The Resilient Society: On volunteering, civil society and corporate community involvement in transition

Changes in the Dutch non-profit regime necessitate the direct participation of citizens and businesses in non-profit organisations. Dutch society must re-invent the commitment of citizens, businesses, foundations, universities and various other organisations by increasing both ‘community capacity’ and ‘management capacity’. ‘Community capacity’ and ‘management capacity’ are important building blocks in the arena of involvement. The resilient society: On volunteering, civil society and corporate community involvement in transition is an exploration of the arena of involvement with regard to research agendas: 1) corporate community involvement as a component of community capacity and 2) non-profit management as a component of ‘management capacity’. Community capacity represents the possibility of a society to make a contribution that must become more private and ‘voluntary’. The address outlines various means to this end, including corporate community involvement on the part of businesses, ‘service learning’ as an instructional tool in universities and the integration of ‘social internships’ as a component of the general high school curriculum. Management capacity represents the possibility of (non-profit) organisations to work with new forms of community capacity, for example by improving accountability and volunteer management. The address concludes by using the metaphor of a slot machine to present a new conceptualisation of volunteer management that can also be applied to other relations between non-profit organisations, civil society and corporations

Reinventing Strategic Philanthropy: the sustainable organization of voluntary action for impact

Philanthropic organizations have recently started to focus on how to invest their resources in a way that will really make a difference to society. Strategic philanthropy is the new concept for voluntary action for the public good to create a valuable sustainable impact! This inaugural address presents the future research agenda of the Erasmus Centre for Strategic Philanthropy and focuses on three (strategic) challenges faced by philanthropic organizations: 1) sustaining philanthropic commitment, 2) selecting and executing programmes, and 3) examining the role of management and boards. These are the linking pin between the first two challenges. Governance, accountability and organizational effectiveness are essential for management and boards of individual organizations and for the philanthropic sector as a whole. In the first strategic challenge, philanthropic commitment is seen as a natural resource and Ostrom’s (1990) eight design principles for managing ‘common pool resources’ are applied to philanthropic commitment. The second strategic challenge focuses on the results chain for programme management while the role of management and boards is analyzed from the perspective of ‘resource exchange partnerships’ in the third challenge. Cooperation, especially with the business world, is presented as essential for creating sustainable impact in society

Characteristics and Motivations of Environmental Volunteers at Episodic Events

As climate change disrupts our lives and environmental awareness and concerns rise within society, more individuals invest time contributing to activities and projects that help preserve the environment. This study uses a recent international database containing data on 1,383 environmental event volunteers in 13 different countries, composed of both developed and developing nations. A profile of the volunteers was created, exposing their demographic characteristics and preferences. This profile shows a decrease in the average age of participants compared with studies conducted over 10 years ago. Then, a comparison was analyzed of individuals who volunteered in the event individually with those who did so as part of a group of recruits. The latter constitutes a new challenge to volunteer participation, highlighting the emergence of new actors in the recruitment process of volunteers, such as businesses and educational institutes, changing the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from recruitment to proper volunteer placement. The motivations behind these environmental event volunteer activities were also examined, revealing that individuals volunteering as part of an organized group give more importance to utilitarian motivations than those who volunteer alone. This research contributes to the existing literature by providing an updated and less westernized perspective on environmental volunteers’ demographics and preferences. It also explains the influence of new actors in the volunteer-NGO relationship that are reshaping the management of the volunteer workforce

Characteristics and Motivations of Environmental Volunteers at Episodic Events

As climate change disrupts our lives and environmental awareness and concerns rise within society, more individuals invest time contributing to activities and projects that help preserve the environment. This study uses a recent international database containing data on 1,383 environmental event volunteers in 13 different countries, composed of both developed and developing nations. A profile of the volunteers was created, exposing their demographic characteristics and preferences. This profile shows a decrease in the average age of participants compared with studies conducted over 10 years ago. Then, a comparison was analyzed of individuals who volunteered in the event individually with those who did so as part of a group of recruits. The latter constitutes a new challenge to volunteer participation, highlighting the emergence of new actors in the recruitment process of volunteers, such as businesses and educational institutes, changing the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from recruitment to proper volunteer placement. The motivations behind these environmental event volunteer activities were also examined, revealing that individuals volunteering as part of an organized group give more importance to utilitarian motivations than those who volunteer alone. This research contributes to the existing literature by providing an updated and less westernized perspective on environmental volunteers’ demographics and preferences. It also explains the influence of new actors in the volunteer-NGO relationship that are reshaping the management of the volunteer workforce

A new spirit across sectors: Constructing a common justification for corporate volunteering

Corporate volunteering is an activity located at the intersection of the corporate and nonprofit spheres. Its coordination and implementation create interesting encounters between professionals from both sectors. This article adopts a pragmatic sociological approach to analysing the discursive processes that nurture or hinder these encounters and the corporate volunteering activities they aim to produce. It brings to the fore the nonprofit perspective by analysing 39 semi-structured interviews with Dutch and Belgian nonprofit professionals who were engaged in corporate volunteering coordination. The study shows that a flexible and project-oriented justification regime, which is mainly promoted by nonprofits that match companies with other nonprofits, creates a common discursive terrain that nurtures cross-sectoral collaboration. Other justification regimes, particularly the civic one, are increasingly marginalised, as they are perceived as hindering collaboration rather than enabling it. Thus the proliferation of corporate volunteering, and the dominance of the project-oriented justification that is intertwined with it, together challenge classical identifications of the nonprofit sector with civic action

The rewards of corporate giving

When conducted through a well-designed programme, corporate community involvement, such as employee volunteering, will benefit both the company and volunteers. In particular, these programmes can be useful to marketing and human resource managers