Abstract
Digital technologies have inspired a change in volunteering in nonprofit organizations. In this context, the engagement of volunteers is mainly self-organized, through online platforms or apps. It is the aim of this paper to analyze the volunteers’ motives, differentiating between self-interest and other-interest. This is important, since effects on organizational volunteer-related outcomes, such as volunteer engagement, recruitment and retention, are likely to occur. A gift exchange perspective is applied and a case study has been used for investigating an online-based nonprofit organization in Germany, consisting of qualitative interviews with experts and volunteers, documentary analysis and participatory observations as well as an online survey. The results show that the volunteers’ instrumental self-interest in gaining food, and their interests in other factors, such as the reduction of food wastage as a societal goal, occur simultaneously. This leads to paradoxes and problems on the organizational level. This study contributes to understanding volunteer engagement, recruitment and retention in digital nonprofit organizations.
Highlights
Digital technologies have inspired a change in volunteering in nonprofit organizations.In this sense, the engagement of volunteers is mainly self-organized through online platforms or apps
The gift exchange perspective is applicable to understanding this development, since it refers to a reciprocal exchange of two parties considering altruism and egoism [4,5,6]
Volunteering is about engagement for the purpose of a societal goal, but, as it is in the case investigated here, this is a possibility to receive food and save money while reducing food wastage
Summary
Digital technologies have inspired a change in volunteering in nonprofit organizations.In this sense, the engagement of volunteers is mainly self-organized through online platforms or apps. Digital technologies have inspired a change in volunteering in nonprofit organizations. The use of digital technologies exemplifies the ability of the nonprofit sector to create new relationships among different actors to achieve societal goals [1]. It shows differences from other volunteer-based organizations (i.e., less personal contact), and the volunteering opportunities are more suited to a self-interested type of volunteer. This is expected to change the relationship between volunteers and nonprofit organizations [2,3]. The gift exchange perspective is applicable to understanding this development, since it refers to a reciprocal exchange of two parties considering altruism and egoism [4,5,6]
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