Adjunct Professor Mark Lyons, UTS School of Management, and ACCORD Research Fellow Paul Simpson, have investigated the apparent membership-decline in voluntary organisations. In a paper that formed the keynote address at the Australia New Zealand Third Sector Research Conference on 24 November in Brisbane, the authors identified a number of different reasons for belonging to a mutual organisation or perceived membership-benefits, which fall into four dimensions: material, self-enhancement, and two that stressed relational benefits, but benefits achieved either by interactions exclusively within the club (relational mutual), or through working with club members or through the club helping others or the wider community (relational altruism).

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