Melanie Oppenheimer

We all did voluntary work of some kind: voluntary work and labour history.

This article introduces a special section on voluntary work and labour history which was timed to coincide with the United Nations International Year of the Volunteer (2001). Voluntary work has only recently been considered a relevant topic for labour history. Its past neglect reflects the widely held view that voluntary work is unproductive. Voluntary work challenges traditional labour history and directly confronts the changing nature of work in our society. By positioning voluntary work as the central category of analysis, this thematic section further extends the boundaries of labour history, and, it is argued, provides an improved framework of analysis. Focusing attention away from the labour movement and labour processes and towards the social and cultural processes of everyday life gives a refreshingly new perspective on labour history.

Voluntary Action, Social Welfare and the Australian Assistance Plan in the 1970s

Abstract The Australian Assistance Plan (AAP), a little-remembered yet radical and imaginative program of social welfare reform, was introduced by the Whitlam government in 1973 and abolished three years later by the Coalition government of Malcolm Fraser. This article will chart the history of the short-lived AAP, its genesis and its demise, and argue that the AAP, while always controversial, helped to reinvigorate the voluntary sector in Australia and recast ways in which governments and voluntary organisations interacted, especially in terms of social welfare delivery.

Controlling civilian volunteering : Canada and Australia during the Second World War

Abstract Uncontrolled and undirected people, in their patriotic exuberance, started to create a host of patriotic organizations. They all needed money and proceeded to try and get it from the public in a variety of ways. The public soon began to exhibit impatience and the Government realised that it had a problem which had to be solved.

The ‘imperial’ girl: Lady Helen Munro Ferguson, the imperial woman and her imperial childhood

Abstract This article examines the role played by ‘imperial girls’: daughters of vice-regal representatives, consuls and ambassadors despatched by British governments to represent its interests in the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras. Little is known about childrens responses to their imperial childhoods and they are rarely considered in transnational and imperial history. It is argued that imperial girls had a more influential and practical education than their brothers who were often absent from the family circle at boarding school. Although they did not have formal educational opportunities, girls remaining with their families learned much more about the imperial mission, about how to act within the imperial space, and the expectations placed on imperial women through the organisational impulse of philanthropy, social reform and the transnational commodity of the imperial feminist mission. This article assesses the possible impact imperial childhoods had on later imperial women using one case study: that of Lady Helen Munro Ferguson [later Viscountess Novar]. She spent a large portion of her own childhood in imperial circles and was later an imperial woman in her own right as the Governor-Generals wife in Australia between 1914 and 1920, and the founder of the Australian Red Cross.

The Conceptualization of volunteering among nonvolunteers: expanding using the net-cost approach to expand definitions and dimensions of volunteering

Based on the four dimensions of volunteering (time, object, nature, and environment) and net-cost analysis theory, this article examines the conceptualization of volunteering among nonvolunteers and what could attract them to volunteer (attractors). Using flashcard images of volunteering activities among a nationally representative sample in Australia, we reveal nonvolunteers perceived the existing four dimensions of volunteering and, in addition, two new dimensions of volunteering emerged: ability (required skill level) and social (who one volunteers with). Of these dimensions, object, nature, and abilities were found to be the most attractive dimensions of volunteering to nonvolunteers. The study further partially supports the use of net-cost theory as a framework for linking nonvolunteer’s perceptions of volunteering to their likelihood of volunteering, with the findings suggesting that low net-cost activities are more attractive to nonvolunteers.

Opportunities to Engage: The Red Cross and Australian Women’s Global War Work

During the First World War Australian women were attracted to voluntary organisations such as the Red Cross, a transnational humanitarian organisation that focused on the sick and wounded in battle as well as civilians displaced by war. Red Cross work provided patriotic Australian women with meaningful wartime activities that not only gave them a purpose but importantly became an antidote against the rising anxieties of war. This chapter reflects on the fluidity of boundaries and borders of war as it affected a range of women’s experiences in the paid and voluntary domain. It features women who worked on the home front and those who found ways to travel to the war, to actively participate, to use their skills and expertise in creative and sometimes unorthodox ways. Through organisations like the Red Cross, Australian women created an imperial community, not imagined but very real, that offered them a space to feel fully involved in the war effort, actively and effectively. The chapter also suggests that exploring questions of self-identity and gender can help further broaden our understanding of Australian experiences of war.

Challenges to the Recruitment and Retention of Volunteers in Traditional Nonprofit Organizations: A Case Study of Australian Meals on Wheels

ABSTRACT Australian Meals on Wheels (MoWs) is a well-known, traditional nonprofit organization operating for over 60 years in a mixed economy of welfare, where it is positioned between the increasingly complex demands of state regulation and market efficiency. These contextual challenges cause critical tensions to an organization reliant on humanitarian principles and a large volunteer workforce. Findings show that this organization is experiencing conflicting and multiple identities which are having a significant impact on volunteer recruitment and retention. Specifically, data highlight the external challenges that threaten volunteers relating to regulation and funding, and internal challenges that tend to ignore volunteer value and instead picture volunteers as ageing and resistant to change. Findings suggest that the organization needs to work with all stakeholders to develop a shared organizational identity that blends humanitarianism with managerialism. New inclusive processes can enable better recruitment and retention practices, enabling the organization to “unfreeze” its traditional ways of operating to build a sustainable future for this much-needed organization.

“There is no trace of him”: the Australian Red Cross, its Wounded and Missing Bureaux and the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign

Abstract One of the lesser known stories of the Gallipoli campaign was the significant support provided to the Australian Imperial Force by the array of voluntary patriotic funds. Mobilized from the beginning of the war and operating both on the Home Front and in Egypt, the large support network of individuals and organizations varied from sandbag funds, the provision of recreational equipment and hostel accommodation, to foodstuffs and medical supplies. This article focuses on the Australian Red Cross, formed on the outbreak of war in August 1914 as a branch of the British Red Cross Society. Its considerable contribution as a humanitarian organization concentrating on sick and wounded soldiers in war included Wounded and Missing Bureaux. Using the records of the South Australian Red Cross Information Bureau, this article explores the beginning of this programme and its efforts to trace missing soldiers from the Gallipoli campaign for family members and friends. Through this case study analysis, we find another lens with which to examine the effects of the Gallipoli campaign on the Home Front and explore the broader social and familial effects of the war more generally.

The Fabric of Welfare: Voluntary Organisations, Government and Welfare in New Zealand, 1840–2005, by Margaret Tennant

the institutional background to the labour market might be broadened and enhanced to include important aspects of economic reforms. Some of the more important of these aspects are the enterprise reforms, the property reforms, the impact of foreign investments, the new labour laws and the social security system reforms in China. This said, Towards a Labour Market in China importantly offers a powerful and insightful account of the formation of the labour market in this important period in the history of China.