Build it and they will come: a case study of the impacts of governance on programming volunteer recruitment within community media organisations

Abstract

Volunteer recruitment to functions such as programming is imperative to the survival of the majority of community media organisations. These functions are embedded in the regulatory and 'custom and practice' environments in which community stations in Australia operate. The structures in which policies and processes for programming volunteer recruitment are developed are complex and frequently volunteer-led. Within the context of developing these processes for a suburban community radio station in a major capital city of Australia, a participatory action research project was conducted longitudinally over five years to identify the positive and negative impacts that governance may have on the recruitment of programming volunteers. Three years after the completion of the action research project, we undertook a post-project analysis that identified an active dismantling of the policies and processes almost immediately after the project finished, a continued shift towards hierarchical decision-making and the observable impact of skills shortages within a volunteer board. The project also exposed significant ideological fractures that had lasting effects on the station and its role as a community voice