The landscape of volunteering is undergoing significant change in Australia and internationally. Large-scale socioeconomic changes have recast the conditions in which people volunteer in the 21st century. Emergency managers can expect to engage with a much wider and more diverse range of volunteers than in the past. These volunteers bring new opportunities, but also risks. To harness the potential of these ‘non-traditional’ volunteers, emergency managers will need to develop more flexible approaches to volunteerism and seek new forms of partnership and collaboration with the voluntary and private sectors.

This paper examines the opportunities and challenges posed by non-traditional volunteering in Australian emergency management. It combines research on the key types of non-traditional emergency volunteering emerging internationally with critical, illustrative studies of this volunteering in Australia. The case studies examine the contributions and management of non-traditional volunteers, challenges for the emergency management sector to support this volunteering, and potential legal implications. Preliminary findings highlight immediate and flow-on public safety benefits that can be realised when supportive relationships are established between non-traditional volunteer groups and formal emergency management organisations. The case studies shed light on what makes these relationships work and how potential challenges, risks and pitfalls can be negotiated or mitigated. They also reveal a number of areas where emergency management organisations need to adapt internal processes to enable engagement with a larger and more diverse base of emergency volunteers.