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Can Institutional Support Improve Volunteer Quality? An Analysis of Online Volunteer Mentors

Year: 2021

Type: article

Abstract: 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.

Source: VOLUNTAS International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations

DOI: 10.1007/s11266-021-00351-9

Authors: Dyana P. Mason, Li-Wei Chen, Saurabh A. Lall

Institutions: University of Oregon, Old Dominion University

Language: English

Topic: Nonprofit Sector and Volunteering

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W3152903330