In partnership with Volunteering New Zealand, Victoria University of Wellington undertook a nationwide survey of Managers of Volunteers between November 2009 and February 2010. Funding for this survey was received from the Tindall Foundation. The initial response rate has been in excess of 800 individual replies to the survey with the replies coming from a broad range of Manager of Volunteer sources.

The research report titled "Managers Matter, Who manages New Zealand's volunteers " published during Volunteer Awareness Week 2010 offers NGOs and community sector agencies a demographic profile of who manages volunteers in New Zealand. Responses to questions on the management role indicate a huge variety of job titles and a range of employment conditions (a complex continuum between being paid/unpaid, a part-time/full-time dedicated position, or managing volunteers as part of a number of other responsibilities) - not unexpected in a sector that is so widely varied in focus and size of organisation.

A number of challenges have been identified. With 54% of respondents indicating they are aged over 50 there is some succession planning to think about. Not having enough time or money to achieve goals is a concern, particularly where there is no budget to support the volunteer programme. While it is evident there are high levels of job satisfaction, the keen desire for further professional training is not being met as long as there are time and resource constraints.

This report is significant in several ways:

• It lifts the lid not just on who manages volunteers, but also on the importance of the role. As noted in earlier reports, Great volunteer programmes do not fall out of the sky; good management makes them even better.
• It offers base-line data that will stimulate and inform future research.
• Results and reported issues are consistent with other research on managing volunteers outside New Zealand. That is, we are on a par with international development in management of volunteers.

The summary of the report  is available here (pdf document, 5KB) and the full report could be downloaded from here (pdf document, 448KB).

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