Yeah, and your personal values. You think it's more important to spend time helping other people than it is to be watching cartoons on Saturday morning.
Previous studies have found that the reasons people decide to volunteer are many and complex. The study of volunteering in Victoria conducted by Soupormas and Ironmonger (2002) found that "the reasons people volunteer are as diverse as the volunteers themselves":
… today's volunteers are developing their own skills as well as improving the lives of others. People volunteer to make contacts, learn new skills, gain work experience and build their self-esteem. Volunteering allows volunteers to maintain and gain new job skills, return something to the community, explore new career paths and basically help someone else (Soupormas and Ironmonger 2002 p. 3).
An often cited study conducted in the United States by Clary, Snyder and Stukas (1996), classifies the motivations of volunteers into six categories:
- a value function – people volunteer to express or act on values they think are important;
- an enhancement function – to enhance their self-esteem and psychological development;
- a social function – to interact with others;
- an understanding function – to increase their knowledge of the world and develop and practice skills;
- a career function – to gain experiences that will benefit their careers; and
- a protective function – to cope with inner anxieties and conflicts.
All six of these functions are visible in the views expressed by the young people who participated in the discussion groups for this project.
Importantly, most of the young people expressed more than one – and sometimes almost all – of these six types of motivations. However, sometimes one function appears to be more important than another for a particular type of voluntary activity. For instance, career motivations appear to be more important for a young person seeking to learn skills through volunteering for a major sporting event, while gaining affirmation and building self-confidence (the protective and enhancement functions) were more important for the same person in their voluntary work for a support group.
Following are a few of their comments used as examples of each type of function.
| Function |
Example |
| Value |
Volunteering is primarily to help others in need. When you see it (a problem) everyday you're thinking "how can I help?" … You think it's more important to spend time helping other people than it is to be watching cartoons on Saturday morning. If I don't do it then X won't happen and that would be a real shame. |
| Enhancement |
… it's nice when someone comes up and says look you're really good at that bit, do you want to come back and do some more or something like that. I mean, that makes you feel so much better that … that … you count … Working with younger children would be good because you're older you'd feel like you'd have the authority to do and say stuff … I had a really great time … they were so friendly and they made me feel like … they thought of me as a person … |
| Social |
… I like working with people one-to-one … Even packing envelopes could be fun if it's a whole lot of people together … Especially for teenagers also meeting younger people or people your own age … (You) get the reward of hanging out with a pretty good group of people … |
| Understanding |
I'm volunteering at the moment … to learn new skills and … to open my life to this kind of event and to decrease my fear of it for the future. |
| Career |
I got involved in that surf-lifesaving through school with the youth development program and part of doing that was that it looks good on the CV. … like if you're doing volunteering perhaps at a radio station and you want to get into radio then you've got a foot in the door … … I can get references from them and put them into (my resume). |
| Protective |
When we're little we always want to help out – the problem comes when we grow up,that's when we forget we can help … (volunteering) … reminds you . . . |
Clary et al. (1996) suggest that the values function is the most important and career and protective functions are least important, with the other functions (enhancement, social and understanding) falling between them. However, the views of our young participants suggest a slightly different hierarchy. While the value function appears to be very important, with most young people looking for "meaningful" activities, the career and social functions appear to be just as important – and occasionally more so. A small number of the young people appear to engage in some activities because their friends do, or because they want to make career connections or learn career skills, without necessarily being committed to the values of the volunteer organisation, or the specific objectives of the voluntary activity. This difference suggests that young people may be motivated to volunteer by a slightly different combination of factors from older people. This may be important in considering how to encourage volunteering among young people. However, in addition, an important issue is that motivation by itself may not be enough to ensure participation. Young people still might not participate in a volunteer activity if they are not encouraged or assisted. They might lack information about how to put their values into practice, for instance, or be unable to find an attractive activity. (These issues are discussed further in the section on Barriers to volunteering.)
A number of previous studies highlight factors that influence involvement in volunteering by young people. For instance, a study in the US by Sundeen and Raskoff (2000) of 12–17-year-olds found that pathways into volunteering were:
- being asked by someone;
- schools encouraging or requiring com-munity service;
- family or close friend involved in volunteer activities; or
- participation in an organisation such as a religious organisation or workplace.
A study by Kidd and Kidd (1997) highlights adult role modelling; adults providing social approval; and peers involved in similar activities. Leadership, particularly charismatic leadership has been found to be important by a number of studies (e.g. Larsson and Ronnmark 1996, Catano, Pond et al. 2001) and is evident in Australia in the story of the Inspire Foundation (www.inspire.org.au/about_history.html) and with Urban Seed (www.urbanseed.org).
The young people participating in discussion groups for this study identified many similar and some additional factors that have a positive influence on their participation in community/volunteer activities:
- Compulsory community service
- Role models
- Previous volunteering experience
- Religious belief or activity
- Advertising
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1. "Compulsory" community service as part of work or study
A majority of participants had undertaken some volunteer activity that was usually a compulsory part of a study or work program and while many had mixed views about the specific arrangements that had been made, or the tasks they had been asked to do:
you only do it for a short time so it's very different to a real voluntary experience … you get stuck in the same thing …
On the whole they were strongly supportive of the concept and indicated that it had had a positive influence on the development of their values, their understanding of the world and of the need for volunteering. In particular, for young people at school, it had enabled them to take part in an activity that their peers regarded as "uncool" without suffering a social stigma:
… other people in the class are in the same boat …
… (when it's) part of the school curriculum they get over the uncoolness and get a taste for what it's really like.
… it's not the coolest thing to do but it's accepted and you know, there's no ridicule if you're in that.
It's something that happens as part of the school scene. Same as you go to Maths and English …
Participants indicated that community service had introduced them to volunteering and given them some idea of what would be involved:
… it also gives you an insight you wouldn't normally get because it gives you that introduction to it …
… if I hadn't done it I wouldn't have got involved with (volunteering) partly because you don't know what to expect …
Sometimes it opens people's eyes to the benefits of volunteering …
However, participants also suggested that compulsory community service could be improved and extended by making the tasks more interesting and meaningful and by giving them opportunities to use and improve their skills. For instance, participants commented that when community service is part of a school program students are sometimes given tasks that seem to have no real purpose and are dull and repetitious. In addition, too few hours are devoted to the program so that little to nothing can be achieved and students do not get a real idea of what volunteering entails and can contribute:
You only do it for a short time so it's very different to a real voluntary experience … you get stuck in the same thing …
… they didn't need our help in the first place …
We only had like an hour or an hour and a half a week and I think like if we had more time … it was so short a time we never got to do anything.
For instance, one group of participants told us that the tasks they were asked to do when they undertook school-based community service in a library or aged-care facility seemed to have been thought up to merely give them something to do. They required no skill, provided no obvious opportunities for learning and often seemed to be pointless, e.g. dusting shelves. These students not only found these tasks dull but also dispiriting – they believed they had skills to offer that were being overlooked and that could be better used. But at the same time they noted that one of their classmates had a more positive experience. Having undertaken community service in deaf care she had changed her mind about her future career:
Rebecca went to that centre for the deaf and then she wanted to become … it changed what she wanted to become in the future …
Overall, positive attitudes to the concept of compulsory community service were thus tempered by a view that greater attention is needed to the quality of the experience to ensure that both participants and the organisations involved gain more benefit from it. For instance:
If they really want to make it worthwhile … they need to make it longer and try to expand it a bit …
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2. Role models
Our discussions with young people indicated that role models had very strongly influenced many of the project participants' attitudes to volunteering and their involvement in volunteer activities:
It's the whole image thing. Like if you see someone you admire doing … oh it's obvious, you know, that's not too bad, we'll do that.
Role models appeared to come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Parents, siblings and other family members were particularly common influences on many of the participants. Young people from regional and rural areas in particular talked about their family members' involvement in volunteer activities and the effect of this on their own decision to volunteer:
– every child models themselves on their parents – or some other adult – …
(It's) what your parents teach you when you're younger … What's good and bad. Is helping people good, or helping people bad? Things like that.
My Mum still does the books for the local kinder …
It may be the way you've been brought up if your parents have been involved in community stuff.
Teachers were also influential:
I went away for a month and I missed a lot of school and I had teachers working with me behind until sort of 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and that's a huge amount of their free time just for one of their students, and you know, that really makes you feel like you want to give something back to the school as well as you know, something back to the teaching staff and that sort of thing.
One of my replacement teachers at school (who was working as a volunteer) … he handed me a volunteer thing and said "sign up" …
A range of other adults had also been important. For instance, one participant described how, as a guide, she had been mentored and encouraged to become a leader, and some of the youngest participants mentioned how images of celebrity involvement in volunteering had affected them:
Like I've been wanting to do the Red Cross Door Knock for a while … simply because, like, I see the ads on the TV and see Red Symons or something like that, and it's something that looks like fun. So if it's got that image, it's likely …
People who offered leadership were also important:
In the group (of volunteers) certain groups of people were attracted to certain leaders.
The views and behaviour of other young people were also influential. Participants suggested that they were more likely to volunteer if there were "other people that you know going for it", or if they saw images of other young people involved in the particular activity:
A lot of people will go, I don't want to do that because it's going to be old people, but if … instead of having all old people in their ads, they had all young people there, then a bunch of young people might go hey, there's going to be other young people doing this and they'll turn up …
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3. Previous volunteering experience
If a previous volunteering experience by the young person, or a friend or family member, had been enjoyable, meaningful and beneficial then the views of the project participants suggested that it would strongly influence further volunteering. The experience did not necessarily have to be without a downside – for instance it did not necessarily need to be "fun" all the time – but the positives needed to outweigh the negatives:
A lot of the time it's pretty stressful and it's hard … (but) I've learnt a lot of stuff (and) that's good for me. I do it because I think (the organisation) is a good place.
What makes for a positive volunteering experience is discussed further in the later sections of this report.
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4. Religious belief/activity
Though several previous studies point to connections between religious activity and volunteering, only a small number of the young people participating in the discussions for this project openly mentioned church connections or religious beliefs when talking about volunteering. This was surprising given that several discussion groups were arranged through church schools or colleges.
However, while religious connections were rarely openly mentioned, religious background did appear to have played a role in forming the attitudes to volunteering, and volunteering behaviour, of a larger number of participants. For instance a group of young participants who had arranged their own volunteering activity all shared the same religious background and expressed similar ideas about "helping others". In addition:
- Buddhist beliefs were cited by one participant as the primary influence on a close friend's volunteering activity;
- one volunteer from a rural background talked about church-based volunteer activities such as playing the organ and welcoming the congregation;
- a group of participants from rural and regional areas and in a church-based university college displayed a very strong sense of community that may have some foundation in shared religious beliefs;
- a young participant talked about her brother's participation in church-based volunteer activity;
- one volunteer organisation interviewed for the project that has a church connection recruits it's young volunteers mainly through local parishes; and
- another volunteer organisation with many young volunteers told us that "putting their faith into action" was an important factor behind their participation.
Thus the connection between volunteering and religious activity may be stronger than appears at first sight.
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5. Advertising
Several participants suggested that advertising campaigns by volunteer organisations had a positive influence:
Especially with the Salvation Army, like the amount of ads that they put on and how they've been with Australia for so many years and they've helped us out throughout …
Extended advertising was also mentioned as a way of encouraging further participation, particularly if it was targeted to young people through schools, teachers, career advisers; included images of young people's involvement; and adopted the language used by young people.
However, as we note in our later discussion of the factors that discourage young people from volunteering, advertising can also be a "turn off" for some young people, especially if it tries to create feelings of guilt, or it uses language that is unfamiliar to young people.
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Summary and observations
The factors that encourage young people to volunteer seem to be as varied as the young people themselves. Young people seek many different returns from volunteering and sometimes an individual will take on a number of different volunteer activities, each for a different reason or combination of reasons.
Young people may be motivated to volunteer by a slightly different combination of factors from older people. Clary et al. (1996) suggest that the values function is the most important and career and protective functions are least important in motivating volunteers, but our discussion groups indicate that while the value function is very important, with most young people looking for "meaningful" activities, the career and social functions appear to be just as important – and sometimes more so. This means that volunteer organisations hoping to attract and retain young people will need to consider specific strategies to appeal to them and will also need to ensure that the tasks and activities they are given meet their career and social needs.
Our discussion groups of young people also identified five factors that have a positive influence on their participation in community/volunteer activities: compulsory community service; role models; previous volunteering experience; religious belief or activity; and advertising. However their comments indicated that there is room to improve compulsory community service, which is not always as enjoyable, effective or positive as it could be.
This is important particularly in the light of welfare reform in Australia that has centred on notions of "mutual obligation" – that those who benefit from the social safety net should give something in return. Those unable to obtain paid work, including many young people, for instance, "could choose social participation as a substitute for economic participation or as a pathway towards economic participation (e.g. voluntary work)" (Wilson 2000).
Since 1997 "Work for the Dole" schemes have been extended so that participation is now required by young people aged 18 or 19 receiving the Youth Allowance for three months or more, or young people aged 18–39 who have received the full rate Newstart or Youth Allowance for six months or more. Activities are managed by Community Work Coordinators and delivered through community or government organisations or agencies such as local government and community groups. They include providing community services and restoring and maintaining community services and facilities. Other schemes requiring similar community participation include Community Development Employment Projects in Indigenous communities.
More recently, under the Voluntary Work Initiative young people receiving Newstart or a Youth allowance have been able to meet their "mutual obligations" by undertaking a set number of hours per fortnight of volunteer work instead of looking for paid work. They must do this in a volunteer organisation that is community-based and not-for-profit and they must not replace a paid worker, or undertake work that does not have a community focus.
The benefits of community participation are expected to include:
- opportunities to maintain existing skills and learn new ones;
- Increased confidence;
- on-the-job training;
- developing a network of contacts;
- obtaining a voluntary work reference from the organisation; and
- demonstrates motivation to employers2.
However, ACOSS (1999, cited in Warburton and MacDonald 2002) suggests that there is no evidence that policies requiring community participation lead to increased employability. Training may not necessarily be included and there is no mechanism to ensure that activities are appropriate or improve job-readiness. Recent research also suggests that when volunteering is compulsory participants "may be even more unlikely to be volunteers in the future" (Warburton and MacDonald 2002, p. 16). If the objective is to increase "active citizenship" in the medium to longer-term "compulsory volunteering" may be counter-productive.
Clearly, if participation by young people in community work is to be increased then their experience of any "compulsory volunteering", whether part of a work or study program, or to meet "social obligations" should be as positive and affirming and should allow the young people opportunities to grow and learn as individuals and as active community members. The comments of this project's young participants indicate that as yet this does not always happen.
The way in which volunteer opportunities are advertised is another area that they identify for improvement, as it can currently sometimes discourage, rather than encourage volunteering by young people. This is discussed further in the following section.