b'COMMUNITY| LEGAL SECTOR| 2019SUSTAINABILITY INSIGHTNON LEGAL VOLUNTEERING According to the most recent State of Volunteering in Australia report, volunteers comprise an average of fifty-seven percent of staff contributing an estimated 743 million hours to the Australian economy. Volunteers work increases the volume of services they can provide as well as bringing new insights, increasing their effectiveness and efficiency as well as enhancing their reputation.Skilled non-legal volunteering is a critical input to the not for profit and community sector and is highly valued by recipients. Many of these organisations depend on the experience and knowledge of lawyers, managers and support staff for a broad range of non-legal roles including governance, planning, management and administration functions. In many cases law firms combine these types of non-legal volunteering programs with pro bono legal and financial contributions through structured Community partnerships which greatly improves the delivery of targeted impacts, a trend that also increasing in businesses across in Australia. The 2016 Giving Australia Report described a series of drivers for supporting volunteering and giving:seeking to do good by making a positive contribution to the communitygenerating social impactemployee expectationsa business desire to attract and retain the best people (employee engagement) a strategy for the community to allow the business to operate and implement its plans.In a similar way to pro bono legal programs, non-legal volunteering programs also provide employees with an opportunity to practise different skills, build new teams and bolster the firms reputation within the community. Sharing the positive impacts and stories from nonlegal volunteering is generally less constrained than for legal volunteering which provides additional opportunities for a firm to promote these achievements to internal and external stakeholders. The most recent Giving Australia Report also found that business volunteering in the workplace is increasing, with almost three-quarters of large businesses allocating paid time for volunteering (ninety percent of these increasing resources to volunteering over the last ten years). The average participation rate by staff was twenty-one percent. Half of all corporations managing a formal program sought to integrate workplace volunteering through more in-depth community partnerships.VOLUNTEERING COORDINATION INITIATIVESSkilled volunteeringSecondments to NGOsLocal group sportingdays & eventsStudent tutoring& mentoringBlood donationsVarious charity events& appealsAllocation of paidvolunteer timeBoardsNon legal volunteeringprograms0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%Perecentage of firmsYes 76% No 12% Not Reported 3%Currently in Development 9%36'