I say to people "you don't join an organisation, you join a mob."
Young people are not interested in pushing tin cans around a floor, that's something adults think they want to do.
More social – it's team – it's ownership.
So far in this report we have presented the views of young people themselves about volunteering. In this section we look at volunteering and young people from another perspective – that of volunteer organisations and communities.
The discussion draws on interviews we conducted with representatives of community and volunteer organisations. These organisations are diverse in a number of respects. They are located in rural or metropolitan areas, but sometimes both. Their focus is dispersed or local, regional/national or restricted to a smaller geographical area. They vary in the formality/informality of their organisational style. Some are more traditional or innovative in their outlook than others. Some focus their objectives and activities on young people. Some employ young people as volunteers.
Similarly, the individuals we interviewed from these organisations are also diverse. They were of different ages, gender and background. They had different roles in the organisation, from senior management to responsibility for managing volunteers or projects using volunteers. They also expressed their understanding of the organisations and their volunteers in a variety of ways. Some wanted to give us many facts and figures, others philosophised or told stories.
However, within this diversity was much similarity. Firstly, all demonstrated a concern for the wellbeing and development of young people. Secondly, all of them saw involvement in community activities such as volunteering as a way for young people to learn about themselves, to develop their skills, confidence and capabilities while also contributing to their communities.
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Issues
In considering volunteering and young people, interviewees raised two main areas of concern and a number of more specific issues under each heading:
- The costs and benefits of having young volunteers:
- costs relating to legislative compliance
- costs of managing and training volunteers
- succession planning and renewal of the organisation
- impact on capacity to meet objectives
- Recruiting and retaining young people:
- what makes an organisation/activity attractive to young people
- gender issues
- meaning and lifestyle issues.
1. The costs and benefits of having young volunteers
There is a distinct cost to using volunteers for any organisation. Interviewees noted:
- the cost of providing additional equipment or accommodation for new volunteers;
- the cost of staff time spent on managing the volunteers and their work;
- the costs of training to ensure that volunteers have skills required by legislation to perform certain tasks (e.g. occupational health and safety);
- other training costs, e.g. in skills required for certain activities, in the organisation's systems etc;
- incidental costs, such as reimbursement of expenses, travel costs;
- the cost of advertising etc. to recruit volunteers; and
- costs incurred in providing some rewards to volunteers (e.g. the costs of holding a formal dinner to present volunteers with an award).
Together, the costs appeared to be considerable, particularly the costs of managing and training volunteers. For instance, one interviewee noted that the cost of staff time spent on managing volunteers was so great that sometimes there was a temptation to turn away people approaching the organisation. Another suggested that the costs of managing volunteers might be higher than for paid staff because a lot more time and effort is needed:
Costs are high to have volunteers, there is a lot of professional time and a lot more messiness. There is always the question whose needs are we meeting? – Volunteers have a high need to be needed.
An organisation that has attracted substantial corporate support finds that these corporations want their people involved and that the money they provide often goes on managing this:
It costs a lot of money to manage relationships.
Training costs were raised by a number of interviewees who noted that they have risen in recent years as legislation has been brought in to ensure minimum training standards for certain activities. In particular, several mentioned the cost of training in occupational health and safety, but there were many other similar calls on the purse. In some cases training is expensive because it is substantial, formal, takes several months and requires external expertise to be brought into the organisation. In other cases the training is less expensive because it is much shorter, informal and conducted in-house by existing staff or volunteers.
Of special concern to some interviewees was the cost of training new volunteers who go on to stay with the organisation for only a very short time and occasionally not at all. A few noted that other organisations had introduced or were considering contracts specifying a minimum period of commitment to the organisation in return for training. However, as yet this is not common and generally interviewees did not support it. Even an organisation that makes substantial investments in training and which admits to being disappointed when the young person has to "move on" did not advocate these measures. Loss of the young person was a disappointment but interviewees suggested that there was a need to understand that the lives of young people can change and that circumstances may prevent them from continuing with volunteer activity.
Importantly, interviewees identified that the types of costs they noted were not unique to young volunteers, but common to all age groups. Costs might be slightly higher if young volunteers required more training or supervision, but overall there was little difference. In addition, several interviewees indicated that costs are not considered to be an important issue where the organisation has a focus on young people. For instance, one organisation that faces substantial costs in providing its young volunteers with support from paid staff and in flying them from different parts of Australia to a central point to attend meetings and discussions saw these costs as necessary to its work in providing support and encouragement to young people. Similarly, a local government organisation viewed the costs of its youth advisory group through a similar lens – that is, essential for it to meet its obligations to the local community.
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Balancing the question of costs, some interviewees noted the substantial value of the time that volunteers give:
There's a real cost in time – if you were to cost it out it is $$'s.
They also identified some benefits of employing volunteers in general:
- enabling the organisation to meet its objectives;
- building relationships with society;
and of employing young volunteers in particular:
- ensuring the future survival and on-going renewal of the organisation (e.g. succession planning);
- building relationships with young people and with future leaders.
A common view was that volunteers are essential:
Without volunteers the organisation would not exist.
For some organisations, employing young volunteers is a philosophical matter reflecting the objectives of the organisation:
Transcending of divisions, breaking down of caricatures and stereotypes. We tend to see welfare as a professional thing but everybody is part of the problem and part of the solution. Volunteering makes it more direct for the community.
It provides an opportunity to bring benefit to the volunteers themselves:
… life directing – living, working, seeing issues of social justice – experiences profound and meaningful – personal development.
and to society more generally:
It's investment in relationship building – you're dealing with future leaders.
Finally, many found that:
Working with volunteers is a most rewarding experience.
On the whole, the responses of the interviewees indicated that while there are some costs in employing young volunteers, these are outweighed by the benefits, both to society and to the volunteer organisations.
Perhaps significantly, there was no suggestion in any of the responses that a major community benefit of young people's involvement in volunteering is that they are less likely to engage in crime or in risk-taking behaviour, as is suggested by previous studies from overseas. On the one hand interviewees dismissed this notion, preferring to focus on the positives of volunteering rather than "negative things". On the other, some suggested that young people who engaged in these behaviours were unlikely to be volunteers anyway.
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Recruiting and retaining young people
While some communities and organisations appear to be very successful in attracting young people to participate in their activities, others experience almost the direct opposite. Few young people come forward seeking to become involved, and few of those that do initially are retained in the longer term. The characteristics of these organisations are in the following table. The organisations in the left-hand column not only have no difficulty in recruiting young people, they often have more young people wanting to volunteer than they can cope with. In contrast, the organisations in the right-hand column experience difficulties in recruiting young people.
| Organisation A (church affiliation) |
Organisation B (church affiliation) |
- Located in inner city
- Local focus on care of homeless and drug affected young people
- Informal organisation
- High profile charismatic leader
- Difficult and dangerous work
- No-one turned away
- Teamwork
- Many young people among clients and volunteers
- Some unaccredited training
- Opportunities for both regular and irregular volunteering
- Career payoffs (i.e. path to paid work)
- No recruitment strategy – more volunteers than needed
|
- Located in outer suburbs
- Local focus on care of needy, children, young people and families
- Formal organisation
- Rigorous selection process for volunteers including police checks
- Long training period with formal accreditation
- One-to-one with clients
- Rewarding but confronting
- Few young volunteers
- Volunteers rarely meet
- Long time commitment
- Regular commitment required
- Career pay-offs
- Recruitment through church, word of mouth and local paper
|
| Organisation C (local government) |
Organisation D (non-aligned overseas aid) |
- Located in outer suburban area
- Local focus
- Formal organisation
- Selection process
- Competition for selection
- Accredited training
- Teamwork
- Short but intense period of commitment
- Career payoffs
- Recruit through word of mouth and local paper
- Youth focus ("cool" activity)
- Status and recognition among peers
|
- Located in inner suburbs
- International focus
- Formal organisation
- Selection process
- Teamwork
- Shorter or longer-term commitments possible
- Fundraising period
- Training and debriefing
- Recruit through Internet and word of mouth
|
| Organisation E (nationwide Internet-based) |
Organisation F (statewide emergency services) |
- Located in capital city
- National operation, some local focus
- Diverse range of projects, primarily aim to assist young people to volunteer
- High use of Internet both to serve and recruit young people
|
- Predominantly rural focus
- Statewide focus
- Formal bureaucratic organisation
- Uses large number of volunteers across all ages
- Young people encouraged to volunteer
- Accredited training
- Regular time commitment
- Seeking long-term commitment
- Hampered by exodus of young people to city
|
| Organisation G (drama group) |
|
- Located in capital city
- Local focus
- Small informal organisation
- Teamwork
- Variety of roles
- Recruit through word of mouth
- High number of males involved
- Supportive environment
- Different
|
|
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All of the organisations we spoke to for this project seek to involve young people in their activities. However, while some have more young volunteers than they can cope with, others struggle to involve even a handful. What makes the difference? Responses from interviewees suggest a number of things.
Firstly, the organisations that are the most successful in recruiting and retaining young people are those that are more highly attuned to the lifestyle issues that these young people face, such as the many demands on their time. They identify that in many cases young people want to be involved in their communities but that is not always possible. One commented:
What young people are looking for is a simple process to get involved, a short-term commitment, not too much training, they want to feel part of the (community).
Secondly, less successful organisations put too many hurdles in the way of young people who want to become volunteers and this discourages them:
Here I am struggling to make ends meet and I want to do volunteering and you tell me I have to go through all these training classes before I can help out – that's not going to happen …
More successful organisations keep training short and provide opportunities for young people to move quickly from training to active involvement.
Thirdly, successful organisations identify that young people are living in a post-modern, information-driven society, in which the traditional loyalties that characterised older adults' lives have disappeared, but that young people are still interested in contributing to social capital:
They (young volunteers) felt that volunteering was sexy because it used your heart because you believed in what you were doing, it used your mind because you were mentally involved and it would use all of your physical body so that it was something exhilarating and exciting – so that translates as sexy.
So they are enthusiastic about offering opportunities for involvement to young people and demonstrate this in finding activities to suit their skills and enthusiasm. These are activities that will also enable them to use their creativity and that do not ask them to conform to meaningless restrictions:
They don't want uniformity …
Several interviewees talked about the need for young people to be able to do things "their way" and argued that it was important to give young people control:
They don't want to be told what to do all the time …
– bring in your own portable CD player or whatever and listen to your own music – here's a 1 000 of these, folded by the end of the day would be great. Leave them on their own, if you can afford it chuck in a Pizza for lunch.
The generation gap thing – you need to let young people make their own decisions.
Fourthly, more successful organisations talk to young people through advertisements, brochures, speakers etc. in language that is familiar to them and that they can understand. Echoing the views of many of the young people participating in this project, some interviewees noted that in many cases the language that organisations use to advertise opportunities for volunteering is unfamiliar to young people. It does not reflect the ways that young people speak and does not focus on the things that are of most interest to them.
Interviewees saw this as one of a number of ways in which tradition still plays a large part in constraining the ways in which things are done within organisations:
But other organisations looking at things might go, oh you know what – we've been doing that for years and we're only doing that for years because that's the way we've been doing it for years …
In addition, a particular mistake some organisations make is that appeals are made often to those who are already committed. Advertising is:
Targeted to the already switched on
rather than to the wider group who might be interested but do not currently get to hear about opportunities.
Finally, the organisations that are the most successful in attracting young people have charismatic leaders with a high media profile or offer opportunities for young people to meet and work with other high profile groups or individuals. Young people gain social status among their peers for this and so will seek out opportunities to become involved.
On the whole, volunteer organisations are aware of the difficulties that prevent young people from becoming involved in volunteering:
Most are working and studying as well as volunteering …
even to the extent of considering that young people are being disadvantaged:
Young Australians in their twenties are not getting opportunities to volunteer.
Importantly, they are also mostly aware that they need to make changes to enable more young people to become involved:
We need to develop a new model of volunteering – teams, short-term, small scale projects.
At least one of the organisations we interviewed is actively addressing these issues through a range of strategies to recruit more young people, including the restructuring of activities to reduce time commitment requirements, increasing team work and developing new advertising strategies that see a shift from print-based to web-published material.
The organisations are also aware of the power of informal recruitment mechanisms, particularly "word of mouth" among young people and thus the importance of ensuring that young people already involved enjoy the experience as much as possible and get something out of it. An interviewee in local government talked about the rewards for young people involved in organising music events for their peers – including a substantial increase in their "social status". He noted how these have contributed to increasing the attractiveness of the volunteer activity to the point where there is considerable competition for selection despite limited advertising.
This interviewee contrasted this experience with the plight of another organisation that he said offered young people only activities that had little meaning or relevance to them and that most young people consequently regard as "uncool". His success story in recruiting young people also emphasised the importance of handing control to the young people to direct their own activities, contrasting this also with other organisations that more overtly direct and manage young participants.
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Gender issues
In general, interviewees indicated that it is more difficult to recruit and retain young men than young women. Some interviewees saw this as a "feminine issue", linked to gendered views of caring. For instance, one noted that:
Relationship building attracts females.
Others saw it as a developmental issue:
It's a maturity thing – young women are more outward-looking at that age and less focused on career and material gain.
The leader of one organisation offered a different view – that it is a societal phenomenon, relating to the fact that:
Young men get the message from government, business and media that they have to focus on career and professional success.
Similarly another interviewee suggested that young men are pressured to focus on their careers, so that it becomes difficult for them to take time out to become involved in volunteer activities.
However, among the organisations we interviewed, the participation of young males appeared to be linked to the type of activities and opportunities that they offered. In deciding whether or not they would volunteer, the objectives of the organisation appeared to be less important to the young men than the ways in which the organisation went about achieving them and the opportunities and rewards that the organisation was able to offer them. Two organisations indicated that they attracted young males because they used science or technology to achieve their objectives:
The work involves a lot of technology and hands-on stuff – hands-on stuff attracts the males.
Another noted that it attracted young men because it offered opportunities for them to gain skills that would help them to enter the competitive music industry and opportunities to meet some high profile individuals in this industry.
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Meaning and lifestyle issues
A number of the interviewees commented on the complex meaning and lifestyle issues that young people face and emphasised the role that community involvement such as volunteering can play in working through some of these issues. Their views implied that organisations which recognise this role and give young people appropriate opportunities and support will be more successful in recruiting and retaining young volunteers and providing young people with a more satisfying experience that will contribute to the personal and social development.
The charismatic leader and founder of a church-based organisation which looks after young "drug addicts" and homeless in the inner city argued that young people become involved in volunteer activities as a way of:
Working out their values.
He considered that for young people, volunteering is a way to express their faith in an alternative way distinct from the traditional church, which they did not find particularly engaging.
Helps process thoughts and faith philosophy – to be engaged in macro issues – process is the most important part.
A similar view was expressed by a secular organisation that initially dealt with youth suicide and is committed to involving young people with the community:
It's very clear young people at that stage of life are reflecting what's kind of happened to other people.
They see young people who volunteer in some of these demanding areas as seeking to get a broader picture, reflecting on society but with different values to an older generation. Others have referred to this as a process of "de-traditionalisation" and "individualisation" with young people questioning the legitimacy of traditional authority figures and "ethic of reciprocity" the belief that respect must be earned. For young people, role models become questionable, and traditional "moral authority" becomes the focus of close examination (Thompson and Holland 2002). This was noted by one of the people interviewed, that young people are critically examining role models:
18 – 25 is a critical age for heroes.
A number of organisations commented in other ways on the maturity levels of the young people:
Young people are quite sophisticated in their thinking, they are not looking for the old charity model …
and the importance of relationships and macro issues:
They are not concerned about what they do but the relationships and the advocacy.