Research on Volunteering

World Leisure, an international organization devoted to the scientific study and promotion of leisure, has as part of its structure several commissions devoted to matters consistent with this mission. One of these – the Volunteerism Commission – was founded to organize and encourage research in all countries on all aspects of volunteering that relate to leisure and, to the extent they are deemed useful there, to disseminate to the applied sector the world over relevant research findings in this area. The socio-economic context of leisure and volunteering is explored and a case made for viewing volunteering as leisure activity. The structure and programs of the Volunteerism Commission are then examined. A selected bibliography of theory and research in this area is presented as part of the reference list.

One of the truly neat things about volunteering is that is allows people to make a contribution to the world in which they live. With formal volunteering this is only true, of course, to the extent that organizations allow people to volunteer, thus recognizing that ability to contribute. This issue’s Along the Web focuses on recognizing the ability to contribute of volunteers with disabilities, a group which has not always enjoyed full access to volunteer opportunities, but which is now receiving much fuller attention. We’ll look at handbooks, manuals and articles as well as organizations that are attempting to facilitate increased involvement.

An analysis of the volunteer service and community engagement efforts in eighteen selected Texas state agencies and commissions, with particular examination of their volunteer management practices.

At the recent Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City many non-Canadians would have heard our national anthem, "O Canada," for the first time. Of course, it is a young anthem, adopted only 35 years ago. Canada is a young country but we have a long history of volunteerism. During 2001, the International Year of Volunteers, I had the privilege of co-chairing what was called the National Volunteerism Initiative Table. This gave me the opportunity to examine volunteerism, to take flight and travel this young and beautiful country from coast to coast. The flight had its spells of turbulence along with periods of very smooth skies. It was really a privilege to be able to view volunteers in Canada from a position way up in the clouds. I listened to volunteers and those who work with volunteers. I had a most unique opportunity to learn about this country and its volunteers. They have many differences and much that is incredibly the same.

Volunteers have always been the backbone of sports, leisure and recreation programs, so we decided to do a quick round-up of Web resources in this area. What follows is a mix of things:

• research studies and articles
• forms and policies
• workbooks and manuals

And just for fun we threw in a bunch of stuff about volunteering for the Olympic Games, which is becoming a social phenomenon all in itself.

One of the least-researched areas of volunteer involvement in the United States is that of ethnic volunteering. Hispanic volunteering, in particular, has received much less attention than it deserves considering the vast increase in size and importance of the Hispanic population of the United States.

This qualitative study, by Safrit and Lopez, is one of the few efforts to examine Hispanic reactions to volunteering.

Steven Farmer and Donald Fedor have taken a look at factors which make volunteers decide to continue and increase their contribution of volunteer time and effort to a particular organization. This issue is a serious one to effective involvement of volunteers, since the motivation of volunteers may be negatively affected by asking for too little involvement (thus creating a sense in a volunteer that their talents and time aren't being well used) or too much (thus creating both a sense of being overworked and a sense that the contribution they are making isn't "enough").

Research for the report, Flying Under the Radar: The Significant Work of All-Volunteer Organizations, was conducted in 1999 in the San Francisco service area of CompassPoint by Cristina Chan, M.P.P., and Sonali Rammohan, C.P.A. Leadership for the study was provided by Jan Masaoka, Executive Director of CompassPoint. I first became aware of the study when I attended a workshop presented by Cristina and Sonali at the 1999 National Community Service Conference. It was very telling that, in a conference of nearly 2,800 participants, there were only about a dozen attendees at this particular workshop. Obviously, not many all-volunteer group representatives were at the conference! When I was discussing the study with CompassPoint Executive Director Jan Masaoka, she used a term that to me describes why the health and well being of all-volunteer groups are so vitally important for our consideration. She called the sub-sector a "fragile ecology" that is little understood and very much under-supported by any of the primary sectors of modern life. This is despite the fact that these groups really create the rich fabric of what we call "community" and bring people together in so many ways. 

Directors of volunteer programs tend to view volunteering from a management perspective, mainly because they're responsible for effectively managing people and resources. Volunteering, however, can be viewed from the perspective of other disciplines as well and this article is a useful reminder that looking at something from all directions is more enlightening than simply examining one.

Ethnology (the discipline, not the magazine of that name) is "the science which treats of races and people, and of their relations to one another, their distinctive physical and other characteristics." It is practiced by sociologists and anthropologists and you've probably been exposed to at least some of it through the works of people such as Margaret Mead. Ethnology tends to examine the relationships among individuals and their culture, with some emphasis on how people fit into that culture. One of the tenets of ethnology is that cultures tend to develop models of appropriate roles for its members, with some classic examples being the shaman, the warrior, the clan mother, etc.

Lynne Nakano's article examines volunteering in a residential neighborhood outside of Yokohama, Japan.