Project Update: Developing a National Rural Volunteering Roadmap (2021 to 2025)

20/06/2024

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

With a firm focus on better understanding the supply and demand side factors affecting rural volunteering, work progresses on the Developing a National Rural Volunteering Roadmap project (ARC grant number LP200301043). Volunteering WA is one of five key peak body partners supporting the project. This four-year project investigates structural, geographic, organisational and personal factors affecting rural volunteering in Australia.

The first phase of the project is complete – a historical analysis of government, voluntary sector and community-led interventions that have supported rural volunteering in Australia from the 1970s to present day. Additionally, a comprehensive literature review has been conducted to identify factors empirically linked to the supply of rural volunteers and/or demand for their services. Most recently, using a two-round expert panel survey conducted online, informants representing rural volunteer-involving organisations, VRCs, volunteering peak bodies and government representatives were asked to review this list of factors to refine the items in terms of their importance and measurability.

The results of this phase feature in a presentation titled Developing indicators of rural volunteering supply and demand in Australia to be presented at the 2024 International Society for Third-Sector Research (ISTR) in Antwerp in July. The survey findings revealed considerable alignment with the literature reviewed on enablers and barriers affecting volunteering supply and demand for rural volunteers. These enablers and barriers were discerned as including structural (macro level), organisational (meso) and personal (micro) level factors. Next steps for this project will see these factors used to develop an index of volunteering vulnerability, which will allow for gaps in rural volunteering supply and demand to be spatially mapped across the diverse geography of rural Australia.

The project will run from 2021 to 2025. To register your interest in receiving updates on this project, please email us at ruralvolunteers@volunteeringwa.org.au.

Click here to find out more about Volunteering WA supported research projects.