Research on Volunteering

In this Research to Practice, Laurie Mook reviews two articles that bring together issues related to measuring the impact of volunteering, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are a set of 17 goals that address social, economic, and environmental challenges at the global and local levels, and are gaining currency across the public, private, and social economy sectors. Volunteer resources managers are well-positioned to embed the SDGs into impact measurement, with the potential benefits of increased volunteer engagement and retention, as well as increased funding. Strategically, reporting on performance related to the SDGs can also be used to influence local and national policy agendas.

Adults 65 and older are an increasing demographic, with many retired from work and reinvesting some of their time into volunteering. A new challenge for volunteer administrators is managing these older adults and, eventually, managing their decisions to withdraw or retire from volunteering.

This segment of older, volunteering adults was a major concern of U.S. and Canadian volunteer administrators who responded to a survey in a study reviewed in this issue’s Research to Practice. Almost 80 percent of the respondents were concerned with volunteers retiring or aging out, and the resulting impact on their volunteers, volunteer programs, and organizations. Few indicated that their organization had policies related to this issue, which led to a logical conclusion: though a lot of attention is paid to recruitment and retention of volunteers, it is now time to add volunteer retirement to the conversation.

High school students do not often think of nonprofits as an option for career-building. Although they may have been exposed to nonprofits through volunteering or community service requirements, they are generally guided by career counselors and their parents to have career aspirations outside of the nonprofit sector.

In this issue of Research to Practice, Laurie Mook looks at a mixed-method study of nonprofit professionals from various chapters of the Young Nonprofit Professional Network and explores how students initially became aware of nonprofit careers and the connection between volunteering and career selection. The implications for volunteer resource managers and their role in fostering the next generation of nonprofit leaders are discussed. The conclusion? At a time when the need for nonprofit leadership continues to grow, volunteer resource  managers can play an important role in nonprofit career decision-making for students.

With more and more volunteer recruitment done online, it is important to take a step back and look at who has or doesn’t have the opportunity to volunteer as a result of not having household Internet access. Has digital access changed the demographics of who is being asked to volunteer or to serve in leadership positions such as on a board? In this issue’s Research to Practice, Laurie Mook reviews a study on the influence of household Internet access on formal and informal volunteering. The results confirm that “volunteer recruitment may not always be an inclusive process” and that nonprofits have a role in bridging this digital divide.

In this Voices, co-editor Tracey O’Neill reviews a new book called The Disruptive Volunteer Manager by well-known volunteer manager Meridian Swift. As O’Neill explains, the new book lays out six steps to increase awareness of volunteers and to try and elevate volunteerism by disrupting the volunteer management norm in a forward-moving way. Swift, who has more than two decades of volunteer management experience, calls it a “step by step journey to setting a new normal, one in which leaders of volunteers unleash the potential that awaits.”  And O’Neill provides an assessment of Swift’s new book that promises to “reframe, redefine, reshape, and re-imagine” volunteer management.

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.