Zoe Waters believes volunteering needs a rebrand. Too often, she says, it is associated with retirees with time on their hands whereas she wants corporate Australia and those under the age of 70 to view it as an opportunity to engage with the community.
As one of the first ‘Directors’ of Volunteer Services in a large organisation – at Victorian regional healthcare service Barwon Health – she’s proof it’s possible to make volunteering a concept embraced by young and old alike.
A finalist in this year’s NAB Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards, she took the director position after successfully leading a rebrand of the organisation’s volunteer program and building a reinvigorated army of supporters to work with the community: including high school and university students, corporate partners, people with disabilities and staff who’d recently been made redundant from Ford and Target.
She did it all as a self-described “young leader” with no experience in hospitals; she was thrown into an at-first sceptical team with half a century of collective experience between them. Passion, energy and a belief in the possibility for change made it happen.
“The volunteer sector is seen as an old fashioned industry that people go to when they retire,” she says, noting we often skip over what volunteers get out of such work. “The benefits of volunteering are massive … It’s about experience, providing mentoring, an opportunity for corporates and community citizenship.”
As such, she’s moved the volunteer program at Barwon from one that’s available for people to help the ‘sick and needy’ to one that offers more mutually beneficial rewards.
Zoe works with a network of 1000 volunteers, averaging one day of work a week, as well as a small number of paid volunteer coordinators. The volunteers contribute the equivalent of $1.5 million in paid work. Her team managed to recruit 220 new volunteers in 2013, most under the age of 60.
She’s also made it a personal mission to have Barwon executives and board members acknowledge the contribution of volunteers, all of whom recently signed Volunteering Victoria’s ‘Thanks a Million’ petition. Volunteerism is now seen as an organisational priority at Barwon.
For Zoe, volunteering’s always been a personal priority, having had such duties instilled in her by her grandparents as a child. She never believed she needed to reach a certain age or particular level of experience before seeking out opportunities to help.
While plenty of organisations have ‘managers’ in charge of volunteer services , she can’t think of one that gives such responsibilities a ‘director’ title.
“Success to me looks like when volunteering is the top priority within a large scale organization,” she says.
Zoe Waters is a finalist in the Female Regional/Rural Entrepreneur or Manager of the Year categorty in the 2014 NAB Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards. Check back with Women’s Agenda for more on the finalists.
Have you got your tickets for the 2014 NAB Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards? Early bird ticket sale closes at 5pm today.