Volunteer Management Activity Funding Recipients (2023-24 Round 1)

Funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services, the Volunteer Management Activity Project-Based Grants aim to help volunteer involving organisations (VIOs) break down barriers to volunteering within one of more of the six identified priority groups.

The focus of the volunteer management grants program is to:

To build the capacity of volunteer involving organisations through online volunteer management information, training and resources.
Provide services to build the capacity of volunteer involving organisations to break down barriers to volunteering for one or more identified priority groups, and if deemed the most effective approach, provide face-to-face services to support these groups to participate in volunteering. These priority groups include: First Nation People; People with Disability; Newly Arrived Migrants; Vulnerable Women; Youth; and the unemployed.

The 2023-24 Round 1 Grants Pool was awarded to four (4) organisations:

Befriend
Volunteer South West
St Pats Community Support Centre
Peel Volunteer Resource Centre

Organisation	Funding	Project focus
Befriend	$60,000	Focus - Intersectional - First Nation Peoples; Newly Arrived Migrants; People with Disabilities; Unemployed Region - Perth Metropolitan The Community Campfires project is an innovative, inclusive approach to volunteer engagement that provides an open entry point for people from diverse backgrounds to discover volunteering and community contribution possibilities. The project is grounded in research insights from a prior VMA project, which identified a disconnect between diverse worldviews and the language and construct of volunteering. The Community Campfire method aims to bridge this disconnect by uniting people around the shared human experience of contributing to community, in a way that honours diversity of contributions. The project will share learnings through a Community Campfire Toolkit for volunteer managers and through Volunteering WA events.
Volunteer South West	$54,408	Focus - Intersectional – First Nation Peoples; Newly Arrived Migrants; People with Disabilities; Vulnerable Women; Youth; Unemployed Region - Regional (South West) CONNECT provides intensive support to volunteer involving organisations (VIOs) to make their organisation inclusive and welcoming to all. This includes working with volunteer managers to reflect on what they are doing already, helping them to identify gaps and create space for new opportunities, designing new volunteer roles that are flexible or adapting existing roles to better suit the priority groups being targeted. And at the same time, the project will be providing them with a volunteer workforce (a group of individuals from priority groups) that have been inducted and trained in the role and have their clearance checks, which helps in reducing this burden on the volunteer manager. This will be done while building confidence and commitment in these volunteers over a period of weeks.
St Pats Community Support Centre	$52,748	Focus - Intersectional – First Nation Peoples; Unemployed; People with Disabilities; Vulnerable Women; Youth Region - Perth Metropolitan The St Patrick’s Community Support Centre Client and Resident Pathway Program will be developing a targeted and supportive approach that will provide opportunities and engagement for St Pat’s clients and residents to meet their identified needs, goals, and requirements to develop skills and gain experience that leads to successful volunteering and/or employment, training or other life outcomes and opportunities. This pilot program will develop a framework for clients and residents to volunteer in roles within the organisation to enable them to gain skills and experience to develop independence and broaden their opportunities in a supportive, structured framework. The program will be co-designed with clients and residents to ensure relevance and appeal to the targeted groups. The success of the program will be measured by the uptake of roles within the organisation by service users and service users report that they are valued and active participants in the service. A library of useful resources for use by other VIOs will be produced.
Peel Volunteer Resource Centre	$55,000	Focus - Intersectional - Vulnerable Women; Unemployed; Youth; First Nation Peoples; Newly Arrived Migrants Region - Regional WA A targeted program to intensely support VIOs to design, plan, recruit and engage with a new realm of volunteers. Thus, establishing a success baseline for both the referring agency and the VIOs such that future engagements will be smoother. Bring the Change is a targeted programme to intensively support the VIOs to engage with a different realm of volunteer groups, i.e., vulnerable women, the Unemployed, Youth, First Nations Individuals, those with disabilities and Newly Arrived Migrants. Case studies will be published for successful partnering’s, thus providing inspiration to a greater number of VIOs.