Benefits to Organisations

 Benefits to organisations derive from either

• Utilising external volunteers, and/or
• Offering existing organisation members as corporate volunteers (See Corporate Volunteering)

Snapshot of Volunteering in Australia

In Australia, volunteers work in all spheres of community and across many sectors including health, welfare and community services, emergency services, arts, culture and heritage, the environment, sport and recreation, education and youth development, overseas aid, animal welfare, human rights and in religious organisations.

The latest data available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics1 shows that In Australia there are more than five million active volunteers over the age of 18. They represent around 34% of the adult population and between them provide approximately 713 million volunteer hours per annum. Ironmonger2 estimates that in Australia volunteering is responsible for around $42 billion of economic activity annually.

The total imputed dollar value of the time donated to welfare service alone by volunteers ($27.4 billion) is almost double the total cash amount spent by all governments and non-government sources ($13.7 billion) in Australia.

Australia has in excess of 700,000 third-sector organisations, the majority of which involve volunteers in some capacity. ABS data shows that although most of these do not have paid staff, they are responsible for 3.3% of GDP, and if you include the financial value of volunteer activity, the figure rises to 4.7%.

1 ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 2007: Voluntary Work, Australia 2006. Cat. No. 4441.0. Canberra: ABS

2 Ironmonger D: Measuring volunteering in economic terms, Volunteers and Volunteering. Federation Press, Sydney 2000 pp. 56 - 72

3 Lyons M: Third Sector: The contribution of nonprofit and cooperative enterprises in Australia p.17