By the Volunteer, For the Volunteer: Volunteer Perspectives of Management Across Levels of Satisfaction

Abstract

Volunteers play a critical role in government and nonprofit organizations. Yet, volunteer management research has focused on universal prescriptions or a contingency perspective based on the needs of the organization rather than the volunteer. As volunteers are a finite resource, how can nonprofits retain their volunteers? We conduct a qualitative analysis of open-ended responses to explore how assessments of volunteer management vary across satisfaction levels as delineated by the Net Promoter Score (NPS) scale. We find evidence that the most satisfied volunteers may be important resources to volunteer programs for the insight and advice they offer as champions of the collective. We also observe patterns across satisfaction levels suggesting that volunteer satisfaction is linked to volunteer development. Our research offers the NPS, a commonly used feedback measure, as a valuable tool for volunteer management to measure volunteer satisfaction, to identify enthusiastic promoters, and to examine volunteer development.