Facts about Volunteering

In Wesley Mission Sydney, between March 1991 and February 2001 1.46 million hours of volunteer activity were recorded, which equates to $20 million.

The only national survey of volunteers conducted by The Australian Bureau of Statistics was in 1994-95. ¹
In 1995 there were 2,639,500 volunteers in Australia, representing 19% of the adult population.²

Across Australia, data suggests an overall decline of 7% in volunteers between 1982 and 1995. ³

Volunteers contributed approx. 433.9 million hours of voluntary work in 1995 across Australia. ⁴

People were more likely in Australia during 1995, to volunteer if they did not live in a capital city - 16% for capital cities compared to 24% outside capital cities. ⁵

More women (21%) than men (17%) volunteered in 1995 across Australia. ⁶

The majority of volunteers (65% or 1,704,500 people) were in either fulltime or part time paid employment. ⁷

The median number of hours volunteered per annum was 75 hours or about 6 hours per month - a total of 433.9 million hours per annum. ⁸

Of all the volunteers in Australia:
• 27% of all volunteers spent 24 hours per year or less on voluntary work, 2 hours or less per month;
• 32% contributed 140 hours or more, and about one in seven performed at least 300 hours of voluntary work per year; and
• 2% of volunteers performed in excess of 1,000 hours of voluntary work per year. ⁹

The mostly likely group (27%) of people to volunteer is aged between 35 and 44 years and reflects commitments to children’s sports and activities. ¹⁰

Across Australia, the number of voluntary hours worked increased with age, up to the 65 - 74 age group, with a median number of hours of 105 per annum. ¹¹

Differences between the rates of volunteering in Australia, for women and men are significant:
• Female partners with dependent children had a volunteer rate of 30% compared to 19% for those without dependent children.
• Male partners with dependent children had a volunteer rate of 23% compared to 17% for those without dependent children, reflecting greater commitment to full time work.
• High rates of involvement of women employed part-time (30%). PT employment has provided a means of balancing family and work commitments. ¹²

The volunteer rate with an organisation for persons born in non-English speaking countries was 9%, compared to Australian born (21%) and English born (20%) people. ¹³

“Not for profit” organisations employed 239,390 volunteers during 1995-96 and accounted for 49 per cent ($4,213 million) of the expenditure on direct community service activity. ¹⁴

The volunteer rate in the welfare/community sector increased with age up to the 55-64 year age group, Australia wide. ¹⁵

On a national level, helping other people in the community was the most common reason (42%) given by volunteers. ¹⁶

Other stated benefits included; personal satisfaction (59%) and social contacts (38%). ¹⁷

In Australia, potential volunteers [young people] are more focussed on one-off and short-term projects rather than long term projects with particular organisations. ¹⁸

The most common way people become volunteers is:
• They were asked by someone (30%);
• They or their family were already involved in the organisation (28%).
• only (4%) were recruited through the media. ¹⁹

In 1995, NSW had the lowest volunteer participation rate - 15%, compared to Canberra at 26%. ²⁰

In 1995, Sydney had the lowest volunteer participation rate - 12%. ²¹
 

THE FIELD OF ORGANISATIONS VOLUNTEERS WORKED IN(a), 1994-95

Field of voluntary work	Men %	Women %
Welfare/community	27.0	31.8
Education/training/youth development	16.7	31.8
Sport/recreation/hobby	41.7	23.5
Religious	16.2	18.8
Health	4.4	8.8
Arts/culture	3.6	4.5
Environmental/animal welfare	4.4	3.2
Emergency services	8.5	2.1
Business/professional/union	4.9	2.0
Law/justice/political	2.2	1.3
Foreign/international	0.6	0.9