Research on Volunteering

The voices of international hospice and palliative care volunteers come through clearly in a new book, The Changing Face of Volunteering in Hospice and Palliative Care. Published in mid-2018 by Oxford University Press and edited by Ros Scott and Steven Howlett, it presents an international perspective, history, and information on hospice and palliative care through the eyes of different country experts. And it also includes insightful volunteer narratives to illustrate and aid the reader in understanding the volunteers’ perspectives.

In this Voices, co-editor Allyson Drinnon reviews this valuable resource, with a special emphasis on the voices and stories of hospice volunteers that unfold in this publication. 

In our last issue, Research to Practice focused on episodic volunteers, as one-time or short-term volunteering is often called. This time, e-Volunteerism looks at a study of super-volunteers, defined as “individuals who volunteer 10 or more hours per week with a single organization” (Einolf & Yung, 2018, 789).

Based on in-depth interviews with 26 super-volunteers and nine volunteer managers, reviewer Laurie Mook presents the results of this research that sought to answer these four questions: (1) What characteristics and experiences of individuals cause them to become super-volunteers?; (2) What criteria do super-volunteers use in choosing an organization for which they will volunteer?; (3) What are the advantages and challenges in employing super-volunteers?; and (4) How can nonprofits best manage super-volunteers? The insights produced by this study, Mook argues, are useful for both those seeking and currently managing super-volunteers.

Volunteer Engagement Professionals (VEPs) commonly feel underpaid and undervalued and believe that their work is misunderstood. In times like these, they often turn to organizations like the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration (MAVA) for support, education, and connection.

To better understand the issues facing VEPs, MAVA embarked upon an important research study in June 2017, a study designed to validate the experience many VEPs described and to examine root causes. MAVA learned that: 1) there truly are equity issues in how VEPs are received, paid, included, and understood in the workplace; 2) the lack of true understanding about the essential nature of volunteers and those who lead them undermines the effectiveness of nonprofits and government entities; and 3) there are affirmative steps that can be taken to address the issues.

This e-Volunteerism feature by MAVA’s Karmit Bulman provides a comprehensive review of this important research study, “Stacking Up: How Volunteer Engagement Professionals Compare with Other Key Staff."

Episodic volunteering – as one-time or short-term volunteering is often called – is becoming the norm as times change and individuals move away from traditional volunteer roles that require consistent, long-term commitments. Technology has made it easy to find and sign up for events on the spur of the moment. It also makes it easier for organizations to organize such events and perform volunteer management functions such as recruiting, scheduling, and follow-up. Some of these events involve thousands of volunteers, and include marathons, sporting competitions, and festivals. 

One such mega event was the World Meeting of Families and the visit of Pope Francis to Philadelphia in 2015. In this Research to Practice column, reviewer Laurie Mook looks at the results of a study of the experiences of over 2,400 volunteers at this mega event in the City of Brotherly Love. Mook’s examination provides useful insights for episodic volunteer management.

What can an organization learn by examining why some people choose not to volunteer? In this issue’s Research to Practice, Laurie Mook reviews an article by researchers from Australia and the Netherlands that focuses our attention on these non-volunteers.

While we know a lot about volunteers, their motivations, and issues related to volunteer management, we know far less about non-volunteers. Using the concept of ‘volunteerability’ – defined as an "individual’s ability to overcome related obstacles and volunteer, based on their willingness, capability, and availability" (Haski-Leventhal et al., 2017, 2) – the authors in this study reviewed literature, held focus groups, and conducted a survey to understand the barriers that non-volunteers face in their willingness, capability, and availability to volunteer.

Although the article is positioned in terms of informing social policy, the findings are also useful at the organization level. Understanding the non-volunteer perspective can be helpful in attracting and retaining new volunteers to your organization. 

Why do volunteers break the rules? This Research to Practice reviews an ethnographic study of an animal shelter where disruptive behavior by volunteers was a regular occurrence. This disruptive behavior was defined as “any behavior that either explicitly violated a rule or was identified by more than one staff member as disruptive” (Jacobs, 2017, 31). Researcher Molly Jacobs volunteered four days a week for a year at the shelter, keeping extensive notes of her observations and interactions. She also interviewed paid and unpaid workers. In her analysis, Jacobs was able to identify different ‘rule breaking’ categories and analyze why this occurred.

This Research to Practice review of this study provides an opportunity to think about these types of disruptions in your own volunteer context, and perhaps determine different ways to handle them.

What role can volunteering and leaders of volunteer engagement play in developing future leaders? This Research to Practice reviews a new instrument developed specifically to help volunteer resource managers identify future leaders in their volunteer base.

Recognizing that many of the qualities that prompt individuals to volunteer are also qualities of leaders, leadership development researchers Janina Fuller and Curtis Friedel set out to develop a way to identify volunteers who had the desire and potential to develop as leaders. To do so, they conducted two surveys with volunteers from HandsOn Network affiliates across the U.S. The first survey aimed to understand volunteers’ perceived advantages and disadvantages of developing leadership as volunteers. The second survey posed questions to volunteers to capture leadership behaviors and intentions. As the authors write, “Organizations that purposefully recognize their volunteers’ leadership skills generate positive consequences not only for themselves and their volunteers, but also for the clients and the communities they serve.”

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.