Motivations for volunteering in an adapted skiing program: implications for volunteer program development

Abstract

Purpose Volunteers are crucial to sustaining adapted sports programs. The purpose of the study was to understand the personal and professional motivations for volunteers in an adapted skiing program and to make recommendations to improve the volunteer experience. Material and methods Forty-eight volunteers participated in a mixed method study in Winters of 2017 and 2018. Both college students and long term volunteers completed a demographics questionnaire and the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI), a scale that assesses six categories of motivations. Additionally, eleven volunteers were interviewed regarding their experiences and suggestions to improve the program. Results Volunteers as a whole were primarily motivated by personal values, understanding [children with disabilities], and personal growth. College students reported significantly higher levels of motivation than long term volunteers for professionally oriented motives that include understanding children and learning career-related information. Qualitative interviews triangulated VFI findings with themes of volunteers’ satisfaction through seeing improvement, positive emotions through helping, and applying academics to everyday practice. Recommendations to improve the volunteer experience included expanding training, developing interprofessional opportunities to team with other healthcare professionals, and developing communication systems around logistics (ridesharing, weekly schedules, ski conditions) and successes of children. Conclusion Volunteers’ motivations are multifactorial and may vary according to volunteers’ life stages. Acknowledgement of personal and professional motivations may promote targeted recruitment, enhanced volunteered programming, and interprofessional opportunities. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION Volunteers are motivated by humanitarian values to serve others in addition to other motivating factors such as personal growth, self-protection, understanding (beneficiaries), social networking, and career development, the relative importance of which may vary according to a volunteer’s life stage. Knowledge of volunteers’ motivations can be utilized to develop targeted recruitment strategies and enrich volunteer programming that meets the personal and professional needs of volunteers. A volunteer program with college-age and long term volunteers enables mutually beneficial opportunities for mentoring, interprofessional teaming, career development for younger volunteers, streamlining program logistics, and bonding experiences with children.