Understanding models for spontaneous volunteering

The dominant image of spontaneous volunteering in Australian emergency management – of many disorganised outsiders converging on an affected community – is overly narrow and unhelpful for emergency planning.

This research provides evidence and a tool to better understand these volunteers and how they come together. It uses case studies of Samaritan’s Purse after the 2015 Pinery bushfire in South Australia and Lismore Helping Hands after the 2017 NSW floods to demonstrate the narrowness of the dominant image.

The research developed a typology of spontaneous societal responses to disasters that planners can use to help them understand the links to the affected communities and motivations for action, and thus prepare for, diverse forms of spontaneous volunteering that may be more realistic for their hazard conditions, communities and jurisdictions. This typology is included in Australia’s first national handbook on planning for spontaneous volunteers, Communities Responding to Disasters: Planning for Spontaneous Volunteers, published in 2018 by the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience.

Further reading

Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (2018), Communities Responding to Disasters: Planning for Spontaneous Volunteers Handbook, Australian Institute of Disaster Resilience, Melbourne

Dynes RR (1970), Organized behavior in disaster. Lexington, Lexington Books

Handmer JW, McLennan BJ, Kruger T (2017), The changing landscape of emergency volunteering in Australia, Hazard Note 27, Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC

McLennan BJ, Whittaker J & Handmer JW (2016a), The changing landscape of disaster volunteering: opportunities, responses and gaps in Australia, Natural Hazards, 84(3): p. 2031–2048

McLennan BJ, Molloy J, Whittaker J & Handmer JW (2016b), Centralised coordination of spontaneous emergency volunteers: the EV CREW model, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 31(1), 24-30

McLennan BJ, Kruger T, Handmer JW & Whittaker J (2017), Strategies for non-traditional emergency volunteers: A risk-benefit framework for decision making, Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, Melbourne

Whittaker J, McLennan BJ & Handmer J (2015), A review of informal volunteerism in emergencies and disasters: Definition, opportunities and challenges, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 13, 358-368