| The Bushcare project research team pictured in the Wollongong Botanic... The Bushcare project research team pictured in the Wollongong Botanic Gardens (from left) are Melanie Randle, Professor Sara Dolnicar, Lynne Kavanagh and Paul Formosa |
Joint research project to aid Bushcare in quest for future volunteers
31 Mar 2008 | Bernie Goldie
A joint research project between the University of Wollongong and Wollongong City Council Bushcare aimed at determining the best means of attracting volunteers to the Bushcare program, has recently been completed.
The project focused on: “Attracting Volunteers to Wollongong Bushcare: Deriving Insight into the Volunteering Market and Formulating Future Marketing Strategies”.
The $97,000 funding for the project derived from an $82,000 Australian Research Council Linkage Grant and a $15,000 contribution from Wollongong City Council.
Participants in the project were Professor Sara Dolnicar and PhD student Melanie Randle from the School of Management and Marketing and from Wollongong City Council Bushcare Paul Formosa (Natural Areas Co-ordinator) and Lynne Kavanagh (Bushcare Officer).
Bushcare is an environmental program run by local council which relies on volunteers to help conserve and restore the local natural areas. Volunteers are involved in various activities including collecting and planting seeds, removing weeds, restoring creeks and preserving wildlife habitats.
Ms Randle said the project was important because in recent decades there has been a rapid growth of the non-profit sector with many more organisations relying on the help of unpaid workers, or volunteers, for the provision of important social services.
In Australia, the value of volunteering is estimated to be in the tens of billions each year with a total of 836 million hours being contributed by 6.3 million individuals annually.
Ms Randle said that the result of this growth has been increased competition for what is a limited pool of volunteers and she said that many organisations, including Bushcare, were finding it more and more difficult to attract and retain sufficient numbers of volunteers.
Volunteering organisations are now being presented with a typical marketing problem. That is, how to:
• identify the right customers (those individuals most likely to become involved in volunteering);
• design a product that will be attractive to them (a volunteering experience that is rewarding and beneficial to them in some way);
• attract them (entice them to begin volunteering); and
• keep them loyal (have them continue to volunteer over a long period of time).
Ms Randle said that without volunteers many non-profit organisations such as Bushcare would be unable to operate and important social services, in this case the conservation and restoration of local natural areas, would not be provided.
The research project focussed on volunteering within the context of a particularly multicultural community, the Illawarra. The key research questions were:
• Do cultural groups differ in their attitudes towards volunteering and their level of involvement in volunteering activities?
• Do different volunteering organisations have distinctive images?
• Who are Bushcare’s main competitors when it comes to attracting volunteers?
• What is the most effective way of attracting more people to become involved in the Bushcare program?
The project team found that:
• For individuals who still strongly associate with their original background, differences were found in attitudes towards volunteering and level of involvement. Generally these people were primarily interested in volunteering for organisations that support their own cultural group.
• However, the second and third generations of these groups were not significantly different (either from each other or from mainstream Anglo-Australians) in their attitudes towards volunteering or their level of involvement.
• Volunteering organisations can be categorised as having one of four types of images:(1) “Do-gooders”, (2) “All-rounders”, (3) “Local Community” and (4) “Adventurers”
Demographic and psychographic descriptions were provided of individuals who prefer the different image types. For example, people who say they have a preference for Bushcare in the “Adventurer” position (and who therefore have a higher chance of volunteering for Bushcare) are most likely to be female, aged 26-45 years, are married or living with a partner, have no children, and are likely to be using local media (85% read local newspapers, 65% listen to local radio, and 57% watch local television).
Volunteering organisations such as Bushcare will now use this information to understand which organisations they are competing with for volunteers and which groups within the community would be most likely to become involved with their particular cause.
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