E. Gil Clary

The Motivations to Volunteer Theoretical and Practical Considerations

Why do significant numbers of people engage in the unpaid helping activities known as volunteerism? Drawing on functional theorizing about the reasons, purposes, and motivations underlying human behavior, we have identified six personal and social functions potentially served by volunteering. In addition to developing an inventory to assess these motivational functions, our program of research has explored the role of motivation in the processes of volunteerism, especially decisions about becoming a volunteer in the first place and decisions about continuing to volunteer.

The Effects of “Mandatory Volunteerism” on Intentions to Volunteer

With the widespread emergence of required community-service programs comes a new opportunity to examine the effects of requirements on future behavioral intentions. To investigate the consequences of such “mandatory volunteerism” programs, we followed students who were required to volunteer in order to graduate from college. Results demonstrated that stronger perceptions of external control eliminated an otherwise positive relation between prior volunteer experience and future intentions to volunteer. A second study experimentally compared mandates and choices to serve and included a premeasured assessment of whether students felt external control was necessary to get them to volunteer. After being required or choosing to serve, students reported their future intentions. Students who initially felt it unlikely that they would freely volunteer had significantly lower intentions after being required to serve than after being given a choice. Those who initially felt more likely to freely volunteer were relatively unaffected by a mandate to serve as compared with a choice. Theoretical and practical implications for understanding the effects of requirements and constraints on intentions and behavior are discussed.

Reactions to Unexpected Events The Naive Scientist and Interpretive Activity

The present investigation sought to examine the differential effects of expected versus unexpected information on interpretive activity. It was predicted that expected information would involve an automatic mode of processing, while unexpected information would prompt a more controlled mode. More specifically, we examined the proposition that unexpected or inconsistent information would lead to attempts at generating explanations for the discrepancy, and that the resulting explanations would tend toward maintaining the original expectation. Subjects were exposed to a general description of an actor, and then received additional information consistent or inconsistent with that description; the strength of or confidence in the original expectation was also varied. The primary experimental task involved subjects retelling these stories. The data revealed that, relative to processing consistent information, subjects tended to provide explanations spontaneously for the unexpected events. These findings were discussed in terms of unexpected events producing greater observer involvement, which in turn increases the likelihood of interpretive activity.

The Matching of Motivations to Affordances in the Volunteer Environment An Index for Assessing the Impact of Multiple Matches on Volunteer Outcomes

The functional approach to volunteerism holds that outcomes from volunteering (e.g., satisfaction and intentions to remain a volunteer) are a function of the match between a volunteers motivations and affordances to meet those motivations found in the environment (i.e., the volunteer activities, position, or organization). In this article, the authors introduce an index for calculating a volunteers total number of matches across six motivational categories identified by past research. They demonstrate that this index predicts outcomes better than motives or affordances alone and as well as any univariate match index (i.e., in a particular motivational category). Following logic about strong and weak situational contexts, the authors demonstrate that the magnitude of the total matches effect may be greater when organizational contexts are less structured and smaller when contexts are more structured. They discuss theoretical and practical benefits of this total match index.

Community Involvement: Opportunities and Challenges in Socializing Adults to Participate in Society

The concluding article of this issue devoted to community involvement considers the unique perspective offered by each article on this topic in this issue, yet does so in the context of the commonalities among them. Most important of these commonalities, perhaps, is that all of the articles address, to some degree, the question of how adults can best be socialized to develop a habit of community participation. Some articles consider this question of encouraging community involvement in educational settings, while others consider the question in more general settings. Some articles focus on key conceptual processes, whereas others concentrate on practical issues in promoting involvement. Finally, virtually all of the articles consider the benefits of community involvement; some of the articles also explore the downside to efforts to promote community involvement.

Social Support as a Unifying Concept in Voluntary Action

This paper discusses the applications of social support to voluntary action. Consist ing of emotional and task-oriented support, social support can potentially be found in all forms of voluntary action. The argument is made that voluntary organizations and groups should strengthen support within groups, and between groups and their recipients.

Mobilizing Adults for Positive Youth Development

The edited volume, Mobilizing Adults for Positive Youth Development: Strategies for Closing the Gap between Beliefs and Behaviors by Clary and Rhodes (2006), is a collection of applied essays that attempt to draw volunteer recruitment strategies from the research literature in a range of fields. The book is divided into ecological strata that reveal potential sources of volunteers for youth development programs. The book begins with a picture of adult volunteers today. Then a section examines research from social psychology about key characteristics of successful and enduring volunteers. The final two sections describe recruitment efforts and strategies for specific types of organizations (e.g., religious, neighborhood) and suggest social policies that may facilitate a culture of volunteering in society at large. This book is rich in examples, and it steers readers towards key research literatures and the strategies they reveal. The book is as much about who volunteers are as it is about how and where to find them. Its strength is its heavy reliance on theory coupled with its realistic and empirically supported examples of recruitment strategies. Consistent across chapters is the theme that volunteers for youth development programs are scarce and it can be a real challenge to recruit and sustain volunteers. Yet, after readers have combed through the chapters and pulled from them what is currently known about volunteers in youth development programs, readers might find themselves asking the question, ‘‘Are our efforts to recruit volunteers for youth development programs all that they should be?’’ That is, can’t programs become both more strategic and more selective when recruiting volunteers? It is commonly known in the practice world of mentoring professionals, for example, that the most pressing question for the staff of mentoring programs is, ‘‘where to find new and better mentors?’’ Realistically, it may not be possible to capture ample mentors sufficient to satisfy the need, which has been estimated as five times the number of adult mentors who are currently serving as program-based youth mentors in the U.S. today (MENTOR 2006). How to tap into and retain this essential and scarce resource seems, so often, a question with very few, clear answers. Mobilizing Adults for Positive Youth Development (Clary and Rhodes 2006) addresses this question. It is a fourteen chapter, 260 page collection of research from several fields about what motivates adults to work with youth, who are the typical volunteers, and how best to recruit these adults. This book is not without limitations. It surely is not the final statement on the very pressing problems of how and who to recruit as volunteers. Mobilizing Adults for Positive Youth Development may nevertheless be the most research-based collection of essays available that focus solely on the topic of how to mobilize adults for participation in youth development programs. If it is not the best, most timely, and comprehensive volume available on the topic, then I don’t know its superior. The chapters in the book draw upon high quality research from peer-reviewed, top-tier journals. This is just what practitioners want to know about but rarely receive in an accessible, summarized, and translated-for-application format. More commonly positive youth development (PYD) program practitioners have to dig deep into complex research articles to find the few kernels of wisdom that have been squirreled away in the discussion sections of published research, which frequently don’t reveal strategies directly applicable to mobilizing adults for PYD programs like theirs. Much like the series of research summaries on M. J. Karcher (&) Counseling and Educational Psychology, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA e-mail: michael.karcher@utsa.edu

Understanding and encouraging volunteerism and community involvement.

ABSTRACT Volunteerism and community involvement have been demonstrated to offer benefits both to communities and to volunteers themselves. However, not every method to encourage these behaviors is equally effective in producing committed volunteers. Drawing on relevant theoretical and empirical literatures, we identify features of efforts that are likely to produce intrinsically motivated other-oriented volunteers and those that may produce extrinsically motivated self-oriented volunteers. In particular, we explore ways to socialize young people to help and ways to build a sense of community focused on particular issues. We also examine requirements for community service and other approaches that highlight self-oriented benefits that volunteers may obtain. Finally, we return to a focus on the importance of intrinsic motivation for promoting sustained involvement in volunteers, even as we acknowledge that volunteers who come with extrinsic or self-oriented reasons can still offer much to communities and can be satisfied when their activities match their motivations.

Book Review: Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs, by Kieran Healy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 200 pp.,

tions for American democracy. First, it proves that despite poverty and segregation, African Americans were not prevented “from elaborating ‘social capital’ in their churches and fraternal associations” (p. 221). Second, “out of separate institution-building in fraternal lodges (as well as in churches), African Americans built the collective will and capacity to contribute to the remaking of U.S. democracy on behalf of all its citizens, regardless of race, creed, gender, or origin” (p. 227). African American fraternal associations not only helped generate the social capital necessary for the civil rights movement, but in doing so furthered the noblest ideals of American democracy. This book should be read by any student interested in the role of voluntary associations in shaping the civic capacities of ordinary citizens. Its lessons extend well beyond African Americans to a broader understanding of how and why joining membership associations enable citizens to become active participants in democratic selfgovernment. The authors reinforce Alexis de Tocqueville’s (2004) claim in Democracy in America that “in democratic countries, the science of association is the fundamental science.” The authors also reinforce Theda Skocpol’s (2003) argument in Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. Many nonprofit advocacy groups today are professional lobbying organizations that rely on members for little more than dues. Although they certainly continue to promote civic education, do they still provide the civic skills that are so vital to democratic self-government? If not, at what cost?