Opinion: Call to rally stronger recognition, resourcing and attention
This opinion article is one in a series of responses by thought leaders in response to our State of the Decade of Volunteering report. Dr Blake Bennett is a senior lecturer, Education and Social Practice, University of Auckland. He is a researcher and educator invested in various facets of sports coaching and coach development. He penned an interesting article about volunteer sport coaches recently.
Introduction: what is resilience resting on?
Thank you for the opportunity to review and comment on The State of the Decade Report. The report is thoughtful and, importantly, useful. The ten-year lens helps us see patterns that shorter cycles often obscure, the data are presented clearly, and the trends are laid out in a way that makes sense.
What I find myself sitting with, though, isn’t whether the sector is resilient. The question for me is what that resilience is resting on. For instance, the report highlights a steady 6.5/10 across the decade and a small participation increase from 50.7% to 53%. On paper, that may read as stability. But stability and sustainability are not the same thing.
Resilience could be interpreted as signalling a ‘thriving’ sector. Indeed, the report leans in that direction. But resilience can also mean coping and adapting under strain. It might also signal (as the data indicate) a relatively small group of people carrying more than their fair share for longer than is healthy.
When I read the sections on ageing demographics, administrative burden, mixed government support, and moderate technology uptake, I don’t see a sector that is failing. But I’m not entirely convinced I see one that is thriving either. What I see, more likely, is a sector that is holding, and sometimes only just.
Which leads me to a broader question: if we frame the sector primarily as “thriving” and “resilient”, do we risk dulling the urgency around the very real challenges identified in the report? There are clear pressures and structural tensions in the sector, and with these come wellbeing implications for volunteers who continue on while sufficient support from new or additional contributors is not forthcoming.
If anything, the findings present an opportunity: not to reassure, but to rally stronger government recognition, resourcing, and attention to the cumulative strain being absorbed by committed volunteers.
Below are some more detailed comments and reflections.
Ageing volunteers and obligation
The ageing volunteer base is clearly identified in the report, as is the difficulty organisations face in recruiting younger people whose motivations often lean toward strategic volunteering aligned with career interests. That finding makes sense, and it is not overly surprising.
What deserves ongoing attention, though, is what this means for those who remain.
Across many small clubs and volunteer-led organisations, it is often the older generation who are holding on, sometimes explicitly out of obligation, and sometimes out of a very real concern that if they step away, the organisation may not survive. This is not anecdotal; it is something I repeatedly see in practice and in research conversations. People stay because “it has to be done.” While this is admirable, it also has implications for wellbeing.
The report quite rightly acknowledges resilience, but resilience can also mask fatigue. If a cohort continues to absorb administrative burden, compliance expectations, and operational responsibility while new volunteers are not forthcoming insufficient numbers, then we need to be careful about describing that as a healthy/thriving situation. It may be functioning, but equally, it may also be fragile.
Episodic volunteering
The report notes the rise of episodic and short-term volunteering and suggests that organisations are adapting by offering more flexible roles. At a broad level, that makes sense. Contemporary life is fragmented and people commit differently.
However, flexibility is easier in some contexts than others.
In the sport sector, for example, the requirement for governance, safeguarding enactment, financial oversight, or specialist technical/coaching knowledge, mean that responsibilities cannot simply be broken into short-term tasks. At least, without losing continuity and institutional memory. The suggestion that organisations can redesign roles to accommodate episodic volunteering is valid, but it is not universally transferable.
This is not a rejection of episodic models. It is a caution against assuming that flexibility alone resolves structural complexity.
Professionalisation and increasing expectations
The report discusses increasing professionalisation across the sector: more structured onboarding, clearer standards, performance management practices, and, in some responses, perceptions of incompetence among those who have been in roles for along time.
This presents an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, there is a legitimate need to modernise practice and meet regulatory expectations. On the other, this is a voluntary sector. For many organisations, it is difficult to expect ‘professionalisation of process’ without the provision of professional infrastructure. Here, it is important to highlight that, if operational complexity continues to increase, and responsibility continues to sit with unpaid individuals, then describing the sector as thriving may understate the structural tension present.
"Unskilled labour": a semantic but important point
The report includes the perception that volunteers are sometimes seen as a “convenient source of unskilled labour.” Given the level of skill required to navigate compliance requirements, enact safeguarding policy, manage finances, and sustain community relationships, many volunteer roles are anything but unskilled!
Semantics aside, this matters because if volunteers are being relied upon to perform increasingly complex and accountable roles, then the narrative should reflect that level of skill and responsibility. Doing so would reveal, more clearly, the implications these trends have on the recruitment, retention, and wellbeing of the volunteer workforce.
Technology and capacity
Technology uptake is described as moderate, with barriers including infrastructure gaps and reluctance to change. Another way to interpret this finding (especially in light of the ageing demographic and administrative burden) is in terms of capacity. Long-term contributors who are already stretched may not have the time or headspace to implement new systems, even if those systems promise efficiency gains.
This does not/is not intended to contradict the report’s findings. Rather, it is to suggest another possible interpretation that slow adoption may signal saturation rather than resistance.
Final comment
The report provides a strong descriptive account of the decade. Yet, my overall reflection is that the framing warrants care, and that the findings present an opportunity to draw attention to a sector that may not be as healthy as summarised.
To put it bluntly, if the sector is primarily described as resilient and thriving, it may inadvertently soften the urgency around structural pressures clearly present in the findings. A modest increase in participation does not automatically equate to sustainable load distribution, and a steady 6.5/10 does not necessarily capture the strain experienced by those carrying disproportionate responsibility.
Yes, resilience and adaptability are evident. But we should also consider an alternative interpretation: maybe what appears as sector-wide resilience, in practice, reflects the persistence of committed, community-minded people doing what they feel they have to do to keep things running.
If that is the case, then the stability reflected in participation rates and sentiment scores may not signal structural health. It may instead reflect a cohort absorbing pressure over time. This distinction is of critical importance, because if ‘resilience’ is resting primarily on those who persist, rather than on strengthened infrastructure and broader participation, then we need to ask whether the foundation is secure for the decade ahead.