Does Charging Nonprofit Volunteers Affect Their Satisfaction?

• Date: 01 June 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21106
• Published date: 01 June 2014

Correspondence to: Richard M. Clerkin, North Carolina University, Public Admin-

istration, Box 8102 NCSU, Raleigh, NC 27695. E-mail: richard_clerkin@ncsu.edu.

NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, vol. 24, no. 4, Summer 2014 © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc 487

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21106

Does Charging Nonprofit

Volunteers Affect Their

Satisfaction?

Richard M. Clerkin, James

E. Swiss

North Carolina State University

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 hous-

ing 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 volun-

teers believed the fee discouraged some volunteers. Concerns

with fees were more common among youth volunteers than

adult volunteers and among those who volunteered for altruis-

tic 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 some-

what 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 like-

lihood of discouraging some potential volunteers, especially

younger or more altruistic volunteers.

Keywords: nonprofit, management, marketing, volunteers, fee