National Regional Challenge
Community Contribution
How does your region keep its volunteer heart strong?
Volunteering has always held regional communities together. But the way people volunteer is changing, and the organisations that depend on it need to change with them. Has your region already figured this out?
Inspiring this challenge
Volunteering is not a nice-to-have in regional communities. It is the operating system. Events, emergency services, aged care, sport, governance: all of it runs on volunteers.
But the pool is changing. New residents don’t always find it easy to find their way in. Many community groups find it hard to attract younger members, lifestyles and the cost of living don’t always permit time for volunteering, and the same small group of experienced people is carrying governance loads across multiple organisations, with compliance and red tape adding to the weight.
The organisations that find ways to welcome new volunteers while sustaining the ones they have are doing something that’s worth sharing.
Practical considerations
Formal volunteering rates have recovered since the pandemic but the composition of who volunteers and how is shifting. Younger cohorts are more likely to volunteer for specific projects than ongoing commitments. Governance and compliance obligations fall disproportionately on small volunteer-run organisations with limited capacity to absorb them. And burnout concentrates on the people who can’t say no, making succession planning harder the longer it’s left.
Tell us how your organisation, town or region is addressing this challenge and be part of national action.
Come on Australia – show us yours.
Show Australia how your region does it
We are looking for organisations and communities that have found new ways to structure, attract, and sustain volunteering and are willing to share what they learned. Show Australia how your region has:
- Found ways to bring new people into volunteering that fit how they actually live rather than how volunteers used to live.
- Reduced the governance and compliance burden on your volunteers without dropping the ball on your obligations.
- Built coordination across organisations so the same people aren’t being asked to carry everything.
- Created a pathway that turns newcomers or younger people into invested, long-term contributors.
- You tried something, it didn’t work and you have some clues about the why.