VOLUNTEERING INFRASTRUCTURE

“Belief for a cause” andwanting to be neighbourly/wanting to help are citedas the main reasons forgetting involved. Over halfof people feel “seeing results”is the mostimportant benefit.asked respondents about their involvement in volunteering activity, rather than participationin community or unpaid work. Many people who participate in their community do not selfidentifyas a volunteer.The Census of 2011 omitted a question on volunteering. For this reason, problematic as theCensus 2006 data may be, there is no comparable data with which to identify trends since 2006.Why do Irish people volunteer?The most recent data comes from 1997/1998 and reported that “belief for a cause” and altruisticfactors such as wanting to be neighbourly or wanting to help/being asked to help as the mostimportant reasons for getting involved. Just over one tenth of volunteers cited liking or enjoyingvolunteering as the most important reason and less than eight% cited having spare time as areason. Women were more likely to be proactively altruistic (wanting to help or be neighbourly)while men were more likely to volunteer after being asked for help. In terms of the perceivedbenefits of volunteering, over half of men and women cited seeing results as the most importantbenefit. Men were more likely to cite enjoyment of volunteer activities asthe prime benefit while women were more likely to cite the feeling of “doinggood”.In 1997/1998 social networks remained the most important route intovolunteering, followed by becoming involved in an organisation (forexample, by membership or attending meetings). Women were more likely touse social networks while men were more likely to choose the organisationalroute. As only one question on volunteering was contained in Census 2006the data gathered does not allow for any explanations as to why peoplebecome involved in volunteering.Why not volunteer or why stop volunteering?Over a third of respondents who had ceased volunteering perceived ‘new demands on time’ tobe the chief reason. Other barriers included loss of interest and getting older (10% each). Halfof those who did not volunteer cited ‘having no time’. However, over one quarter (26.7%) ofthose who did not volunteer, reported never even thinking about volunteering and over onefifth (21.9%) reported that they had never been asked. Perceived drawbacks of volunteering wasthe belief that too much was expected of volunteers and they were taken for granted (almost50% indicated these as drawbacks). Insufficient volunteer numbers and a negative outlook byothers in the organisation were other prevalent perceived drawbacks (15.8% each). Interestingly,despite those with third level education being most likely to volunteer they were also the mostlikely to have cited ‘never thinking about volunteering’ or ‘never being asked to volunteer’ as themain reasons why they did not volunteer.Volunteer-involving organisationsIn the Centre for Non-profit Management’s Mapping 23 survey almost half of the respondents(1,975) reported data on their volunteers. Using this data a profile of volunteer-involvingorganisations in Ireland can be established. It must be noted that in this report ‘volunteerinvolvingorganisations’ referred to organisations where volunteers were reported but did notinclude board members as volunteers.23. See O’ Donoghue et al. (2006) The Hidden Landscape194 Volunteering infrastructure in Europe 14 Ireland