As cost of living pressures bite, many Australians are turning to charities and not-for-profit organisations for support.
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These services have been over-stretched by a perfect storm of economic hardship and an ageing volunteer workforce.
Eighty-three per cent of volunteering organisations need more volunteers. Some data suggest that young people are less inclined to volunteer and that this trend is getting worse.
Volunteering Australia found that formal volunteering among young people "decreased significantly between 2016 and 2021, which includes the impact of COVID-19. Between April 2021 and April 2022, people aged 18-24 were the only age group for which the rate of formal volunteering did not increase."
But our research into young people aged 18 to 24 offers a positive possibility, albeit with a dark backdrop.
Our research in Australians aged 18-24 shows that political anxiety is negatively associated with self-rated mental health. Political anxiety can be caused by constant exposure to political events but can motivate young people to take political action (eg volunteer, protest) to change the causes of these negative emotions.
Volunteering is positively associated with self-rated mental health and life satisfaction.
Our annual surveys of young people since 2021 have consistently found high levels of young people interested and engaging in volunteering and civic activities. The 2023 Australian Youth Barometer, for example, shows that 73 per cent of young Australians volunteered in organised activities at least once in the past 12 months.
They just want to do it differently.
From my experience working with non-profit organisations over the last 20 years, I have noticed disconnects between the workforce models used by many charities and non-profit organisations and the ways young people live and work today, such as those who work multiple jobs while studying.
Other disconnects are between how young people engage in matters of concern to them and the flexibility required by them for volunteering to become possible.
Firstly, their civic and political engagement tends to be more issue-based rather than via traditional ways such as belonging to a union or political party. But when the issue they're most interested in (or which causes anxiety) is available by traditional pathways such as voting (such as the same sex plebiscite), they tend to show up in greater numbers.
Secondly, young people are more likely to seek organisations that share their values and address issues of concern to them.
Thirdly, with a shift towards post-industrial ways of working, young people seek more flexible hours and approaches to engage in civic matters. For example, they may participate online.
So, with the knowledge that young people are volunteering and are keen to do so, we can imagine new ways of engaging them.
Keep in mind that their motivations tend to sit on a spectrum: at one end, many seek volunteering opportunities to build their CVs and employability; at the other end of the spectrum, some develop a civic habit for volunteering once they feel as though they are part of a wider social purpose.
Motivations go from what's in it for me, to what's in it for us. So a young person could enter volunteering to improve their work prospects, but develop a longer-term civic habit of giving back to society through volunteering.
This leads to the second key finding of our research. Young people see strong links between volunteering, reducing anxiety and improving their wellbeing. It makes them feel good.
Wellbeing is a major concern of young Australians.
These pieces of the puzzle need to be joined by rethinking how, where and when volunteering takes place.
One of the things the pandemic taught us in areas such as youth mentoring was that it's possible for mentoring to take place at great distances.
The mentor could be on the other side of the country and still support their mentee. This also opens up possibilities for different kinds of volunteering and support.
And where face-to-face volunteering is required, lowering costs of volunteering, assisting travel and transport, offering flexibility, mutual benefit and promoting shared values could significantly boost our volunteering workforce at a time when Australians doing it hard need it the most.
And in doing so, we can make progress in improving the well-being of young Australians themselves - and maybe address the root causes of anxiety as well.
- Professor Lucas Walsh is director of the Centre for Youth Policy and Education and coauthor of the report: Anxiety, wellbeing, and engaging young people in volunteering.
