Lo, the Poor Volunteer Manager: Hollywood’s Nonprofit Volunteer and Volunteer Manager

Abstract

The literature of film studies has emerged in many academic fields as a relevant prism to examine the image of those professions in popular culture. Nonprofit management, though, has paid much less attention to film images. This article explores the cinematic image of the nonprofit volunteer and the volunteer manager in American feature films. It identified eight such movies, produced in 1953 through 2010. This universe is modest, but Hollywood’s extant nonprofit volunteer roughly mirrored the literature, with volunteers tending to be female and white and gaining emotional satisfaction through volunteering. By contrast, managers of nonprofit volunteers were depicted less often in Hollywood’s nonprofit sector, and the image was usually not flattering. We explore the implications of these findings, especially for the profession of managing volunteers in nonprofit organizations and conclude with a suggested agenda for research on the film image of volunteering, volunteer management, and nonprofit organizations.