Nonprofit Volunteer Research Articles

Publicize Your Nonprofit's Volunteer Efforts

Nonprofit Communications ReportVolume 15, Issue 11 p. 7-7 Articles Publicize Your Nonprofit's Volunteer Efforts First published: 17 October 2017 https://doi.org/10.1002/npcr.30810Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume15, Issue11November 2017Pages 7-7 RelatedInformation

Retaining Critical Human Capital: Volunteer Firefighters in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Effective delivery of services for the public good involves a multiplicity of organizations and actors, including those from the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. In some cases, service delivery is accomplished using programs that directly engage volunteers, including key public services like community-based and nonprofit volunteer fire departments. Volunteers in fire departments—often highly engaged volunteers with specialized training—provide vital services for a substantial portion of the United States, allowing local governments to realize considerable cost savings. Thus, issues of volunteer retention are a critical challenge for fire departments. Existing research has addressed issues of retention in a variety of settings; we argue that the challenging and particular context of fire departments is worthy of focused research. This article is an exploratory study of the predictors of voluntary firefighter retention in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We use data from a web-based survey of volunteer firefighters to examine the factors that influence volunteer retention, focusing specifically on volunteer management practices and broader job-related concepts. Results indicate that volunteer training, performance management, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment influence both short- and mid-term intent to remain, indicating that management practices and programs, as well as other contextual factors that shape satisfaction and commitment, are important in retaining volunteers.

기업자원봉사자의 자원봉사반응에 영향을 미치는 요인에 대한 연구

본 연구는 기업자원봉사자가 봉사활동을 수행한 다음에 보이는 차등적인 반응에 주목하여 어떤 요인이 차등적인 반응에 기여하는가를 밝히려는 목적으로 수행되었다. 자원봉사에 대한 긍정적 반응은 만족도와 기여도로, 부정적 반응은 소진으로 개념화하였다. 자원봉사에 대한 반응을 예측하는 요인으로 가족의 지지, 회사의 자원봉사 지원제도, 그리고 자원봉사현장에서의 다양한 인간관계의 영향력을 검증하였다. 250명의 기업자원봉사자를 표본으로 선정했으며 설문조사로 수집한 자료를 위계적 회귀분석을 통해 분석하였다. 분석결과 가족의 지지는 자원봉사에 대한 반응에 영향이 거의 없는 것으로 나타났지만 회사의 자원봉사지원 제도는 의미 있는 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 나아가 봉사현장에서의 봉사대상자와의 관계와 기관의 자원봉사 담당자와의 관계는 자원봉사만족도와 인지된 기여에 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 하지만 부정적 반응인 소진에는 아무런 영향을 미치지 않았다. 연구결과의 함축성으로 기업의 경우 기업자원봉사자를 적극적으로 동기화시키는 봉사지원제도를 개발하는 것이 필요하다. 비영리조직의 자원봉사관리자의 경우 자원봉사현장에서 발생하는 다양한 인간관계의 영향과 중요성을 인식한다면 기업자원봉사자의 만족도와 인지된 기여도를 높일 수 있을 것이다. This study is aimed to investigate the factors predicting the responses after volunteering activities among corporate volunteers. While positive responses to volunteering are conceptualized as both the degree of satisfaction from volunteering and the perceived contribution of volunteering, negative responses are conceptualized as the degree of burnout. Family supports, the volunteering support system of corporation, various human relations in volunteering sites are selected and empirically tested as variables predicting the differential responses after volunteer activities. Questionnaire data were collected from 250 corporate volunteers and analyzed through hierarchical regression analysis. The results showed that while family supports have no significant effects on volunteering responses, corporate support system of volunteering have significant effects. Additionally, human relations with clients and volunteers managers have strong and positive significant effects on positive responses including the degree of satisfaction and the perceived contribution. However, no significant effect has been found on negative responses represented by burnout. Findings from this study emphasized the importance of human relations management in volunteering sites for corporate and nonprofit volunteer managers to increase the positive response from corporate volunteers.

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

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.

Exploring the interplay between leadership styles and PSM in two organisational settings

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships of public service motivation (PSM) with leadership style (transformational and transactional) in two different sectors: nonprofit and public research.Design/methodology/approach– The authors have investigated the effects of leadership styles on the level of PSM, assuming that transformational leadership has a positive and higher relation to PSM than transactional one. The analysis is based on data collected in two different investigations: a group of nonprofit volunteers, sitting in the NPs boards of directors, and a group of employees working for a National Research Institute.Findings– Transformational leaders in the nonprofit organisation have higher scores on PSM than transactional leaders. For the employees of the research institution a charismatic leadership is not necessary, and even demotivating; autonomy is a central factor for researcher, and the intervention of the leader seems to be playing a motivation role only in moments of impasse.Research limitations/implications– Some more work should be done in refining the measures used in the scales. The perception of the leader attitude as controlling or supportive can be the key to better understand some controversial results: this can be object of further studies.Practical implications– The results offers some preliminary results indicating that, in research institutions, a charismatic leadership should not be considered a generalised management solution. The transformational style reach better results in those research contexts in which research programmes are carried out via team work.Originality/value– Not so much work in this field has been done yet in Italy, even less focusing on leadership in the research institutions.

Value Creation in Inter-Organizational Collaboration: An Empirical Study

Over the last decade, businesses, policymakers, and researchers alike have advocated the need for (and potential of) value creation through inter-organizational collaboration. Researchers have widely argued that organizations that are engaged in collaborative processes create value. Because researchers have tended to focus on the identification of organizational motivations and on key success factors for collaboration, however, both the nature and processes of value creation in inter-organizational collaboration have yet to be examined. A recent theory by Austin and Seitanidi (Nonprofit Volunt Sect Q 41(5):726–758, 2012a; Nonprofit Volunt Sect Q 41(6):929–968, 2012b) has proposed an analytical framework for analyzing value creation in inter-organizational collaboration, based on four types of value. The purpose of this current study is to empirically test this framework, and to provide key pointers for analyzing the nature of value, particularly in relation to learning. Our detailed empirical research is based on a 6-year retrospective case study of an inter-organizational partnership within an international development project for local economic development in Guatemala. The study’s contributions are twofold. First, it provides evidence of the critical path of the creation of diverse types of values in a collaborative process; second, it links the different types of value creation with the types of learning that occur in an inter-organizational process.

Spine surgery in Nepal: the 2015 earthquake.

At noon on Saturday, 25 April 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal. It was centered in the Himalaya northwest of Kathmandu, the capital of over 1 million people. The violent tremors were felt as far away as New Delhi, India 1,000 km from the epicenter, but the worst of its destructive force was experienced in the heavily populated Kathmandu valley and in the remote mountainous villages of the Himalaya. Ancient temples crumbled; poorly constructed buildings collapsed; men, women, and children were trapped and injured, sometimes fatally. Avalanches killed mountain climbers, Sherpa guides, and porters at Everest base camp (EBC). The death toll to date exceeds 8,600 with as many as 20,000 injured. Spinal Health International (SHI), a nonprofit volunteer organization, has been active in Nepal in past years and responded to requests by Nepali spine surgeons for assistance with traumatic spine injury victims following the earthquake. SHI volunteers were present during the 2(nd) major earthquake of magnitude 7.3 on 12 May 2015. Past and current experiences in Nepal will be presented.

CIRPLAST: Cleft Lip and Palate Missions in Peru.

The author presents a 20-year experience leading cleft lip and palate surgical volunteer missions in Peru for CIRPLAST, a nonprofit volunteer plastic surgery goodwill program that has provided free surgery for patients with cleft lip and palate deformities in remote areas of Peru. Surgical procedures were performed by the author, together with a group of experienced plastic surgeons, under the auspices of the Peruvian Plastic Surgery Society, and local health authorities. CIRPLAST missions are scheduled annually in different locations around Peru. Selected patients for surgery after adequate screening are photographed, and their cleft deformity is recorded. Scheduled patients or their parents, when they are minors, sign an informed consent form. Patients operated on in any given day are examined and photographed 1 day after surgery, before discharge. Between 30 and 35 patients are operated on at each mission site. About 2 weeks after the mission, patients are checked and photographed, and the outcome of surgery is recorded. Complications that may occur are recorded and treated by the CIRPLAST team as soon as possible. Almost all operations are performed under general endotracheal anesthesia coupled by local anesthesia containing a vasoconstrictor, to reduce bleeding and facilitate tissue dissection. All wounds of the lip and palate are closed with absorbable sutures, to avoid the need for suture removal. After cleft lip surgery, patients go to the recovery room for monitoring by nurses until they recover completely. A total of 6108 cleft lip and palate repairs, primary and secondary, were performed by CIRPLAST in 141 missions, between May 12, 1994, and October 15, 2014. The medical records of the 5162 patients (84.5%) who returned for follow-up (ranging from 12 days to 9 years) were reviewed retrospectively. Between 45% and 70% of the patients operated on a mission have returned for early follow-up and some the following year. There were 3176 males (51.9%) and 2932 females (48.1%). The incidence of isolated lip clefts was 1546 patients (25.3%); of isolated palate clefts, 2223 patients (36.4%); and combined defects, 2339 patients (38.3%). Of the 5162 patients who returned for follow-up, 377 patients (7.3%) had complications. Lip wound dehiscence was present in 58 patients (15.4). Palate fistula formation in 33 patients (8.8%): 24 (6.4%) after primary palate closure, and 9 (2.4%) after previous fistula closure. Infection occurred in 37 cleft lip patients (9.8%). Hypertrophic lip scars were seen in 56 patients (14.9%). Bleeding occurred in the recovery room after palatoplasty in 48 patients (12.7%), and in most cases, it was contained by applying pressure. No blood transfusions were used. Residual deformities of varying degree of the nose and/or lip occurred in 145 patients (38.5%). All required reoperation for correction. There were no intraoperative deaths in this series. During the past 20 years, the CIRPLAST team has offered free surgery with good outcomes and few complications, to more than 6000 cleft lip and/or palate patients in remote areas of Peru.

Adoption of knowledge management by Canadian housing charities

Many researchers have focused on the adoption and associated challenges of knowledge management tools in the commercial construction sector. However, few have investigated the usage and effectiveness of such tools and their adoption in the non-profit sector. Accordingly, ongoing action research principles are used to provide insights into preferred types, challenges of adoption, and qualitative and quantitative impacts of utilising knowledge management tools in a large and a small Canadian housing charity. Preliminary results indicate preference towards a combination of information technology and non-information technology tools for both charities. Barriers included inadequate technical capability, time and financial constraints; and improved efficacy of organisational knowledge management practices. The paper contributes to the construction engineering management sphere in academia and industry by exploring the knowledge management theme through the application of action research methods. Future work focuses on developing a roadmap for knowledge management in construction non-profit volunteer organisations.

The Adoption and Use of the Hirschman–Herfindahl Index in Nonprofit Research: Does Revenue Diversification Measurement Matter?

Since its introduction by Tuckman and Chang (Nonprofit Volunt Sector Q 20(4):445–460, 1991), the Hirschman–Herfindahl Index (HHI) has been widely adopted into the nonprofit literature as a precise measure of revenue concentration. This widespread adoption has been characterized by diverse composition, with the HHI’s calculation being largely determined by the nature of the available data and the degree to which it contained disaggregated measures of revenue. Using the NCCS 990 Digitized Data, we perform an acid test on whether different HHI measures yield significantly different results. Four measures of revenue concentration—an aggregated measure based on three revenue streams, an aggregated measure separating government grants from other contributions, a more nuanced measure based on seven revenue streams, and a fully disaggregated measure based on thirteen revenue streams—are used to predict two dominant nonprofit financial health dimensions: financial volatility and financial capacity. Overall, our results show that aggregation in HHI measurement matters; aggregation often downplays relationships by influencing the significance levels and magnitudes of estimates in a non-trivial way.

Cultural Competence and the Global Role of Dietitians: A Haitian Medical Mission and Inter-Professional, Service-Learning Nutrition Course

As the poorest Western Hemisphere country, Haiti has a long history of health disparity including elevated rates of hypertension, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis. In the summer of 2012, a four-week knowledge and skills based course, including a one-week medical mission, was developed to meet the need for medical care in Haiti, and to provide an interprofessional, service-learning environment to enhance students’ cultural competence. A nonprofit volunteer organization that connects healthcare people with a community in need assisted in developing the mission trip. Background on the culture of Haiti, medical education, and development of nutrition education materials were incorporated into the course. Students participated in classroom activities, assisted with development of nutrition education materials, and maintained a reflective journal during the mission trip. Basic nutrition education, nutrition assessment and evaluation, and breastfeeding instruction were provided to Haitian patients. Additionally, students and faculty interacted with each member of the healthcare team; facilitating a greater understanding of an interprofessional approach to medical care. Incorporating a medical mission trip into dietetics education provides an opportunity to increase cultural competence of faculty and students while providing another outlet for students to gain hands-on experience. Interprofessional service-learning further enhances the educational experience and should be considered as a worthwhile educational technique. Programs looking to incorporate such a mission trip into their curriculum can follow a similar scheme of course development.

Service-Learning and Philanthropy: Implications for Course Design

Developing good citizens is an historic role for higher education (Sullivan & Rosin, 2008) and the emergence of service-learning as a pedagogical strategy has heightened attention to the intentional educational objectives to be addressed in higher education. This article examines the role of service-learning in developing philanthropic values and behaviors in students that can influence their postgraduate years through careers, civic activities, and family life. Unlike other forms of community-based education (e.g., cooperative education, internship), service-learning extends beyond “serving to learn,” to “learning to serve” (see Chang, this issue) through being involved in community activities (e.g., advocacy, community organizing, volunteering). Two of the explicit dimensions of preparing civic-minded graduates are increasing knowledge of the nonprofit sector and volunteer opportunities and increasing commitment to be involved in the community, both of which can be achieved through service-learning (Steinberg, Hatcher, & Bringle, 2011).

Nonprofit Financial Vulnerability: Testing Competing Models, Recommended Improvements, and Implications

We examine the predictive validity of existing models used by researchers and by professional rating agencies of nonprofit organizations to assess financial vulnerability, on a sample of performing arts organizations. The models tested include Ohlson’s (J Account Res 18(1):31–109, 1980) “business” model, Tuckman and Chang’s “nonprofit” model (Nonprofit Volunt Sect Q 20:445–460, 1991), and a “practitioner” model based on the guidelines of two nonprofit ranking and rating agencies (Copps and Vernon, The little blue book, NPC’s guide to analyzing charities, for charities and funders. New Philanthropy Capital, London, 2010; Midot, Midot guide for effectiveness. Midot—Analyzing and Rating NPOs. Tel Aviv, 2013). Since there is considerable criticism over the effectiveness of existing models in predicting financial distress, we propose that a new model is needed which can improve our ability to predict financial vulnerability. The findings reveal that the Tuckman and Chang model provides the best prediction of financial vulnerability; and a reduced version offers an even better prediction. Implications for financial management and particularly for revenue diversification, increased overhead costs (particularly management costs), and surplus accumulation are discussed.

Does Charging Nonprofit Volunteers Affect Their Satisfaction?

Nonprofits that offer volunteer experiences in foreign countries have long charged fees to their volunteers, but recently some other nonprofit organizations have begun to charge as well. Volunteer attitudes toward such fees have not previously been studied. Product marketing research has suggested that fees can sometimes improve participants’ evaluation of their experience, but public service motivation research seems to suggest that fees will diminish participants’ satisfaction. This study examines the attitudes toward fees of 4,400 volunteers who paid $310 to participate in a week-long project that built and repaired housing in Appalachia. Although a third of volunteers believed that the fee enhanced their appreciation of the program, an equal proportion disagreed. An even larger percentage of the volunteers believed the fee discouraged some volunteers. Concerns with fees were more common among youth volunteers than adult volunteers and among those who volunteered for altruistic rather than for career reasons. Most volunteers, even those critical of fees, were positive about their volunteer experience, but those who were least positive about the fees were also somewhat less positive about their experience. These results suggest that decisions about volunteer fees must balance the benefits of additional funds for enhanced client services against the likelihood of discouraging some potential volunteers, especially younger or more altruistic volunteers.

Antecedents, prevalence and manifestations of social entrepreneurship

Human capital and institutional factors explain the dynamics fuelling social entrepreneurial activity. Social entrepreneurs enhance social value by creating new social entities. The study investigates the prevalence of early stage social entrepreneurship activity amongst the Norwegian adult population. As much as 5.1% of the population is at any time engaged in nascent social entrepreneurship, as measured in involvement in the starting up non-profit volunteer organisations. Males, younger and better educated people are more inclined to engage in nascent social entrepreneurship. Institutional factors such as social needs and municipality centrality are linked to start-up of social entrepreneurial activity. Different structural frameworks link to different categories of social entrepreneurship. Social bricoleur activity aimed at creating social value more often appears in rural municipalities. Social constructionists and social engineers wanting societal change are negatively correlated with social requirements in their home municipality. This paper discusses how better to categorise nascent social entrepreneurship activity in order to improve our understanding of its drivers.

Corporate versus non-profit volunteering—do the volunteers’ motivations significantly differ?

Despite volunteering be usually associated to non-profit organisations, more and more companies have been implemented in their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) some volunteering activities involving their internal publics. This research aims to analyse if there are significant differences between two groups of volunteers (corporate and non-profit) regarding the motivations to volunteer and to analyse if the socio-demographic variables are the ones that most discriminate the two types of volunteers. The results indicate that the motivational factor recorded as the most relevant for both type of volunteers was Values and the less scored was Career. The results also evidence higher scores for all motivations for Non-profit volunteers when compared with the Corporate ones, pointing out to the existence of significant differences between the two types of volunteers for all motivations, except in the case of Understanding. Income and Values were the variables that most contributed for that distinction.

Missing in Action: Strategic Human Resource Management in German Nonprofits

Human resource (HR) management is important for human service nonprofits because they rely on the quality of their employees for the provision of their services. Using a typology of nonprofit HR architecture developed by Ridder and McCandless (Nonprofit Volunt Sect Q 29(1):124–141, 2010), we attempt to unpack the black box between performance and HR practices. To this end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with HR managers and young employees to investigate their perceptions of HR practices in their nonprofit organizations. Based on the findings, we extend the research on HR management in nonprofit organizations and caution that success or failure of implementing HR practices may be directly influenced by the external environment.

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Vectors of volunteerism: Correlates of volunteer retention, recruitment, and job satisfaction

AbstractVolunteers are a rapidly growing segment of the workforce population, contributing both time and resources to the success of many organizations. Utilizing quantitative data from a survey, this study first develops a theoretical model of nonprofit volunteer participation and satisfaction and tests this model through structural equation modeling. The data derive from over 250 volunteers of a nonprofit organization located in a large southwestern urban area. Specifically, this study investigates the relationship of volunteer motivation, organizational communication, and structural barriers with job satisfaction, intent to remain with the organization, and intent to engage in volunteer‐initiated recruitment. A slightly modified model derived from the theorized model received support. Motivation predicted satisfaction with organizational communication, which in turn predicted perceived barriers, job satisfaction, commitment, and intentions to recruit others. Implications are examined both for the theory of organizational communication and the recruitment of volunteers for nonprofit organizations.

An Analysis of State–Civil Society Relations in Finland: A Case of Joensuu

Theoretical researches have argued that state–civil society relations differ from one country to another because of different economic, political, and socio-cultural factors. This article aims to show civil society’s role in the Finnish welfare state and how the state and the civil society affect each other in Joensuu, a 72,167 populated Finnish city. Joensuu case is analyzed from the theoretical perspectives of Esping-Andersen (The three worlds of welfare capitalism, 1990), Young (Nonprofit Volunt Sector Q 29:149–172, 2000), and Schofer and Fourcade-Gourinchas (Am Sociol Rev 66: 806–828, 2001) by taking into account interviews with 13 members of voluntary organizations in the city. In the light of the field work, the argument is based on the negative impact of welfare system’s transformation process on nongovernmental organizations in Joensuu, Finland.