Why Do Older Adults Commence, Re-Commence and Continue Volunteering? Prioritising Enablers and Barriers to Participation

Volunteering is recommended as a way for older adults to age healthily due to a variety of biopsychosocial health benefits. There are a range of previously identified enablers and barriers to volunteering participation that have been identified. Policymakers may benefit from knowing which strategies are likely to have the greatest immediate impact on recruitment and retention. This study aimed to prioritise enablers and barriers to volunteering and to compare priorities across four participant groups: Volunteer Pro-gram Representatives, Current volunteers, Former volunteers and Never volunteers. Participants (n=681) completed an online survey scoring enablers and barriers to volunteering using Likert scale responses to indicate the importance of each item to commencement and continuation in volunteering. Data were analysed descriptively for responses to each item for each participant group and simple pairwise comparisons were conducted between groups. Feeling welcome scored the highest for all participant groups (Participant Group (Mean, SD): Representatives (4.86, 0.56); Current (4.70, 0.72); Former (4.25, 1.22); Never 4.57 (0.83). Former volunteers valued four items higher than Current volunteers: reim-bursement vouchers, reliable transport, information technology training and online volunteering. Representatives largely scored items higher than Former and Never vol-unteers. Increasing engagement in older adult volunteering requires targeted strategies due to differences in priorities of potential volunteers. Policymakers should consider these community priorities when assessing current volunteering recruitment strategies and to inform future decision-making for funding and resource allocation.