Making the volunteer journey a better one with I-O psychology knowledge

Abstract

We concur with Tippins et al. (2023) that not-for-profit and volunteer-involving organizations (VIOs) have not had enough access to the expertise of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists, and volunteer managers rarely have access to professional development opportunities that stem from I-O psychology knowledge. Through collaborative research partnerships with VIOs, our team of I-O psychology researchers have spent the last two decades building the science to inform and guide evidence-based volunteer management practices that enhance the volunteer journey. Our work spans a great part of this volunteer journey , from helping VIOs attract the right volunteers (Holtrop et al., 2020), to enhancing VIOs' onboarding (Dunlop, Holtrop, et al., 2022), and improving the quality of the volunteering experience through designing better volunteer work (Millette & Gagné, 2008) and enhancing leadership (Forner, 2019;Gagné, 2003). In providing commentary, we hope to enrich the conversation by offering an I-O-psychology researcher perspective on volunteer work to complement the valuable case studies in the focal article.Our research stems from a practical need to address significant workforce issues facing the volunteering sector. VIOs are struggling to attract and retain enough volunteers to sustain their activities. Volunteering rates have been on the decline for a decade across the world, and this decline has worsened during the pandemic (Davies et al., 2021; Luksyte et al., 2021). In just 4 years, from 2018 to 2021, almost half (44%) of the global volunteer workforce stopped volunteering, a loss equivalent to 48 million full-time workers (Forner et al., 2022;Holmes et al., 2022; UNV, 2018 UNV, , 2022. VIOs have had to adapt to the lifestyle and work-related changes (e.g., rising costs of living, prevalence of contract work and "fly in-fly out" work) that hamper volunteers' commitment to regular and long-term volunteering.Some VIOs have large volunteer workforce. Scouts Australia currently has over 20,000 adult volunteers running the programs, many of whom volunteer between 10 and 20 hr per week. In 2019, on the eve of one of the worst bushfires the country ever faced, Australia counted over 195,000 volunteer firefighters and support staff. Other countries also rely heavily on volunteer firefighters: China counted over 7.5M of them in 2019, whereas Germany had close to a million. Training and managing these volunteer numbers without proper resources, let alone expertise, would likely be disastrous. Yet, VIOs render crucial services to nations that cover health and social assistance, education, and emergency services.Following the first author, author order is alphabetical reflecting equal contributions.