On this page, we’ve brought key volunteering findings, statistics and research projects to one place.
Explore research from international, national and Western Australian sources, to help you understand volunteering in Australia, and to assist with program development, funding applications and advocacy.
Visit Volunteering WA’s advocacy and policy pages to see how this research influences our work.
Recognising the vital contribution that research makes in informing evidence-based policy and supporting best-practice in the sector, Volunteering WA facilitates a Research Advisory Committee; and supports research projects through grant funding.
University of Western Australia
This project will provide the WA volunteering sector with evidence-based guidance to: make informed technology investment decisions in a rapidly evolving AI landscape; help organisations implement AI responsibly and build stakeholder trust; investigate effective approaches to building AI literacy and capabilities within Volunteering WA and member organisations.
The project includes 35+ in depth Volunteering WA member interviews to be completed in Phase 1 and 400+ Volunteering WA member surveys to be completed in Phase 2.
Project deliverables include an Industry Best Practice Guide, an interim and a final Knowledge Exchange seminar and a Final AI Adoption Roadmap Report.
Term: July 2025-December 2026
Chief Investigator Dr Ronnie Das, Associate Professor, Management and Organisations, UWA Business Schoo
Co-Project Lead Prof. Sanjit Roy, Vice chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow AI Adoption in Service industry, Edith Cowan University.
The project team includes three Associate Researchers from the UWA Business School, Dr Tristan Reed, Dr Miguel Loyola and Dr Mubashar Hassan, and four International Academic Advisors: Professor Mariann Hardey, Human-Ai Interaction, Durham University, UK; Dr Wasim Ahmed, Digital Transformation, University of Hull, UK; Dr Jose Moreno AI Development and Large Language Models, Audenia Business School, France; and Associate Professor Kshtij Sharma, AI & Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Volunteering within Western Australia spans the ‘spectrum of participation’ with volunteers engaging in activities that have informal, formal, and hybrid features. Informal volunteering is extensive and more engaged in than formal volunteering yet it is not deeply understood, and it is an understudied area.
Murdoch University is partnering with Chorus Australia in this VWA funded research project, to develop an understanding of the role informal volunteering plays in different communities and chart its character and contribution. This pilot study will likely provide information for a broader externally-funded research proposal.
This pilot study will explore three broad research questions:
1. What is the nature and extent of informal and formal volunteering in local communities?
2. What is informal volunteering’s potential relationship with more formal volunteering activities and volunteer involving organisations?
3. Which practices, platforms and people facilitate informal volunteering in a local community, and what are the practice and policy implications?
Term: August 2024 – March 2026
Lead Investigator: Dr Jo-Anne Kestel, Murdoch University,
Co-investigators:
Dr Megan Paull
Dr Moira Watson
In partnership with Chorus Australia’s CEO, Dan Minchin, and staff.
Volunteering WA is pleased to be a partner in this Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project which aims to investigate the challenges affecting rural volunteering in Australia.
Conducting a national analysis of volunteering demand and supply, this project expects to generate new interdisciplinary knowledge of the structural, demographic, organisational and personal factors affecting the sustainability of rural volunteering.
Expected outcomes of this project include a world-first index of volunteering vulnerabilities and a spatial map of volunteering unevenness, leading to the development of an evidence-based National Rural Volunteering Roadmap (2025-2035). The Roadmap will support volunteering peak body partners, governments and rural communities to plan for and support rural volunteering over the longer-term.
Volunteering WA aims to build stronger and more connected communities through volunteering and provides a range of resources, services, programs and support so that the people of Western Australia are made aware of, and understand, the nature, value and scope of volunteering activity in the State.
We will support the project through contributions of staff time, participation as experts and in focus groups, the provision of available data, facilitating linkages to VIOs and networks, and work to co-create the Roadmap document.
The project will run from 2021 to 2025 and more information on opportunities to be involved will be promoted to our members and the community. To register your interest in receiving updates on this project, please email us at ruralvolunteers@volunteeringwa.org.au.
Project Team
• Project Lead – Associate Professor Leonie Lockstone-Binney, Griffith University
• Professor Kirsten Holmes, Curtin University
• Professor Amanda Davies, University of Western Australia
• Professor Melanie Oppenheimer, Australian National University
• PhD student, Griffith University – to be appointed
• Research Associates, Griffith University, Curtin University, UWA, ANU – to be appointed
Partner Organisations
Curtin University, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre
This project will utilise data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to: profile volunteering patterns among WA families; apply rigorous statistical methods to examine how exposure to volunteering by family members influences an individual’s likelihood and intensity of volunteering later in life; examine the drivers and barriers to volunteering within families and across: generations of the same family; demographic groups and geographic areas.
The 12 month research project commencing 1 July 2025 will be the first to address the dynamics of volunteering within families and across generations of the same family in WA. The project will provide Volunteering WA with a data-driven evidence base to better understand how volunteering behaviours are shaped within families and across generations. Understanding how early exposure to volunteering within families fosters lifelong engagement will help to inform practical, on-the-ground initiatives to boost participation, particularly among young people. Recommendations from this research will support Volunteering WA in shaping its strategies to build sustainable volunteer networks in WA and strengthen its advocacy with government and community agencies.
To ensure effective communication and dissemination of research findings, the team will produce policy briefs, host a stakeholder workshop, and provide accessible, solutions-oriented project summaries and briefing notes for the Volunteering WA website
Term: July 2025-June 2026
Lead researcher – Dr Lili Loan Vu, Research Fellow
Professors Alan Duncan and Kirsten Holmes are advising the research team which includes Senior Industry Fellow Chris Twomey and Senior Research Fellow Dr Abebe Hailemariam.
While volunteers are a known resource within a healthcare setting, there is limited understanding of what good dementia care volunteering management practice looks like. This report outlines a project involving a series of interviews and research workshops (held in person and online) over several months in 2023 and 2024 by the Project Team from Murdoch University. The study makes 7 key findings in relation to managing volunteering in dementia care settings in Western Australia in the areas of: Communications; Complexity; Compliance; Organisational Policies; Managing at a distance; First Language; and Training.
The Executive Summary includes useful resources which may assist in the development of programs in dementia care settings.
The Report also identifies potential opportunities for future research.
Lead Investigator: Dr Megan Paull
Co-Investigators: Dr Ana Rita Sequeira; Dr Anne Peachey; Dr Andrea Steele; Dr Ingrid O’Brien; Dr Sally Paulin.
Funded through Volunteering WA’s annual volunteer grant program with the support of the Volunteering WA Research Committee.
Volunteering WA congratulates the WA Council of State School Organisations Inc. (WACSSO) as the recipient of the 2022-23 Research Grant Program. Their project will examine the question of “Volunteer Engagement – Building Parent Participation in P&Cs across WA”.
Western Australian Council of State School Organisations (WACSSO) is the peak body representing parents of public school students in WA. They provide representation at state and national levels and guidance and support to over 650 Parent and Citizen Associations (P&Cs).
In 2021 P&Cs in WA provided over $17 million to school communities. Recruiting parent volunteers is an ongoing challenge due to natural turnover as children progress in their schooling, and made more difficult by COVID-19.
This project focussed on three questions:
The WACSSO will work in partnership with Murdoch University to deliver the project, under the leadership of Dr Kath Sugars.
Research team:
Dr Kath Sugars, Early Career Researcher, Murdoch University
Dr Megan Paull, Senior Lecturer, Murdoch University.
Read the Final Report, published February 2025.
Read the practical resource for P&Cs, which was synthesised from the research findings.
University students’ experiences of volunteering: A qualitative case study (2023)
Funded through Volunteering WA’s annual volunteer grant program with the support of the Volunteering WA Research Committee.
Lead researcher: Dr Olivia Gallagher, Edith Cowan University
This project was undertaken to explore the research question “What are the experiences of university health professional students volunteering in Western Australia”?.
The objectives of the study were to: 1. Describe the motivation and perceptions of the university health professional student volunteers and the relevance to learning and future practice. 2. Explore the experiences of university health professional students volunteering. 3. Explore the barriers and facilitators to volunteering among university health professional students.
This qualitative case study was undertaken through interviews with students volunteering in a clinical (hospital) setting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2024, Volunteering WA released the richest data set on volunteering in Western Australia in over a decade.
Western Australia’s State of Volunteering Report is the result of the largest survey of volunteers and volunteer managers ever conducted in Western Australia. This report is for everyone involved in the volunteering ecosystem in WA and across Australia. As the peak body for volunteering, we are committed to sharing the latest volunteering trends with members and stakeholders.
It provides information to answer four main questions from our unique, Western Australian, perspective:
Funded through Volunteering WA’s annual volunteer grant program with the support of the Volunteering WA Research Committee.
Lead researcher: Dr Fazlul Rabbanee, Curtin University
The COVID-19 pandemic had an adverse impact on all volunteering activities in Australia, particularly as traditional in-person volunteering was severely curtailed due to lockdowns, social isolation, and physical distancing requirements. Due to a dearth of existing research on how and to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic impacted university student volunteering, this research addresses four key objectives: (i) identifying the challenges experienced by university student volunteers due to COVID-19, (ii) examining the impact of the pandemic on university student volunteers’ wellbeing and resilience influencing their future intention to volunteer, (iii) exploring the emerging trends of university students’ volunteering in WA, and (iv) identifying the influence of COVID-19 on virtual and informal volunteering among university students in WA
Read the University Students’ Volunteering During the COVID-19 Pandemic Report, Published April 2023.
Volunteering WA has released the final report on Volunteering in Aged Care Settings in Western Australia – Good Practice During COVID-19 and Beyond, authored by Dr Megan Paull and Dr Sally Paulin, Murdoch Business School + Centre for Healthy Ageing.
The project was funded by a Lotterywest grant to Volunteering WA and supplemented by contributions from Volunteering WA and Murdoch University.
The project was designed to facilitate knowledge sharing from those actively involved in volunteering and volunteer management in aged care settings in WA during this COVID-19 period, with a particular focus on residential aged care and the Community Visitors Scheme.