Work‐to‐Society Spillover?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21146
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Date: 01 September 2015

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N M  L, vol. 26, no. 1, Fall 2015 © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21146

Journal sponsored by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University.

Correspondence to: Young-joo Lee, University of Texas at Dallas, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, 800

West Campbell Road, WT 17, Richardson, TX 75080. E-mail: ylee@utdallas.edu.

Work-to-Society Spillover?

VOLUNTEERING BY EMPLOYEES OF NONPROFIT

ORGANIZATIONS

Young-joo Lee,1 Jeff rey L. Brudney2

1University of Texas at Dallas, 2University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Nonprofit employees can make ideal volunteers for other organizations in the sector, and

understanding their participation in volunteering is a timely task. Based on “spillover

theory,” this study tests how nonprofit employees’ experience on the job may carr y over into

the nonwork arena. The study focuses on how nonprofit employees’ satisfaction with the

job and perception of the organization’s mission achievement relate to their volunteering,

controlling for the generally higher levels of prosocial motivation found in the sector. The

findings suggest that the consequences of job satisfaction for this group extend beyond the

workplace, contributing to societal benefits.

Keywords: volunteers, nonprofit, human resources

IN 2013 ONE-QUARTER OF THE ADULT US POPULATION (25.4 percent)—some 62.6

million people—volunteered nearly 7.7 billion hours to an organization (Corporation for

National and Community Service 2014). Nonprofi t organizations and government agen-

cies can use every one of those hours. In their quest to satisfy service demands, though, it is

not only the raw labor of volunteers that is important but also the values and predispositions

they bring to these entities. In this article we show how nonprofi ts can help to stimulate vol-

unteering by people who possess a basic background and understanding of the sector: their

own employees.  is article concentrates on how nonprofi t employees’ job satisfaction and

perceptions concerning their organization’s mission achievement may relate to their volun-

teering, taking into account the generally higher levels of public service motivation (PSM)

found in the sector. We identify the reasons why some nonprofi t employees are more likely

than their colleagues to donate their time, and explain what the management of nonprofi t

organizations can do to increase this volunteering.

Background

Volunteers play an important role in the delivery of human, religious, educational, and social

services, accounting for about 10 percent of the total working hours of the nonprofi t sec-

tor (Brown 1999). Independent Sector (2015) estimated the monetary value of volunteers’