Research on Volunteering

The United Nations is leading a worldwide effort to achieve clearly stated “Sustainable Development Goals.” Hundreds of organizations are selecting how they will contribute to the effort and, within that process, many are also determining where volunteers fit in. What are the essential elements of an environment that enables volunteerism? And what type of environment will ensure that volunteers make the greatest possible contribution to achieving sustainable development goals?

In this Voices, Bonnie Learmonth, James O'Brien, Shaleen Rakesh, and Goopy Parke Weaving identify and explore some of the environmental elements that contribute to the success of volunteers and the organisations that rely on volunteers to achieve their mission. These include contextual elements like how well people understand and recognise the impact of volunteerism; actor-based elements like the role of the state, civil society, and the private sector in enabling volunteering; relationships and power dynamics between actors; as well as system-wide factors like partnerships, technology, and funding.

The article draws on a discussion paper prepared by AVI (Australian Volunteers for International Development), VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas), and the Volunteer Groups Alliance for this year’s IVCO (International Volunteer Cooperation Organisations) conference. Between them, VSO and AVI have over 100 years of experience in sending international volunteers. The paper includes case studies of volunteering in an emerging democracy, Myanmar, and of private sector partnership in India.

If you Google it, there are 10 times the number of articles on “volunteer recruitment” than “volunteer retention.” With the number of volunteers declining nationally, understanding the dynamics and rates of volunteer retention for different groups of volunteers is crucial.

In this Research to Practice, reviewer Laurie Mook presents the findings of several studies that investigate predictors of volunteer retention, with a special focus on a recent study that explores how volunteers’ feeling of “community service self-efficacy” (CSSE) affects their continued volunteer engagement. This study—based on results of a volunteer program assessment survey of volunteers in three U.S. nonprofit organizations—was influenced by research on students in service-learning courses. In terms of practice, a volunteer’s feeling of CSSE can be assessed in the recruitment process, and increases or decreases in CSSE measured periodically. As Mook explains, this information can be useful for developing and refining volunteer management practices that contribute to volunteer retention.

We love our volunteers—and we want them to know it. We all know it’s important to say “thank you” and to let volunteers know they’re appreciated. And although funds may be limited, we still want the recognition to be meaningful. The good news is that many volunteers prefer informal and ongoing signs of appreciation rather than a formal, public event.

If you’re looking to upgrade your volunteer recognition, this Along the Web column by Faye C. Roberts includes ideas you can use throughout the year. Some ideas will have special appeal for specific groups such as school, youth, or church-affiliated volunteers, but most are easily adapted to broader audiences. And as Roberts explains, if you want to learn the very best ways to recognize your volunteers, “Ask them.”

Surveys have long raised questions about volunteer management practices. The problem with surveys, argues nonprofit management and leadership professor Mark A. Hager, is that “we can’t reliably know what’s really responsible for some trend or relationships we see in pairs of variables.”

In this quarter’s Research to Practice, Hager looks at a study involving disaster response volunteering with the American Red Cross. In this study, the authors actually ask dedicated volunteers about their satisfactions and dissatisfactions, and talk about them. Hager notes that “hearing real volunteers talk about their experiences can go a lot further in filling in some of the blanks left by survey research.”

Volunteerism research has produced a wide range of palpable evidence supporting various motivations for volunteer involvement, including but not limited to humanitarian and altruistic concern for others; an unassuming yearning to help; a desire for satisfying self); an unwavering commitment to an organization’s mission; rewards; appreciation; or the reputation of an organization. While nonprofit and public organizations continue to rely heavily on volunteer support, there is still no simple answer to determine what motivates individuals to not only volunteer but also return on an ongoing basis. One tangible resource that has proven to aide in engaging volunteers is the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI), first proposed in 1998 by Gil Clary and Mark Snyder.

In this quarter’s Research to Practice, author and volunteer management consultant Tonya Howard Calhoun looks at a study that provides an online VFI for 155 registered volunteers working for different NGOs and NPOs in Saudi Arabia. The goal of administering the VFI was to determine the significance of the six functions measured by the VFI to volunteer behavior in the Saudi cultural context. The study not only illuminates the effectiveness of the use of VFI instrument across cultures, but also confirms that the VFI can help design training manuals for volunteer organizations, as well as enhance the volunteer management practices of recruitment and retention.

 

Much has been written about the differences between paid staff and volunteers and the need to develop a management style for volunteers that takes into account their unique characteristics. But to date much volunteer practice has lagged behind the research, with many organisations continuing to adopt a traditional ‘workplace’ model for involving volunteers drawn from standard HR practice that treats volunteers as unpaid members of staff.

In this issue of Research to Practice, internationally known British researcher Justin Davis Smith looks at a new study from Switzerland that examines probable elements in a distinctive volunteer management approach. The focus is specifically on the need to treat volunteers as a unique group within an organization, and to manage their relationship with other key stakeholders such as paid staff, senior leadership, and members. The study has important practical implications for the way we think about involving and managing volunteers in our organisations.

Volunteer recognition is one of the few aspects of volunteer involvement about which we actually have quite a bit of reliable information. Mostly this is because volunteer recognition is simple to evaluate since recognition is, after all, in the eye of the receiver: “Does the volunteer feel appropriately recognized or not?” You can therefore evaluate recognition techniques through straightforward opinion studies, unlike other aspects of volunteer management that have seen far too many opinion-based surveys that reveal not much more than the ignorance of those responding to the questionnaire.

There are a number of interesting and useful studies about the most effective ways to recognize volunteers. In this issue of Research to Practice, Publishing Editor Emeritus Steve McCurley discusses one such study from Volunteer Canada. 

Today’s workplaces may have as many as five generations of workers, each raised in different times with different influences affecting their work styles. The same is true of volunteer programs. Organizations are now experiencing many different generations of volunteers working together, making for a very interesting and complex environment for volunteer management.

In this quarter’s Research to Practice, reviewer Laurie Mook looks at a study by Walden University’s Dr. Tonya Renee’ Howard, who interviewed five generations of volunteers (including Generation Z) and asked about their volunteer experiences with recruitment, recognition, and retention. Based on these in-depth interviews, Dr. Howard proposes generation-based volunteer management practices that all leaders of volunteers will find useful.

 

There are many research studies on volunteerism from the perspective of volunteers. Among other things, researchers have asked volunteers why they do or do not volunteer, and why they remain in their roles or leave. However, research from the perspective of paid workers is sparse. In this Research to Practice, reviewer Laurie Mook looks at one study that contributes to filling this gap by comparing social workers who worked with volunteers to those who didn’t. The sample consisted of 287 social workers from 26 randomly selected municipal social service departments in Israel. The research identifies factors that fostered or impeded social workers’ engagement with volunteers, and provides suggestions for volunteer management practices that could lead to improved relationships between employees and volunteers.