Providing voluntary work opportunities

A not-for-profit (NFP) organisation can provide voluntary work opportunities for eligible job seekers. Learn more about who’s eligible.

You can provide voluntary work opportunities if you’re either:

  • a community based organisation, with appropriate insurance
  • a government sector agency.

In either case, the organisation or agency must be not-for-profit and may need to provide evidence of insurance.

What you can do

You can give job seekers valuable opportunities in your organisation or government sector agency. This can include volunteer or unpaid work activities.

Tasks volunteers can do

There are many activities a job seeker can do while volunteering with your organisation, for example:

  • gardening and maintenance
  • animal or wildlife shelter activities
  • rehabilitation of public parks
  • office administration
  • retail work.

Volunteers can’t do tasks that paid workers would normally do.

What you need to tell us

An organisation or government agency must be able to declare they meet the requirements of an approved voluntary work organisation. You can do this by completing a form.

Verification of voluntary work form

To help us understand if the volunteer work can be approved, the organisation or agency must declare the volunteer work meets our requirements.

You must complete the relevant section in the Verification of voluntary work form. The job seeker also needs to complete their section of the form.

If we need other information, we’ll let you know if we need supporting documents for voluntary work.

What other government programs are available

There are other government programs that you may already be taking part in, such as Work for the Dole. Your role and eligibility requirements will be different for this program.

You can access the Work for the Dole Host Organisation Handbook on the Employment and Workplace Relations website.

Page last updated: 1 July 2024.
QC 23561