Harnessing the Power of Volunteer Labor
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Date
2014-04
Authors
Langham, Rebecca C.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
In 2012, about one in every four adults in the United States volunteered at least
once, totaling 7.9 billion hours of volunteer service. This abundance of unpaid labor is
an incredibly valuable resource that many nonprofit organizations utilize in order to
operate programming and provide services, but it also dictates a need for a volunteer
management program within organizations to coordinate all of the volunteer functions.
The amount of people who choose to volunteer and the number of organizations who
utilize this volunteer labor has made volunteerism and volunteer management a
compelling research topic. Thousands of articles have been published in academic
journals in a variety of disciplines. This thesis examines volunteer management by
researching the findings of academia and discovering the practices nonprofit
organizations use through interviews and case studies. I hypothesize that there is a
disconnect between the academic and professional sphere, and found that all of the
volunteer management professionals who were interviewed do not use academic
research as a resource when seeking to improve their volunteer programs. I call for a
better integration of the extensive knowledge to bridge the gap between the academic
and professional spheres.
Description
62 pages. A thesis presented to the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management and the Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree of Bachelor of Arts, Spring 2014.
Keywords
Nonprofit organizations, Volunteerism, Nonprofit management, Human resources, Labor, Volunteer motivation