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This opinion article is one in a series of responses by thought leaders in response to our State of the Decade of Volunteering report. Angela Wallace is the Volunteering Services Manager at SociaLink working to grow and support volunteering across the Western Bay of Plenty.

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As a manager of a volunteer centre, I’m often asked how I think volunteering is faring in our busy and pressured world. There are very real challenges: the rising cost of living, people juggling multiple jobs, growing individualism, and increasing social isolation.

And yet, despite all of this, I believe volunteering in Aotearoa is not only holding steady – it is thriving. More than that, volunteering offers us a pathway through many of the challenges we face as communities today. It is one of the ways we pull together, working shoulder to shoulder for something bigger than ourselves.

With 2026 designated as the International Volunteer Year, Volunteering New Zealand’s State of the Decade of Volunteering report gives us timely and valuable way markers. It helps us understand what hasc hanged, what has endured, and where we need to focus our collective effort if volunteering is to remain strong, visible, and valued into the future.

Here’s what stands out to me.

Volunteering is strong

The Decade report shows that more people are volunteering in Aotearoa than ever before. While individuals may be contributing fewer hours on average, more people are giving small but regular amounts of time.

The recent International Volunteer Day theme, Every Contribution Counts, could not be more fitting. When volunteering is spread across more people, the benefits ripple outwards.

Each volunteer connects with a cause. They build relationships and friendships. They rub shoulders with people who can be very different from themselves. They gain skills, confidence, and insight – and invite others to join them in the mahi.

The impact is wide-reaching: stronger social connections, greater understanding of difference and diversity, and increased social cohesion across communities. And of course, there is the immediate and tangible benefit of the volunteer work itself for the organisations and causes being supported.

People want to play a meaningful part in their community

The report confirms what many of us see every day: volunteers are motivated by purpose. Today’s volunteers seek opportunities that align with their values, fit around their lives, and allow them to use or grow their skills.

When people care about their communities, communities thrive. While many volunteers may no longer be able to commit to long-term, regular roles, they are still deeply willing to give their time and energy when the opportunity feels meaningful and manageable.

This is where storytelling matters. Clearly communicating the purpose and impact of volunteer roles is key to engaging and retaining volunteers. When someone understands how their fortnightly two hours contributes to positive change, they are far more likely to keep coming back.

Take the volunteer at a local animal shelter. Much of their time may be spent cleaning cages and washing blankets, yet they return week after week because they know their effort helps animals feel safe, cared for, and ready for rehoming. That connection to purpose makes all the difference.

Adaptation is essential

This brings us to a clear challenge for volunteer-involving organisations: we must adapt.

As the Decade report reminds us, “The strength of Aotearoa New Zealand’s voluntary sector lies not only in its history, but in its capacity to adapt and innovate”.

The spirit of volunteering remains a cornerstone of community life in Aotearoa, but the ways people choose to volunteer – how, when, and why – are changing. Our roles, systems, and expectations need to reflect the realities of modern life.

We need to ask ourselves:

• How are we adapting our volunteer roles to meet the needs of today's volunteers?
• How are our practices becoming more flexible, responsive and welcoming for people who are time-poor, mobile, digitally savvy, and keen to contribute in purposeful ways?

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The task ahead is not to recreate volunteering as it once was, but to recognise and support what it is becoming. The energy, care, and willingness are still here. The question is whether our institutions and practices are evolving to meet them.

We continue to value and appreciate the volunteers who form the civic core – those who give regularly, often for many hours, and stay connected to organisations for years. At the same time, the data tells us this group is shrinking as our population ages. We’re also becoming a more diverse and multicultural society. To sustain volunteering into the future, our approach must evolve, meeting new generations of volunteers where they are.

In this International Volunteer Year 2026, I feel genuinely encouraged by the commitment I see across our community sector: people stepping up to support those who are struggling, welcoming newcomers, and acting as kaitiaki for our whānau and whenua.

Volunteering has the power to bring people together, to repair what has been broken, and to build something stronger than the sum of its parts. There is a place for everyone who wants to show aroha to their community through volunteering.

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He waka eke noa – we are all in this together.
Pick up a paddle! Let’s forge ahead in our waka.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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This opinion article is one in a series of responses by Community and Volunteer Sector thought leaders in response to our State of the Decade of Volunteering report.

UK-based Rob Jackson has over 30 years’ experience working in the voluntary and community sector, holding a variety of strategic development and senior management roles that have focused on leading and engaging volunteers. 

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Thank you, Volunteering New Zealand, for publishing the “State of the Decade of Volunteering” report. Any research and data that allows us to explore trends in volunteering is vital to ensuring that Volunteer Engagement Professionals, Volunteer Involving Organisations, volunteering infrastructure, funders, policymakers, and others make properly informed decisions to strengthen our communities.

I was honoured to be invited by Volunteering New Zealand to give my reflections on this new report. I do so from my perspective as a UK-based consultant on volunteer engagement, someone who has had the privilege of engaging with colleagues around the world (including New Zealand) on the crucial issues facing volunteering in our ever-changing world.

In my article, I want to reflect on three shifts in volunteer engagement that Volunteer Involving Organisations need to make. These are not all unique to New Zealand, but they are borne outby the data in the “State of the Decade of Volunteering” report. I hope they are of help and considered in the spirit in which they are shared — one of seeking a better future for society, our organisations, and volunteering.

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1. Stop seeing long-term and short-term volunteering as binary options

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“Organisations are finding it harder to secure volunteers who are willing to undertake long-term commitments, and many now rely on a small group of highly engaged but aging individuals, placing additional pressure on this core cohort.” - State of the Decade of Volunteering report

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There is much in the report about the changing nature of volunteering. People are giving less time, and they are doing so on their terms and not ours. Volunteering New Zealand sums it up well when they talk of the public taking a more casual approach to volunteering, one that is at odds with the traditional, formal and structured approach employed by many organisations.

Volunteer Engagement Professionals and Volunteer Involving Organisations understandably bemoan this situation. Demand for their work is rising as funding falls, just as the models of volunteer engagement they have relied upon for so long undergo fundamental changes. It’s not an easy situation.

We can worsen it, though. If we view people’s commitment to volunteering as binary — either short or long term — then we miss a rich and fertile land of potential that lies between.

There is huge potential in that fertile middle ground — taking people from their first engagement to a deepening relationship with our organisations where, over time, they can step up to the high commitment roles we need filled.

It is wrong to say that people won’t make regular, long-term commitments to volunteer any more. Rather, they won’t do it on day one. We must take people on a journey, one they are controlling, allowing them to adapt their commitment over time as we create and curate meaningful ways for people to engage with the causes they are passionate about.

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2. Start collaborating

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”The availability of entertainment options has changed drastically in the past decade. The rise of our digital, connected world means that there is always ‘something to do’ or ‘something on’, directly competing with the time people are able to devote to volunteering. This cultural shift towards so-called “on-demand lifestyles” has created competition between volunteering and other leisure pursuits, reshaping the volunteer offering and expectations from both individuals and organisations.” - State of the Decade of Volunteering report

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If the first shift sounds challenging, here’s some good news. You are not in it alone. Every Volunteer Involving Organisation is facing, or will face, the need to shift their engagement practice as volunteering changes.

Yet, if we see our nonprofits as in competition with each other, we will make our task of adapting to the new volunteering reality more difficult than it needs to be.

Here’s the truth — you are not in competition with other organisations seeing to recruit volunteers in your community. You are all in competition with any of those multitudes of ways people can choose to spend their spare time.

If Volunteer Involving Organisations come together to face this common challenge, then we can find creative new ways to engage people. Volunteer sharing initiatives, local passporting schemes and other collaborative efforts help make it easier for people to volunteer. We can do what we can to reduce bureaucracy and make it possible for people to move more seamlessly between organisations according to the needs and desires of the individual.

As Lucas Meijs and Jeff Brudney put it in their 2009 paper, "It Ain't Natural: Toward a New (Natural) Resource Conceptualization for Volunteer Management”, it is our collective responsibility to work together to steward the natural resource of volunteer energy in our communities.

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3. Start to invest in volunteer expenses

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“…the majority of VIOs do not routinely reimburse volunteers for all their out-of-pocket expenses.”

“Many organisations are now taking active steps to embed diversity and inclusion into their practices… This formalisation of values reflects a broader sectoral shift toward diversion, inclusion, and equity.” - State of the Decade of Volunteering report

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Progress on diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) is welcome. Yet, it will always be limited if Volunteer Involving Organisations are not providing the reimbursement of volunteer expenses.

Without covering expenses, volunteering becomes the preserve of those who can afford to engage in it. That creates uniformity, inequity and exclusion, the very opposite of what we want to achieve.

I know money can be scarce. Volunteering is often an easy budget line to realise savings from. But I will be blunt — it is hypocritical to claim to champion DEI and not provide volunteer expenses.

Challenging as it may be, money needs to be allocated to offer and provide expense reimbursement to all volunteers. Whether it’s an organisation, government (at all levels), or a funder seeking to effective positive change, volunteer expenses are not a cost to be cut but a vital and worthwhile investment in the future of healthy, vibrant New Zealand society.

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This opinion article is one in a series of responses by Community and Volunteer Sector thought leaders in response to our State of the Decade of Volunteering report.

Victoria Davy is Head of Volunteering at Blind Low Vision New Zealand, with more than 30 years of leadership experience, including over a decade in volunteer leadership within the not-for-profit sector, alongside a background in business management and life coaching.

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Thank you for the privilege of reviewing State of the Decade of Volunteering report. I found it insightful, well-researched, and thorough. While it provides a detailed picture of where the volunteering sector is now and how we arrived here, I found the insights inspiring.

The report highlights the opportunity we have to build volunteer functions across all sectors and organisations, large and small, that truly align with the roles, experiences, and values that todays and tomorrow’s volunteers are seeking. To achieve this, organisations will need to take a hard look at how they operate, manage, and support both staff and volunteers. Government agencies also need to be part of this shift. A real meeting of the minds is needed if New Zealanders are to continue receiving the services that volunteers have delivered over the past several decades.

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What’s needed for change

I read this report through a lens of opportunity. The younger generation of volunteers are seeking new ways to contribute, and while the market can adapt, it will require:

• Operational and technological shifts
• Cultural shifts in how organisations structure staff roles, teams, and relationships
• A stronger commitment to building one team culture where staff and volunteers work side by side. This is something I am particularly passionate about.

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Another key theme I saw is the need for the sector to raise a united voice. Volunteer-involving organisations must come together, rather than speak as smaller, disparate voices, if the sector, its clients, and volunteers are to be heard. There is also an opportunity, and necessity, for organisations delivering similar services to collaborate in advocating for resourcing and considerations to be built into policy decisions. With government agencies increasingly relying on volunteers to fill service gaps, there is strength in unity.

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I also see potential for smaller organisations to band together, pooling expertise and experience to adapt to a changing market, professionalise the sector, and embrace technological advances. For example, multiple organisations could jointly engage CRM specialists to develop technology platforms, lowering costs overall and increasing bargaining power.

There is urgency for the sector to address the professionalism of volunteer recruitment, management, support, and recognition if we are to continue delivering vital services to New Zealanders. I was particularly encouraged by the sections on the next generation of volunteers and what they are looking for. I am already reflecting on the elements of our own volunteering function that I will intentionally rebuild to attract these volunteers in ways that suit them, while also ensuring continuity of services delivered by volunteers for our clients.

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Reflections on the next five years

Looking ahead, I see several key issues for volunteers and volunteering in Aotearoa over the next five years, alongside the opportunities they present:

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Recruitment and retention

Issue: Finding ways to engage diverse volunteers with different motivations, availability, and expectations.

Opportunity: Build and adapt functions that are flexible rather than static, able to evolve with the times. Review volunteering structures, roles, and outputs, creating more specialised, time-bound roles (e.g., six months) and splitting larger roles to make them more manageable. Leverage technology, including AI tools like ChatGPT, to free up volunteer and staff capacity to focus on serving clients. Grow the volunteer base by attracting people of all backgrounds and skills, fostering a dynamic and inclusive volunteer community. Developing opportunities that meet the market rather than role driven opportunities that cannot be filled or sustained.

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Professionalism of the sector

Issue: Ensuring volunteer management is resourced, respected, and embedded in organisational structures.

Opportunity: Elevate volunteer management as a core function, fully integrated into organisational leadership, with dedicated resources to support volunteer success. Foster an environment where the organisations in the sector work together, leveraging each other’s expertise and experience to maximise the impact and effectiveness of volunteering.

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Technology and systems

Issue: Adopting fit-for-purpose tools that support volunteers, streamline processes, and reduce duplication.

Opportunity: Make volunteering easier, more rewarding, and more impactful by using systems that help volunteers connect directly with roles and opportunities they’re trained and approved for. Streamline processes so everyone can focus on what matters most - helping clients - rather than getting bogged down in paperwork. Work smarter, not harder, and use technology to free up time and energy for meaningful contribution.

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Collaboration and advocacy

Issue: Uniting voices across the sector to influence policy and secure sustainable resourcing.

Opportunity: Build strong sector-wide partnerships and alliances to amplify our voice, influence policy, and secure long-term investment in volunteering.

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Cultural change

Issue: Building truly inclusive “one team” environments where staff and volunteers work together seamlessly.

Opportunity: Foster workplaces where staff and volunteers operate as one team, in cultures that value inclusion, respect, and shared purpose. Champion the impact of volunteering by having a clear organisational position on volunteering, ensuring consistency, preventing misuse of volunteer roles, and providing a high-quality experience for all volunteers, no matter where they serve.

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Thank you again for sharing this report, I am thoroughly inspired by the opportunities ahead of us if we as a sector are brave and honest in addressing the current issues, I believe we can.

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