Alice Springs resident Graeme Anning says his body can no longer stand up to the rigours of running a volunteer organisation to which he has dedicated the past 30 years of his life.
That, and a lack of people to haul out the barbecue trailer, put up the shades and set up for big events has led the Lions Club of Alice Springs president to shut down the organisation after 59 years of service.
Mr Anning said he was proud of the club's achievements and many worthy causes it had supported but the time had come to call it a day.
"As you get older, your body tells you that you can't do as much as you did earlier on ... it becomes a lot harder and it takes longer to recover," he said.
The volunteering sector has taken a massive hit across the country over the past decade, with many charities and not-for-profits experiencing a drop in volunteers, particularly since the COVID pandemic.
An industry leader says the current cost-of-living crisis is further hampering efforts to recruit volunteers.
"With the lack of members, people with positions in the club moving away, members getting older and not being able to recruit other members over the last 10 years, it was decided that we needed to fold," Mr Anning said.
"Having been here in Alice since 1964 – and being the first Lions club in the Territory – it's not something that you make a decision on lightly."
The Alice Springs Camel Cup was the club's major annual fixture for fundraising until its recent retirement.
The popular camel racing festival had raised up to $30,000 profit each year, which was then distributed for projects such as a walking track up Anzac Hill and a sprinkler system for the Old Timers Village.
Mr Anning said he never wanted to be the one to have to throw in the towel, but it was a decision he "could probably have seen coming".
"A lot of these things are a younger person's game – hauling out the barbecue trailer, putting up the shades, and erecting all these things for the Camel Cup, and other things that go with it," he said.
"But some of the younger people are of course [occupied] with their children, they're involved in a lot of things, and work takes up a lot more time as well these days, so they just don't find the time to be able to attend meetings."
Mr Anning said the club would be making its final donation to the community in coming months.
Bucking the trend
While many service groups struggle to recruit new members, the Lions club in Tennant Creek, 500 kilometres north of Alice Springs, is bucking the trend.
Lions Club Tennant Creek and District event coordinator Marlene Hicks said the community was lucky to have a "strong and active" club.
"Everyone just gets in and does it ... we've been growing for a while," she said.
"We've just recently had a couple [of members] leave due to work routes, but there's always new ones popping up here, which is great."
She said she had considered winding the club down in the early 90s when there was an exodus of members.
"At one stage, my husband and I were the only two members – we nearly folded," she said.
"We had a Goldrush [fundraising] event way back then, which attracted big numbers of attendance, and we had six people that were involved in that who decided to join.
"From there, it just grew and grew."
Ms Hicks, who is in her mid-70s, said the club had recently had success attracting some new "younger-ish" members.
Economy hampers volunteering
Volunteering NT executive chairman Megan Saltmarsh said many grassroots organisations were struggling to provide their much-needed services and contributions to the community.
"With the the current state of the cost of living and increases to interest rates, people are having to make some tough decisions around having to focus on paid work, and that is obviously taking up their precious time and their ability to volunteer," she said.
Ms Saltmarsh said many organisations struggled to find ways to attract younger people to volunteer.
"A lot of people across the volunteering space are looking at their model of volunteering and how they can innovate their current approach to try and understand what might be the motivations behind young people wanting to volunteer," she said.
"It's important to look at how young people access information, and trying to tap into that, and that could be an online mode like Spotify, YouTube, or even TikTok.
"It's also about looking at what is the message that you would like to portray to young people to capture their attention and to bring that motivation to how they could potentially make a difference in their own community by volunteering."
