The Limits and Possibilities of Volunteering: A Framework for Explaining the Scope of Volunteer Involvement in Public and Nonprofit Organizations

• Date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12894
• Published date: 01 July 2018

502 Public Administration Review • July | A ugus t 201 8

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 4, pp. 502–513. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12894.

Jeffrey L. Brudney is Betty and Dan

Cameron Family Distinguished Professor of

Innovation in the Nonprofit Sector at the

University of North Carolina Wilmington.

His research focuses on the nonprofit

sector, volunteerism, and public service

delivery. He is the recipient of the Award for

Distinguished Achievement and Leadership

in Nonprofit and Voluntary Action Research,

the highest honor presented by the

Association for Research on Nonprofit

Organizations and Voluntary Action.

E-mail: brudneyj@uncw.edu

Robert K. Christensen is associate

professor in Brigham Young University’s

Marriott School of Management. His current

research focuses on prosocial and antisocial

motivations and behaviors in the public

and nonprofit sectors. He is a research

fellow at Arizona State University’s Center

for Organization Research and Design and

a researcher at Seoul National University’s

Center for Government Competitiveness.

He and James Perry are editors of Wiley’s

Handbook of Public Administration

.

E-mail: rkc@byu.edu

Rebecca Nesbit is assistant professor of

nonprofit management in the Department

of Public Administration and Policy at

the University of Georgia. She received

her PhD in public affairs from the School

of Public and Environmental Affairs at

Indiana University and her master of public

administration degree from Brigham Young

University. Her research explores how

organizations use and deploy volunteers,

volunteer management, philanthropy,

and management of nonprofit and public

organizations.

E-mail: nesbit7@uga.edu

Abstract: Despite popular rhetoric concerning the benefits of volunteerism for public and nonprofit organizations,

the use and management of volunteers to assist in the delivery of services is uneven: some organizations rely heavily on

volunteer labor for this purpose, while others circumscribe volunteer contributions or eschew volunteer involvement

altogether. This article introduces eight dimensions of volunteer involvement—four involving organizational decisions

and four regarding volunteers’ decisions—that make up the overall scope of volunteer involvement in an organization.

Based on a review of the literature, the article presents a conceptual framework and several research propositions

concerning how organizational characteristics, volunteer management, and environmental factors affect the overall

scope of volunteer involvement in an organization.

Evidence for Practice

• Organizational characteristics, volunteer management, and environmental factors all contribute to the scope

of volunteer involvement within an organization.

• Organizations that are struggling to broaden the scope of volunteer involvement can actively work to create

more supportive organizational structures.

• Organizations that are struggling to broaden the scope of volunteer involvement need to be attentive to

volunteer management capacity and practices used to manage volunteers.

Rebecca Nesbit

University of Georgia

Robert K. Christensen

Brigham Young University

Jeffrey L. Brudney

University of North Carolina Wilmington

The Limits and Possibilities of Volunteering:

A Framework for Explaining the Scope of Volunteer

Involvement in Public and Nonprofit Organizations

If volunteers’ contributions to organizations are

as valuable as the literature suggests with respect

to cost-efficiency, service quality, and impact

(Brudney 1990c), we would expect every public

and nonprofit organization to use volunteers to

the utmost. However, not all public and nonprofit

organizations use volunteers to assist in the delivery

of services. Between one-fourth and one-third of

local governments (Nesbit and Brudney 2013) and

four-fifths of charities (Hager and Brudney 2004)

use volunteers. Scant research investigates the extent

of volunteer involvement or volunteer/staff service

configurations in public and nonprofit organizations.

We argue that volunteer involvement is a

multidimensional concept and that organizations

exhibit great variation along those dimensions. Two

organizations that both have 500 volunteers and

10,000 contributed yearly hours could look very

different in terms of volunteer involvement. One

organization might have a diverse, high-performing

volunteer workforce laboring in a variety of roles. The

other organization might limit volunteers to menial

tasks, experience a lot of volunteer turnover, and

feel frustrated by poor volunteer/staff relationships.

These situations represent vastly different volunteer

programs with a different scope of volunteer

involvement.

This article elaborates the eight dimensions of

volunteer involvement and the concept of the overall

scope of volunteer involvement. The article presents a

comprehensive framework that incorporates the major

factors thought to account for differences in the scope

of volunteer involvement across public and nonprofit

organizations. This framework is accompanied by

propositions intended to explain the existence of and

variation in the scope and dimensions of volunteer

involvement.

Dimensions and Scope of Volunteer

Involvement

We propose a broader conceptualization of volunteer

involvement and a framework to explain variations

in volunteer involvement in public and nonprofit

organizations. Research on volunteer involvement

typically concentrates on easily measurable

quantities, such as the number of volunteers or

hours contributed, rather than a holistic assessment

of volunteer involvement. Instead, volunteer

involvement is a multidimensional concept that

also incorporates more meaningful aspects of

This manuscript was originally submitted

and accepted as

Theory to Practice

article. The feature editor, Hal G. Rainey,

is gratefully acknowledged for their work

in soliciting and developing this content.

Effective with Volume 78, the

Theory to

Practice

feature has been discontinued.

Research Article