Communities have always played an important role in responding to emergencies. Shifts in volunteerism and growing exposure to increasingly frequent and impactful severe weather events has transformed how communities respond to disasters. The self-mobilisation of communities continues to challenge traditional emergency management arrangements. Consideration of how informal community volunteering can be integrated into formal search, rescue and formal emergency management structures was the subject of a recently completed Churchill Fellowship. Andrew McCullough travelled to some of the most disaster affected locations in the world to understand how emergency response and disaster management agencies can best engage, support and empower communities who take collective action and mobilise to help. Andrew met with government representatives, volunteering organisations, emergent group leaders and informal volunteers to understand their experience and learnings from recent emergencies and disaster events. The research considered the impact of informal volunteering during searches for missing people and rescue response through to catastrophic disaster events, and how this could be better coordinated by emergency management organisations - including formal volunteers. The research also investigated the growing role of ‘disaster influencers’, how agencies provide training for the community and informal volunteers, and lessons learned from the implementation of the international spontaneous volunteering approaches. This work has been since utilised several times during the response to incidents in Australia, which will be detailed in the presentation. In preparation for informal volunteers, emergency management agencies need to consider new approaches to work with community organisations, develop contemporary emergency management policies, develop processes for task matching, improve public information and develop training to build capable volunteer leaders. This interactive presentation will share global insights and recommendations for how emergency management leaders and formal volunteers can engage with informal volunteers - with a particular focus on how search and rescue teams can utilise community volunteers and resources during the response to an incident.