Meanings of Organizational Volunteering

Abstract

Despite the practical need to cultivate individuals’ engagement with nonprofit organizations and theoretical interest in volunteerism across multiple disciplines and perspectives, the conceptual boundaries of volunteering remain vague. Although definitions from the literature emphasize free will, lack of financial gain, and benefit to others, they do not consider how volunteers might integrate, negotiate, or reject these meanings when the demands of freedom and contribution collide. This study adopts a hybrid phenomenological perspective to explore what organizational volunteering meant to volunteers themselves. The findings show that the meanings that participants gave to volunteering were both agentic and relational and that volunteers negotiated agency and relationality in a dynamic way. The article discusses the theoretical implications for how researchers define organizational volunteering and the meaning of work in nonstandard work environments, as well as the practical implications for volunteer management.