Mitchell Shire Council will investigate its assistance to community groups in regards to volunteers and navigating bureaucratic ‘red tape’.
A council officer will prepare a report outlining the ways council currently assists community groups, future assistance that can be provided, and any other additional measures to supply greater assistance to groups.
Volunteering Australia data shows that two thirds of people who volunteered through organisations or groups stopped volunteering during the early stages of the COVID pandemic, compounding a longer-term decline in volunteering participation.
Data shows that a third of people aged between 40 and 54 volunteer, but participation significantly decreases for the younger demographic, with only one in five aged 15 to 24 years choosing to volunteer.
Cr Bill Chisholm’s notice of motion for council to do more to assist with volunteering across the municipality was passed unanimously, with Cr Bob Cornish excused due to conflict of interest.
“Volunteers are really the lifeblood of this shire and communities right across Victoria and Australia. Currently they’re doing it really tough in a lot of areas,” Cr Chisholm said.
“Recruitment is a real concern but also the structures where you need to comply with so much red tap and regulations.
“We as a shire should be supporting them in every which way.
“We should actually know what organisations are out there so this report really means bringing that knowledge to one central source and try support these people that are helping the community.”
Cr Rob Eldridge said a concern he had was with ‘all of the legislation and red tape’.
“There’s so much structure to volunteering now that you have to commit so much time as a volunteer that not many people have that time,” he said.
“One of the things I’d like to see as part of this report is actually workshopping this with councillors because, I think looking at this from an organisational perspective, you’re looking from the inside out and I don’t think you see new ways of doing things except in a structured way.
“I think there is opportunities to look at ways we can basically run a volunteer day and have people turn up rather than have an organisation necessarily doing it.
“So there’s all sorts of ways we can tackle this not just with another full blown incorporated organisation that has to have insurance and everything else.
“You’re not going to get the young people involved and we need to get the young people into this.”
Cr Nathan Clark agreed the red tape imposed on some volunteer groups could be ‘quite burdensome’.
“Also I think we’ve got this hyperconnected social media and it gives us a false sense of volunteering. Participating in an online chat is not the same thing as joining a volunteer group,” he said.
“It’s a poor surrogate for real community connection so I’d like to see what opportunities we could have – not just in connecting with existing volunteer organisations that are out there but in fostering new ones and kickstarting the next generation of volunteer organisations.”
