity with the organisation.

Many people, particularly older volunteers who know their town well or have built up an association with a charity or other group, offer their services to it directly.

Volunteering Waikato services about 120 agencies of the about 400 not-for-profit groups in the Waikato.

But with that in mind, it has some interesting statistics.

Many volunteers are immigrants. Miss Chapman said new New Zealanders find volunteering a good way to get to know their new home and how it works. Included in the category are students who do volunteer work to get practical or hands-on experience in a field they are studying.

Her organisation's breakdown of volunteers by ethnicity in the past year shows that 28 per cent were Asian, 53 per cent European, 12 per cent Maori, 2 per cent Pacific Islander, with the rest unidentified.

Fifty-eight per cent were aged between 20 and 39 years, and 74 per cent were women.

Twenty-nine per cent of volunteers were students, 26 per cent were unemployed, 13 per cent were employed part-time, and 9 per cent were in full-time work. Seven per cent were retired.

Miss Chapman said her South African company staff might have got well paid for their working hours, but she has noted a big difference in attitude between them and those who put in the time for no money.

"Here, everybody seems so happy," she said. "They have a commitment, and they want to make others happy."

Some people feel so rewarded by their donated efforts it can be hard to find anyone willing to accept a $50 voucher awarded to a volunteer-of-the-month.

The 170 jobs on Volunteering Waikato's books can range from one-day annual collections, zoo visitor hosting, van driving, office administration, assisting the elderly or a school child, to a short-term project to help an agency clear a work backlog.

The organisation's principle is that no volunteer job should be for more than 16 hours a week because anything more abuses a person's goodwill.

Volunteering Waikato staff interview those offering to do volunteer work to establish what skills they have before referring them to the agency with the vacancy.

Unemployed job seekers get the chance to add volunteer work experience to their CVs. Volunteering Waikato offers a variety of free courses that enable people to learn new skills.

An increasingly successful project has involved companies who offer staff training, making spare course seats available to volunteer workers.

Miss Chapman said the volunteer centres - based in Auckland, Tauranga, Gisborne, Wanganui, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Dunedin, as well as Waikato - are working together on issues such as lobbying for legislation to provide the same protection for volunteer workers as paid counterparts.

A separate body, Volunteering NZ, also co-ordinates policy and governance issues on behalf of the regional centres.

Miss Chapman said her top priority was to find ways for not-for-profit organisations to work better together to reduce overheads. Perhaps the volunteers are not out of fashion, they're just trying on a new, smart, business suit for the new millennium.

* Email Philippa Stevenson