Voluntary organizations as well as churches rely heavily on Christian volunteers, yet research on their motivation delivers conflicting answers and limited guidance. This paper applies a comprehensive (2,485 records screened) scoping review-based approach mapping 79 empirical studies (1989–2026) on Christian volunteer motivation across church and civil society projects. Using the UN Volunteers 2020 framework, we analyze (i) study designs, theoretical lenses, instruments, (ii) volunteer populations, and (iii) project settings. We identify three structural barriers to cumulative knowledge: heterogeneous and often implicit motivation concepts; an instrument–phenomenon mismatch that sidelines religious motives (notably through uncritical reliance on the Volunteer Functions Inventory); and systematic underreporting of key participant and context variables. These gaps account for much of the contradictory evidence and restrict its practical use. We outline concrete reporting and measurement standards to integrate religious motives into mainstream volunteering research and to improve evidence-informed management of Christian volunteers.

To address the increasing need for volunteers in countries experiencing conflict and natural disasters, this study examined young adults’ willingness to volunteer abroad in a “higher risk” country. Young Australian adults (N = 163) completed an online survey of Prototype Willingness Model constructs, risk perceptions, and trust in the organization. Attitude, subjective norm (approval from others), perceived similarity to a typical volunteer, risk susceptibility, risk severity, and trust in the charitable organization significantly predicted volunteer willingness, with trust in the organization influencing a number of the antecedents to volunteer willingness. Risk susceptibility had an unexpected positive relationship with volunteer willingness, highlighting the importance of acceptance of associated risks for openness to volunteering in higher risk settings. This study contributes to our understanding of volunteering abroad in higher risk countries, informing efforts to increase the prevalence of international volunteering, essential to address the imbalance of resources globally.

This article examines democracy-related attitudes of German sports club members. It employs a framework derived from the neo-Tocquevillian theoretical works about democracy to argue that the depth of individual involvement in a club, in conjunction with the club’s political and democratic culture, is crucial for determining attitudes conveyed by members. A representative sample of the population (N = 3,049) indicates that there is only a slight difference in the levels of political interest, political efficacy beliefs, cosmopolitan orientations, or satisfaction with democracy between sports club members and non-members. However, more nuanced models for sports club members indicate that active participation, as well as a club culture that encourages initiative, open political debate, and diversity, is predictive of pro-democratic attitudes. Based on these findings, we propose a perspective that no longer treats sports clubs as a homogeneous group, but acknowledges the existence of a range of club cultures.

This study examines how intersectional identity congruence between leaders and members of associations shapes volunteering behaviors and outcomes. Drawing on the American Society of Association Executives’ Decision to Volunteer survey and using the intersection of gender and race identities, we find that board–member congruence is associated with more time volunteered, whereas executive director–member congruence shows limited association. Strikingly, intersectional congruence with boards is associated with lower volunteer satisfaction. Applying an intersectional framework to leadership–member representation reveals the complex implications of the multiplicity of identities across and within individuals.

Studies in volunteering often focus on why people start volunteering and how to retain volunteers. Conversely, less attention is given to why volunteers quit. Hustinx (Nonprofit Volunt Sect Q 39(2):236–255, 2010) provided a substantial contribution on this topic by examining quitting volunteering at the Flemish Red Cross. The present article revisits and extends the contribution of Hustinx (2010), by exploring reasons to quit volunteering at the Netherlands’ largest refugee aid organization. Based on thematic analysis of open answers from 605 former volunteers for refugees, we find that organization-related reasons and personal circumstances are important drivers for quitting volunteering, thereby confirming Hustinx’ outcomes. Moreover, we identified another ‘umbrella’ under which many exit reasons can be subsumed: reasons to quit volunteering that are rooted in egocentric considerations. Next to this third perspective, this study raises attention for burnout and boreout in volunteering and challenges in mentor–mentee relationships, being volunteer–refugee relationships where volunteers quit out of frustration, disappointment or unfulfilled expectations. Implications of the findings and directions for further research are discussed.

This article introduces the concept of valorization to theorize how voluntary social welfare organizations foster social inclusion for marginalized individuals. Departing from dominant frameworks that view volunteering primarily as a pathway to labor market integration, the study conceptualizes inclusion as a dialectical process of valorization—co-constructed through sustained interaction between volunteers and enabling organizational settings. Based on qualitative interviews with 13 marginalized volunteers and three organizational leaders in Danish voluntary social welfare organizations, the analysis identifies three interrelated phases of the valorization process: (1) the discovery of informal, biographically rooted competencies, (2) the reinforcement of self-efficacy through organizational validation, and (3) the internalization of new narratives of self-worth. Rather than facilitating capital accumulation, these organizations enable recognition of informal resources often overlooked in formal institutions.

This paper examines patterns of volunteering during COVID-19 in different areas of civil society and demographic groups in Denmark. The aim is to understand how differences in the areas of civil society's political resources and organizational settings, and different barriers to volunteering of demographic groups, relate to variation in the levels of volunteering in periods of the pandemic with different lockdown measures. Using two cross-sectional surveys from spring 2020 (n = 3,497), and spring 2021 (n = 1,692), and a four-round panel dataset (n = 1,340), we measure changes in volunteer participation during the first year of the pandemic. We find significant drops in volunteering within most areas. While the level of lockdown correlates strongly with changes in volunteering, differences between areas of civil society point to the importance of variations in political resources and organizational settings for explaining which areas recovered fastest in the re-opening of society. Additionally, declines in volunteering did not differ significantly across demographic groups.

A serious challenge facing Western democracies is the falling propensity of successive cohorts of citizens to vote. Over the last 50 years, newly eligible voters – particularly from poorer backgrounds – have become less likely to vote in their first elections, and more likely to develop habits of non‐voting. This trend has prompted greater interest in policies with the potential to increase first‐time voter turnout, such as lowering the voting age or compulsory political education. Despite a growing academic interest in volunteering as a means of youth political expression or route to civic revival, however, the promotion of youth volunteering has not been seriously considered as a potential tool to help address generational turnout decline.

An extensive literature argues that volunteering can increase first‐time voter turnout, but it is hindered by the limited use of panel data and failure to account for confounding and selection effects. It has not, moreover, considered the potential for the effects of childhood volunteering to be conditional on prior political socialisation, particularly the influence of parents, which is necessary to assess its potential to reduce turnout gaps reflecting socio‐economic status. This study uses the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study and structural equation modelling to overcome these limitations and examine the impact of childhood volunteering on the turnout of newly eligible voters. It shows that for most young volunteers there is no significant benefit, but for the children of politically disengaged parents, volunteering does have a significant, positive effect.

This article evaluates whether economic hardship affects social capital in Europe. Comparing 27 European countries, it evaluates the impact of personal experiences of economic hardship on engagement in voluntary associations as a cornerstone of civic and democratic life. Empirical analyses of the Eurobarometer data indicate that individual economic hardship has indeed a negative effect on associational volunteering in Europe. However, the result is qualified in two respects. First, it is found that the effect of individual economic hardship is contingent upon education. Second, this effect mostly refers to volunteering for associations providing solidarity goods (Putnam groups). These results have broader implications for understanding how economic hardship shapes the social capital within democratic societies.

Despite the rise of interest in nonprofit organizations’ (NPOs) retention strategies and organizational behaviour micro-mechanisms, little research has specifically addressed volunteers’ religiosity and attitude towards the organization, and their links to motivation and intention to stay with NPOs. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of religiosity as an antecedent of volunteers’ intention to stay with the organization, and the mediating role of both volunteers’ motivation and attitude towards the organization in such a relationship. Building on motivational functions theory and the theory of planned behaviour, a conceptual model is proposed and empirically tested using bootstrapped multiple mediation analysis on a sample of 379 volunteers of NPOs located in Italy. The results support the role of religiosity as a significant predictor of volunteer intentions, and the mediating role of motivation and attitude on this relationship. Volunteers who are driven by their religious values are likely to develop a stronger motivation to volunteering and a positive attitude towards NPOs’ activities, and consequently a stronger willingness to stay with the organization. The study contributes to the literature on NPOs by stressing the role of antecedents and underlying mechanisms affecting volunteers’ motivation and, in turn, their intention to stay with the organization.

This paper discusses the relationship between corporate volunteering and civic engagement outside the workplace in Russia, proceeding from a mixed-method approach. The quantitative findings are based on a comparison between employees in 37 Russian companies who participated in corporate volunteering (N = 399) and those who did not (N = 402). Using binary logistic regression analysis, we demonstrate that employee participation in corporate volunteering is positively related to four forms of civic engagement outside the workplace: informal volunteering, formal volunteering, formal monetary donation, and informal monetary donation. In addition, we draw on information obtained from interviews with 10 corporate volunteers, as well as with all 37 company corporate volunteering managers, to develop a general explanation for why corporate volunteering might lead to civic engagement. We identify three primary explanations. First, trust in companies can be converted into increased trust in social institutions. Second, corporate volunteering can expose employees to other realities, thereby leading them to rethink their priorities. Third, corporate volunteering socializes employees to volunteering, thus making them more likely to incorporate volunteering into their personal repertoires of activities. Corporate volunteering appears to be an effective mechanism for stimulating civic engagement and volunteering infrastructure in post-communist countries.

This paper, based on Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data, analyzes the relation between volunteering and well-being among 30,023 Europeans aged 50 and above in 12 countries. There is an overall positive correlation between volunteering and perceived health, life satisfaction, and self-life expectancy and a negative correlation to depression. However, in some countries the correlation is much stronger than in others.

The phenomenon of volunteering can be analysed as a consumer experience through the concept of value as a trade-off between benefits and costs. In event volunteering, both the expected value (pre-experienced) and the perceived value (post-experienced) of volunteering can be assessed. With this purpose, an online quantitative survey is conducted with a sample of 711 volunteers in a religious mega event, with questions related to five dimensions of their experience: efficiency, social value, play, spirituality and time spent. These five scales, properly tested are used for building a multidimensional index of both the expected and perceived value of the volunteer experience. ANOVAs test show significant differences on the index in both moments upon the socio-demographic profiles: negative expectations/experience balance by age, contrasted results by sex, and more experienced volunteers being more critical with the value experienced. Implications for event managers are proposed, in line with the motivation of volunteers.

Volunteer management practices have been shown to have positive effects on employees in terms of skill development, job success, organizational identity, and morale in the public, nonprofit, and corporate sectors. Despite considerable research on volunteering, questions remain about how management practices of volunteer programs may affect volunteer performance. Leveraging data comparing self-enrolled and corporate-recruited volunteer mentors into a large-scale online program for entrepreneurs, this study measures the impact of institutional support on volunteer intensity, persistence, and quality. It also presents a novel way to measure volunteer quality through sentiment analysis to measure the tone of online messages, an emerging statistical technique. Findings suggest that a high level of institutional support leads to higher quality mentor engagement, compared to self-enrolled volunteers, while a low level of support leads to mentor quality much lower than self-enrolled volunteers.

This study examines the subjective quality of life of globally expanding senior citizens post-retirement, from a volunteering perspective. Formal volunteering is one way to engage retired seniors, providing social connectedness and enhanced well-being while potentially reducing their support service needs. It also provides a valuable resource to nonprofits. Thus, it is a win–win for both these individuals and their societies. This study has empirically examined associations between regular formal volunteering and seniors’ personal outlook, in the context of enhanced subjective quality of life. Past research has overlooked this important perspective, which often influences relationships between volunteering and subjective quality of life. Surveying 207 seniors, this study found that voluntary work perceptions are often associated with regular formal volunteering, which in turn is associated with the individual’s personal outlook, which in turn is positively associated with the aspects of subjective quality of life, particularly mental and emotional well-being. These results will guide policymakers on improving the quality of life of seniors through their extended involvement as volunteers, including for nonprofits, ways to recruit, train and manage their volunteer workforce and take action in further increasing the profile and the availability of formal volunteering.

This paper examines the extent to which communication strategies may influence willingness to volunteer. Research on persuasive advertising and the “arousal: cost-reward” model serve as theoretical foundations. The results of two experiments indicate that advertisement-induced (ad-induced) emotional arousal, message framing, and manipulations of self-efficacy perceptions can impact willingness to volunteer. Analysis detected a significant interaction between perceived self-efficacy and message framing. In the low (high) self-efficacy condition gain frames (loss frames) were more persuasive. When gender-related differences were considered, analysis revealed that ad-induced emotional arousal and manipulations of self-efficacy had their impact solely on men’s willingness to volunteer. Based on the results of the empirical analyses, implications for management and starting points for future research are presented.

In the context of professional societies and trade associations, social role theory hypothesizes that women’s and men’s volunteer roles will also reflect gendered choices that persist even after controlling for parenting, professional experience, education, race, country of residence, and other potentially mitigating factors. Our sample includes 12,722 members of 23 diverse US-based international professional societies who participated in a survey of volunteer behavior in 2007. Using probit regression analysis, we find that gender continues to influence volunteer behaviors within professional settings. Instead of a pattern of male and female preferences for certain roles, we find that women are consistently less likely than men to engage in most volunteer activities common to professional association life. However, this gender disparity is partly neutralized when women are older and fully employed. Overall, social role theory provides a significant but incomplete perspective for understanding the volunteer behavior of professional society members.

The paper investigates processes and consequences of ‘philanthropic kinning’, that is the use of kinship and family idioms in constructing and maintaining personal relations between donors and recipients in philanthropy. Usual studies collapse the occurrence of kinship metaphors in philanthropy either as evidence of ‘prosociality’ (e.g. trust, care or love) or more frequently as evidence of ‘paternalism’ (power and domination of donors over recipients, and their objectification). This paper claims that introducing kinship and parenting studies into researching philanthropy would greatly refine our understanding of donor–recipient relations. In the framework of a qualitative case study of a philanthropic ‘godparenthood’ programme organised in Hungary supporting ethnic Hungarian communities in Romania, this paper looks at the roles, responsibilities and obligations various forms of philanthropic kinship offer for the participants; and relations of power unfolding in helping interactions. With such concerns, this paper complements earlier research on hybridisation of philanthropy, through its sectoral entanglements with kinship and family. Also, it contributes to research on inequalities in philanthropy, by showing how philanthropic kinning may recreate, modify or reshape donor–recipient power relations in diverse ways.

This paper explores the links between volunteers care workers’ current unpaid work and their own present or former paid work with the objective of analysing the ways welfare states influence volunteer care work. Data were collected between August 2012 and May 2013 through 41 face-to-face interviews with Danish and Australian volunteers working with the frail elderly, very sick and terminally ill. Three related arguments are made. One, paid and unpaid care work are so intertwined that it is not possible to understand volunteers’ unpaid working lives without simultaneously understanding their paid work lives. Two, many volunteer care workers are attracted to care work, not volunteering per se. Three, volunteering must be understood in relation to men’s and women’s ‘access to work’ in the welfare state, access that ultimately depends on the design and developments of these two contrasting welfare states.

This cross-national comparative study examines how social role and social capital are associated with gender differences in volunteering in four regions of East Asia–China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Using the 2012 East Asia Social Survey, we find that women in East Asia, particularly in South Korea, are less likely to volunteer than men. Additionally, women with children are less likely to volunteer than men with children, especially when their secular and religious group participations are not considered, which is consistent with the social role theory. Social capital indicators, including trust, neighborhood support, informal network, secular group participation, and religious group participation, significantly increase the likelihood of volunteering. More importantly, the results indicate that secular group participation moderates gender differences in volunteering. Women who participate in secular groups are more likely to volunteer than men in East Asia. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.