Volunteer Statistics and Trends

Volunteer Statistics - National
Volunteer Statistics - Queensland
Volunteering Queensland Referral Statistics

NATIONAL:

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF VOLUNTEERING TO AUSTRALIA?

• Volunteering contributes an estimated $42 billion a year to the Australian economy. (Source: Ironmonger 2000)

WHO VOLUNTEERS?

• In 2000, 4.4 million Australians over the age of 18 years volunteered in Australia – this is excluding Sydney Olympic volunteers. (Source: ABS 2001)
•Approximately 704.1 million hours of voluntary work is carried out by Australians annually. (Source: ABS 2001)
• The most active age group of volunteers is 35-44 years (40%). (Source: ABS 2001)
• On average people volunteer for 1.4 hours per week, with young people averaging 60.5 hours a year. (Source: ABS 2001)

WHAT DO VOLUNTEERS DO?

• The most common volunteering activities are fundraising (56%), management (45%), teaching (44%) and administration (41%). (Source: ABS 2001)
• People tend to choose volunteer activity that reflects their paid employment. Professionals teach (65%) and trades people choose maintenance, repairs and gardening work (47%). (Source: ABS 2001)
• For young people aged 18-24, the most popular form of volunteer work is in sport and recreation.

WHY DO PEOPLE VOLUNTEER?

• Reasons for volunteering in the general community include being of service to the community (47%) and personal satisfaction (43%). (Source: Kerr et al 2001)
• Young people aged 18-24 volunteered for personal satisfaction (40%) and to help others in the community (40%), to gain new skills (13%) and gain work experience (17%). (Source: Kerr et al 2001)
• The most common reason people from indigenous and non-English backgrounds volunteer include: to gain work experience and develop skills; to do something worthwhile and help others and to be active.

National Roundtable Profile:
The National Roundtable for Non-profit Organisations (2003) says:

700,000 non-profit organisations in Australia
35,000 (of the 700,000) organisations employ more than 600,000 (above 6% of the workforce) and contribute more than 3% of gross domestic product: more than the communications industry and equivalent in size with the agricultural industry.
In per capita terms, Australia’s non-profit sector is similar to that in the United States and larger than those in Britain and Europe but smaller than those in Holland and Ireland.
The non-profit sector produces more than $30 billion in income each year.

Employment breakdown in non-profit sector:

Social Services - 26%
Education and Research – 24%
Culture and recreation – 21%
Health – 15%
Other – 11%
Business, associations and unions – 2.5%

Source: National Roundtable of Non-profit Organisations, 19 February 2004

Top of page

QUEENSLAND:

Source: ABS Voluntary Work Australia 2000 Stats – Queensland

HOW MANY VOLUNTEERS IN QUEENSLAND:
- In Queensland 783,800 volunteers

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF VOLUNTEERING IN QUEENSLAND?
- Queenslanders carry out 116.2 million hours of voluntary work per year

WHO VOLUNTEERS?
- Queensland Males: 357,400
- Queensland Females: 426,400

Age Groups:
18-34 years: 237,300 (males 110,700 & females 126,600)
35-64 years: 464,100 (males 214,600 & females 249,500)
65 and over: 82,400 (males 32,000 & females 50,400)

WHAT DO VOLUNTEERS DO?

Type of organisations:
Community / welfare – 36.4%
Sport / recreation – 31.1%
Education / training / youth development – 28.6%
Religious – 16.2%
Health – 10.1%

Type of voluntary activity
Administration/clerical/recruitment – 39.2%
Befriending / supporting listening / counseling – 22.4%
Coaching / referring / judging – 16.6%
Fundraising / sales – 53.3%
Management / committee work / coordination – 42.4
Performing / media production – 8.2%
Personal care / assistance – 15.7%
Preparing / serving food – 37.2%
Repairing / maintenance gardening – 25.4%
Teaching / instruction / providing information – 41.8%
Transporting people / goods – 9.6%
Other – 9.6%

WHY DO PEOPLE VOLUNTEER?

Current most common reasons for being a volunteer:
Help others / community – 48%
Personal satisfaction – 39%
Personal / family involvement – 29.2%
To do something worthwhile – 27.9%
Social contact – 20.3%

VOLUNTEERING QUEENSLAND DATA 2004:

In Queensland over 25,000 people a year contact the Queensland state-wide network of Volunteer Centres seeking voluntary opportunities.
Volunteering Queensland has recorded a 70% increase of people accessing state-wide voluntary opportunities via the Internet
Trends are also reflected through anecdotal evidence collected from the 1,110 not-profit organisaitons who make up the Queensland state-wide network of volunteer centres membership.

PLEASE NOTE:
The State and regional volunteer centres national body, Volunteering Australia continues to lobby the Commonwealth Government to have volunteering included on the national census questions. There will be an ABS data collection on volunteering in 2006.

SOURCE - OFFICE OF FAIR TRADING QUEENSLAND 2005:

145,000 Incorporated Associations (Australia wide)
20,000 Incorporated Associations (Queensland)

SOURCE - QUT CENTRE OF PHILANTHROPY & NON-PROFIT STUDIES 2005:

$697 Million State funding to non-profit sector (or 14.2% current transfers)

AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS (ABS):

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has a range of statistics available.
The Queensland office:
Physical location - 313 Adelaide Street, Brisbane QLD 4000
Postal address - GPO Box 9817, Brisbane QLD 4001
Web-site – www.abs.gov.au

If you are unable to find the information you need, or require further statistical information please contact ABS using either the ABS' National Information and Referral Service (NIRS) which is a phone information and referral service, or Client Services. The ABS trained consultants can work with you to satisfy your statistical information needs.

Australian residents telephone: 1300 135 070
International clients may call +61 2 9268 4909

Email Client Services
Due to the complexity and range of data available from the ABS, your questions can often be best answered over the phone. If you cannot call us however, please email your query to client.services@abs.gov.au
For Census information contact census2001@abs.gov.au

4441.0.55.001 Voluntary Work, State Tables
This EXCEL workbook contains 17 tables for the States and Territories being companion data to the publication Voluntary Work 2000, Australia (Catalogue No. 4441.0), released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on 20 June 2001.
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/A2B6F10E619F67A8CA256ACD0006128B?Open

4441.0.55.001 Voluntary Work, State Tables- Queensland (44410.qld.xls)
If you are a subscriber this product costs $10.00
If you are not a subscriber:
Electronic product (purchase on-line and receive this product in an electronic downloadable format)
This product costs $10.00
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookupresponses/4a62888fdd7c4bb6ca256acd00067565?opendocument

Volunteer Statistics
http://www.volunteeringaustralia.org/research_stats.html

Statistics on Volunteer Participation by State http://www.volunteeringaustralia.org/documents/VolunteersbyState.pdf

Statistics on Metropolitan vs Ex- Metropolitan http://www.volunteeringaustralia.org/documents/Volunteersbystate-metroVexmetro.pdf

Statistics on Participation by Age Group http://www.volunteeringaustralia.org/documents/VolunteerRatebyAge.pdf

Volunteer Involvement by Organisation
http://www.volunteeringaustralia.org/documents/VolunteerInvolvementbyOrganisation.pdf

Volunteers by Type of activity
http://www.volunteeringaustralia.org/documents/TypeofVoluntaryActivity.pdf

Top of page