May, 2021. Volunteering Australia has been working in partnership with the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods (CSRM) to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volunteering. New data suggests that voluntary work has been impacted harder by the COVID-19 recession than paid work. Research shows a much greater decrease in the proportion of Australians who undertook volunteering than the decline in the proportion of Australians in paid work.