@article {bnh-1721, title = {Emergency volunteering in Australia: transforming, not declining}, number = {065}, year = {2015}, month = {04/2015}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, abstract = {

The landscape of volunteering is undergoing significant change, in Australia and internationally. Large-scale socioeconomic changes have recast the conditions under which people volunteer in the 21st Century.

With the notable exception of research into the role of digital volunteers, there has been very little research attention yet given to the impact of such changes on disaster and emergency volunteering. Within Australia, a narrow focus on shoring up and protecting the traditional volunteer base of Australian state and territory emergency service agencies against emerging challenges has drowned out awareness of emerging new opportunities. This has led to a narrative of crisis and decline in emergency volunteering that threatens to leave emergency management organisations falling behind in a changing volunteer environment.

This paper presents a more complete picture of the changing landscape of emergency volunteering. It identifies key shifts in the volunteering landscape as a whole and considers the possible implications for Australian emergency volunteering more particularly. Importantly, it includes within its purview volunteering that takes place both with and without affiliation to state and territory emergency service agencies.

The most significant shifts were identified by triangulating two sources of information: 1) international literature on trends in volunteering and 2) trends indicated directly in domestic data and research studies on volunteering in Australia. The same trends were identified in the international and domestic sources.

The {\textquoteright}Big 4{\textquoteright} Forces of Change

While there are numerous developments currently shaping and reshaping the nature and practice of volunteering, based on a broad review of the literature they can be justifiably distilled down to four big, interconnected forces of change.\  The first three of these are each associated with the recent burgeoning of new or previously uncommon forms of volunteering: episodic, corporate (and skills-based) and digital. Combined, these three fast-growing forms of volunteering are widely regarded as {\textquotedblleft}the wave of the future{\textquotedblright}.

The rise of episodic (shorter-term) volunteering is most directly connected to the transformation of modern life and work in the 21st Century.\  The growth of corporate volunteering reflects growing private sector engagement with the voluntary sector and with the societies and communities in which they operate. Meanwhile, digital volunteering is an exciting outcome of the revolution in communication technology, particularly the growth of interactive web 2.0, social media and mobile devices.\  The final trend is greater entanglement of the voluntary sector and government that is recasting the institutional and organisational settings in which volunteering takes place.

Opportunities for Australian Emergency Volunteering

There is no doubt that these {\textquoteleft}big 4{\textquoteright} forces of change will reshape the future landscape of emergency volunteering in Australia as elsewhere. However, exactly what shape this future landscape will take is unclear. In large part, it depends on how emergency management organisations, volunteer managers and volunteers themselves respond to the shifting constellation of challenges and opportunities that are developing in an unfolding {\textquotedblleft}new world{\textquotedblright} of volunteering. The current narrow focus on shoring up and protecting the traditional volunteer base of Australian state and territory emergency service agencies against emerging challenges needs to be expanded to embrace new opportunities to engage with a potentially larger, more diverse, more empowered and more innovative volunteer base.

Emerging research reveals numerous benefits to organisations of engaging with episodic volunteers. These include accessing a larger potential volunteer base, potentially greater flexibility, adaptability and pragmatism amongst episodic volunteers compared to traditional volunteers, and the likelihood that episodic volunteers will commit more time in the shorter-term, which is of particular relevance to disaster response.

For emergency management organisations, more diverse and flexible recruitment and retention strategies are needed to tap into the potential contribution of episodic volunteers. This includes practices such as offering more diverse volunteering roles and experiences, allowing volunteers to more actively shape their own roles, engaging further with skills-based volunteering, as well as actively fostering a sense of community and building social capital amongst volunteers.

Opportunities to develop partnerships with the private sector to support corporate and skills-based emergency volunteering are not being taken up. Most corporate volunteering appears to be reactionary and ad hoc, while on the emergency management sector side there appears to be growing doubt over the potential role of corporate volunteering in particular. Given the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies, the growth in employee volunteer programs, the growing time commitment expected in paid employment and the preferences of younger employees to combine their paid and volunteer work, it would be worthwhile renewing a focus on exploring models for partnering with the private sector to support emergency volunteering.

Digital volunteering has great potential to strengthen and diversify emergency volunteering; however it would require the greatest degree of change and adaptation within existing emergency management arrangements. While there is a nascent interest in digital volunteering in Australian emergency management, examples of digital volunteering have so far occurred more or less in isolation from the formal emergency management system.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) lists three adaptation needs amongst traditional humanitarian organisations in order to harness the potential of digital volunteering that are also pertinent to Australian emergency management. They are to adapt to: 1) work with new data sources, 2) work with new partners and techniques, and 3) the idea of information as a basic need in humanitarian response. The UN-OCHA report also argues that {\textquotedblleft}These adaptations are not optional{\textquotedblright} and stresses that {\textquotedblleft}Governments and responders will soon need answers to the questions: {\textquotedblleft}Where were you? We Facebooked/tweeted/texted for help, why didn{\textquoteright}t someone come?{\textquotedblright}

The potential impacts of the shifting relationship between government and the voluntary sector on volunteering are unclear. However, there are opportunities for pursuing supportive public-voluntary sector partnerships. The response of volunteers and volunteer-led organisations to the new organisational and institutional contexts appears to be developing along one of two divergent paths: increased professionalization and greater informality. Professionalization may create greater potential for partnerships as non-profits take up more professional and business-like models of operation that are more familiar to and compatible with government agencies. While a growth in informal, grass-roots volunteering would be less predictable for emergency management organisations, it is well aligned with the national goal of building community resilience to disasters.\ \ 

Conclusions

A key message arising from this report is that emergency volunteering is undergoing a process of transformation rather than one of decline. One thing is clear; the future landscape of emergency volunteering is going to be populated by a much wider and more diverse range of players than in the past. In order to harness the potential of this new landscape, existing emergency management organisations will need to: a) develop more diverse and flexible approaches to engage with a wider range of volunteers and volunteering styles, and b) seek out new forms of partnership and collaboration with both the voluntary and private sectors.

}, author = {J Whittaker and John Handmer} }