Last Friday, I was corrected for a possible inaccurate perception I had of Australian
Baby Boomer volunteering patterns when I suggested that "
As older volunteers disengage from volunteering, for health reasons, we will need to replace those people somehow. I do not see them being replaced by Baby Boomers or Gen X.
My attention was drawn to the
General Social Survey that in 2010, 46.1 per cent of Baby Boomers volunteered and this represented an increase on four years ago- a significant increase.
Further, the survey showed that 6.1 million Australians aged 18 years and over participated in voluntary work in Australia.
A volunteering participation rate of 36%, up from 34% in 2006. Amongst women the rate is 38% and amongst men it is 34%. Wow, this means 1 in 3 Australians are volunteering.
The data further says that Parents in couple relationships with dependent children aged between 5 and 17 years have the highest
volunteering participation rate, at 55%.
I was perplexed by these figures. They do not bear out what I am hearing anecdotally. Managers across the country report declining volunteer rates. I do not see 55 per cent of the parents in my friendship circles out there volunteering. The figures are also different to the US figures which show quite different trends so I did some digging.
The key is what
people are being reported on. A volunteer "is someone who willingly gave unpaid help, in the form of time, service or skills, to or
through an organisation or group." No argument there. The reference period was the 12 months prior to the survey. In other words, any volunteer work done in the 12 months was included. In other words, if I volunteered once for half an hour or I volunteered every week for six hours, I was counted as a volunteer. So for parents, 55 per cent of them did some sort of volunteer work in the past twelve months. It may have been coaching sport every week or cutting oranges
once.
Table 10 of the 2010 data gave me what I am looking for. Of volunteers one third volunteered every week. In other words, 12.6 per cent of the Australian population volunteered weekly, just over one in ten people. A further 4.1 per cent of Australians (11.3 per cent of volunteers) volunteered at least every two weeks. So in other words,
16.7 per cent of Australians or 46.3 per cent of volunteers are regular volunteers. Is this glass half empty or half full? Interestingly, the 2006 Census which measured unpaid work for the first time determined that the proportion of the Australian population who performed voluntary work was 17.9%. Suddenly the census figure makes sense.
In the 2010 data, another 5.8 per cent of Aussies were identified as volunteering monthly.
A quarter of volunteers (almost one in ten Australians) "only" help several times a year. So they may run a sausage sizzle at the school four times a year or help kids practice reading a few times through the year or turn up to two planning meetings and a fundraising event.
And almost five per cent of Australians (almost 14 per cent of all volunteers) are the country's once a year volunteers.
| % of vols | % of popl |
| At least once a week | 35.0 | 12.6 |
| At least once a fortnight | 11.3 | 4.1 |
| At least once a month | 16.0 | 5.8 |
| Several times a year | 24.1 | 8.7 |
| Less regularly | 13.6 | 4.9 |
| Total | 100.0 | 36.0 |
For our senior volunteers (over 65), about 40 per cent of them volunteer weekly and approximately 14 per cent fortnightly (every two weeks). In other words about 54 per cent of them volunteer often, higher than the overall average. For Baby Boomers, they were bang on the overall average. What was very significant for me was that 40 per cent of 55 to 64 year olds volunteered either several times a year or less regularly. This compares to 36 per cent of 45 to 54 year olds.
In other words, the older Baby Boomers are volunteering less time than the Australian average. This is what we have been hearing anecdotally across the country.
I suggest we are seeing a continuation of the results in the 2006 survey where it was noted that: "
While the total annual hours contributed by volunteers increased between 1995 and 2006, the amount of time each volunteer gave decreased."
The other significant thing is that Baby Boomers are volunteering for sport organisations at double the rate of senior volunteers. In fact almost
40 per cent of all Baby Boomer volunteering is in sport. Their involvement in welfare, health and religious organisations is way, way lower. This is the same for Gen X. Baby Boomer involvement in Business and Professional volunteering is, however, much higher than any other generational cohort and way higher than it is for the older generation.
I suggest we are seeing in the statistics the structural change I talked about last week. If I had the data cubes from 2006, then I could see the changes between the two periods. I also want to see hours volunteered by age group but as yet that data does not seem to be available for 2010.
So in summary:
- More Australians are volunteering - for fewer hours
- One fifth of Australians volunteer weekly or fortnightly
- More Baby Boomers are volunteering but almost half of all Baby Boomers are volunteering less than a few times a year
- More Baby Boomers are volunteering for business and professional roles (and more may want to!) and for sport
- In terms of replacing older volunteers with Baby Boomers, my concerns from last week remain. We need to restructure how we deliver services that utilise volunteers and make some hard decisions as to how we do that.
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