Understanding Motivations to Volunteer
Dr Arthur Stukas and Sarah Wilson
September 2022
About the Volunteering Research Papers Initiative
The Volunteering Research Papers aim to capture evidence on a wide range of topics
related to volunteering and outline key insights for policy and practice. The Volunteering
Research Papers are peer reviewed, and insights will directly inform the development of
the National Strategy for Volunteering.
The Volunteering Research Papers are an initiative of the National Strategy for
Volunteering Research Working Group.
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 2
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer
Dr Arthur Stukas1 and Sarah Wilson2
Key Insights
• Identifying and enabling volunteers to fulfil their primary motivations plays a pivotal
role in volunteer satisfaction and retention.
• Recruitment messages that appeal to an individual’s primary motivations for
volunteering are more effective and persuasive.
• Volunteer motivations that are other-oriented may have different consequences
than those that are self-oriented, including for retention and possibly for wellbeing.
• Ensuring that volunteers are provided with autonomy-support and opportunities to
satisfy needs for competence and respectful relationships with others can boost
wellbeing and retention.
2 Volunteering Australia
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 3
Introduction
Why do people volunteer? And why should volunteer involving organisations care?
It might seem silly to ask but, at the end of the day, organisations primarily want to
ensure there are enough hands to work, that clients and stakeholders are well-served,
and organisational outcomes are achieved. This paper summarises the literature on
volunteer motivations and argues that volunteer involving organisations should care
about why people volunteer, including their goals and motives for participating, because
understanding motivations to volunteer offers a pathway toward enhancing volunteer
recruitment and improving volunteer retention. Moreover, research on different types of
motivations may allow insights into whether and how volunteers themselves benefit from
volunteering in terms of their health and wellbeing, in addition to more specific goals they
hope to achieve.
Before we continue, a brief note. The literature on volunteer motivation has increased
dramatically in recent years with studies originating from a variety of disciplines. From our
vantage point in psychological science, we focus specifically on the functional approach
to volunteering (and later self-determination theory), but we encourage readers to seek
out work from other disciplines and studies focused on specific types of volunteers or
organisations that may be most relevant to their own contexts.
Volunteer Motivations
Researchers have spent many years cataloguing the reasons why volunteers get
involved, usually by asking them through surveys.3 This descriptive approach has
resulted in a long list of potential motivations, gathered from volunteers in many different
roles and organisations. However, taking a theoretical approach to investigating primary
motivations has also paid dividends. For example, in psychological science, functional
approaches have been used to understand an array of attitudes and behaviours.
This approach asks what function an attitude or action serves for a person and what
personal goals it allows them to meet.4 Early attitude researchers posited several
functions that could be met by holding an opinion, such as expressing important values
(value expressive), fitting into social groups (social adjustive), organising and guiding
understanding of the world (knowledge), securing rewards and avoiding punishments
(instrumental), and protecting the self from negative beliefs (ego defensive). This
approach was adapted to volunteering by Clary and Snyder who suggested that
community service actions might serve similar functions: acting on important personal
3 See Cnaan & Goldberg-Glen, 1991
4 Katz, 1960; Smith et al., 1956
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 4
values (values), living up to the social expectations of close others (social), understanding
the world, other people, and social issues (understanding), boosting self-esteem
(enhancement), achieving career goals and related benefits (career), and protecting the
self from negative beliefs (protective).5 Clary et al. later created and validated a self-
report measure, the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI), to assess these six ‘functions’
or motivations to volunteer.6 A second set of items based on the VFI asks about motive
fulfilment and can be used by organisations to safeguard volunteer retention. The VFI has
been used widely, but it is worth noting that it focuses on motivations that are general and
held by volunteers across a wide array of activities. Other more specific motivations might
be relevant to certain activities or populations and need to be captured with other tools,
beyond the VFI.7
The Functional Approach to Volunteering
Theoretically, the functional approach contains a number of propositions and
implications.8 First, it holds that different volunteers may engage in the same activity for
different reasons. Second, any single volunteer may have multiple motivations. Third,
persuasive messages that are targeted to a person’s important motivations should
be more successful at encouraging them to act than untargeted messages. Fourth,
volunteers who find activities that allow them to fulfil their most important motivations
should be more satisfied and persist longer in their volunteer service. In total, these
propositions suggest that identifying and meeting a volunteer’s primary motivations is the
key to both successful recruitment and retention.
In practice, organisations may discover that a majority (or significant subgroups) of
their volunteers share similar motivations, making recruitment messaging a little easier.
However, research has not yet yielded a clear set of ingredients that allow organisations
to identify which tasks and activities enable volunteers to fulfil particular motives. It
might make sense that recognition for their contribution would help volunteers with
enhancement motives to feel satisfied (and appreciated), for example. Yet, research
that has evaluated tasks has thus far found that volunteers see task affordances (the
functionally relevant benefits available from them) idiosyncratically – different volunteers
see the same task differently and potentially through the lens of their own primary
motivations.9 In the end, what matters for satisfaction and retention may be whether or
5 Clary and Snyder, 1991
6 Clary et al., 1998a
7 For example, see Petrovic & Stukas, 2021, for a review of approaches to studying motivations for
event, sport, and tourism volunteers
8 Snyder et al., 2000
9 For example, Houle et al., 2005
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 5
not volunteers subjectively feel that they are fulfilling their primary motivations. However,
research may yet find that certain task features are linked to certain functional benefits.
Other unanswered questions elicited by the functional approach focus on the question
of multiple motivations and on the stability of motivations over time. The functional
approach assumes that volunteers may have multiple motivations but typically examines,
in separate analyses, whether each important motivation has been fulfilled or not and
correspondingly contributes to satisfaction.10 Where multiple motivations have been
examined together, they have either been seen to be in competition, with perceived
fulfilment of one motive crowding out perceived fulfilment of another, making it harder
for volunteers to feel satisfied,11 or additive, meaning that a greater number of important
motivations simultaneously perceived to be fulfilled leads to greater satisfaction and
higher intentions to continue volunteering.12 Theoretically, being able to fulfil at least one
key motive should be enough to satisfy and retain a volunteer but undoubtedly there is
variability based on the motive, task, and organisation. That is, certain motives may be
easier (or more difficult) to fulfil, certain tasks may afford the ability to fulfil more (or fewer)
motives, and certain organisations may highlight and enable the fulfilment of some (but
not other) motives. The experience of volunteers with multiple motives may then vary
depending on the context.
Additionally, environmental factors outside the volunteering activity, such as health,
family, or paid work, may impact volunteer satisfaction and retention. Age-related
differences may also predict motivations. For example, Okun and Schultz applied the VFI
to a large sample of volunteers and found as age increases, career and understanding
motivations decrease and social motivations increase. No relationship was found
between age and enhancement, protective, or values motivations.13 The study found
that across age groups, values motivation was consistently the most salient motivation
for volunteering. This suggests that recruitment campaigns can be further targeted by
population group, but all messaging should be underscored by how a volunteering role
can help people express their values. Although the VFI specifies humanitarian values in
general, organisations may need to think carefully about whether there is congruence
between the organisation’s values and those of its volunteers.14
Although motive fulfilment has been shown to predict intentions to remain a volunteer,
it seems possible that fulfilling certain motivations could lead to the end of a volunteer’s
10 For example, Clary et al., 1998a
11 Kiviniemi et al., 2002
12 Stukas et al., 2009
13 Okun and Schultz, 2003
14 Van Schie et al., 2015
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 6
tenure.15 For example, it is plausible that certain motivations could be satiated, particularly
understanding and career motives, when volunteers learn all there is to learn from an
activity or succeed in obtaining paid work based on the skills and contacts obtained
through volunteering. Other motivations, such as values or social, may remain just as
important over time with fulfilment desired in an ongoing way, if they are linked to stable
features of volunteers, such as their deep-seated values or longstanding social networks.
Hypothetically, volunteers should be able to be retained at a particular organisation even
if their goals and motivations change, simply by moving them to a new task or role that
facilitates the fulfilment of newly important motivations.16 If that is not possible, it may
be the case that it is best for the volunteer to move on to a new opportunity at another
organisation.
Volunteering and Wellbeing
The functional approach suggests satisfaction and retention can be bolstered by motive
fulfilment (any motive), but recent research has begun to discriminate between self-
oriented and other-oriented motives for volunteering. This distinction reflects earlier
debates about whether helping behaviour is primarily egoistic (motivated by self-benefits)
or purely altruistic (motivated by the goal of benefiting others).17 Perhaps unsurprisingly,
recent research reports that volunteers with self-oriented motivations (e.g., career,
protective, and enhancement) persist less and report lower satisfaction than volunteers
with other-oriented motivations (values, understanding, and social).18 This makes sense
if self-oriented volunteers are not intrinsically or autonomously motivated to participate
but rather seek to meet external demands or satisfy instrumental goals through
volunteering.19 However, other-oriented volunteers also report greater wellbeing than
self-oriented volunteers. At present, it is not exactly clear why this might be. Research
is needed to confirm this effect and also to understand its potential mechanisms. How
and whether volunteering actually contributes to wellbeing at all has been the focus of a
growing number of studies.
So, does volunteering improve wellbeing? At present, research results are ambiguous.
Cross-sectional surveys that link volunteer engagement (comparing volunteers to non-
volunteers or looking at the number of hours or years contributed) with wellbeing are
unable to tell us the causal direction of any effect: it could just as easily be that people
15 For example, Stukas et al., 2005
16 See Stukas et al., 2015
17 For example, Batson et al., 2002
18 Stukas et al., 2016
19 For example, Gagne, 2003
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 7
with higher wellbeing are drawn to volunteering20 as it is that volunteering provides
wellbeing boosts.21 Longitudinal studies have often shown a bi-directional effect (greater
wellbeing encourages volunteering and volunteering increases wellbeing)22 and there are
suggestions that benefits only accrue for those who have done ‘enough’ volunteering23
but perhaps not too much24 or especially for those who are lacking social integration.25
Different outcomes have been observed in different studies. Son and Wilson break
wellbeing into hedonic (e.g., positive mood), eudemonic (e.g., purpose), and social (e.g.,
feelings of belonging) varieties, finding an effect of volunteering only on the latter two.26
However, as mentioned, recent research has started to point to the volunteer’s primary
motivations as a key moderator of health and wellbeing benefits. That is, the mixed
results in the literature could be due to benefits only accruing to volunteers with certain
motivations. In particular, Konrath et al. found,27 when reanalysing earlier results from the
Wisconsin Longitudinal Study,28 that only elderly volunteers with other-oriented motives
lived longer than non-volunteers, and that elderly volunteers with self-oriented motives
showed similar mortality rates to non-volunteers.
The benefits of other-oriented motivations also align with earlier findings from
the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study which found that “mattering” mediates the link
between volunteering and wellbeing. Mattering is defined as the perception that we
are a significant part of the world around us and consists of both feeling valued and
adding value.29 Volunteering may promote eudemonic wellbeing by making people
feel better about themselves (feeling valued) and their contribution to others (adding
value), boosting self-esteem and lowering depression. The others to whom we may
matter include close relationship partners, organisations, and the wider community.
Organisations can foster feelings of mattering by articulating the impact of a volunteer’s
contribution in achieving organisational mission (feeling valued), reminding volunteers
about the important role they play in society (adding value).
Although many studies do find that volunteers report greater wellbeing, demonstrating
a cause-and-effect relationship is more challenging. Experimental studies that have
randomly assigned students to engage in community service or not (i.e., to a waiting
20 For example, Rhoads et al., 2021
21 Yeung et al., 2018
22 Thoits & Hewitt, 2001
23 Kim et al., 2020
24 Windsor et al., 2008
25 Piliavin & Siegl, 2007
26 Son and Wilson, 2012
27 Konrath et al., 2012
28 Piliavin & Siegl, 2007
29 Prilleltensky, 2020
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 8
list) have failed to show that volunteering can increase wellbeing.30 However, assigning
students who clearly want to volunteer to either start right away or wait, however true a
test of wellbeing benefits that may be, is not the same as assigning people at random
to do community service or not – which could show that volunteering also benefits
those who are not predisposed to help. However, such studies run the risk of creating
a “mandatory volunteerism” condition, which has been shown to reduce intentions to
volunteer in the future.31
The Importance of Autonomy Support in Volunteering
When external pressures are used to encourage or require people to volunteer, this
creates extrinsic motivation that may promote engagement, but only for the time when
the external pressures or rewards are salient. When the forces encouraging people to
volunteer are removed, volunteers may cease participating. For example, pressuring
employees to engage in corporate volunteering may backfire.32 Potentially, wellbeing
benefits also dissipate when community service is not freely chosen.33 This is one
premise of self-determination theory (SDT),34 which has long argued that motivation
may be either intrinsic (the behaviour is appealing, in and of itself) or extrinsic (the
behaviour is enacted for instrumental reasons to achieve other goals) – and that extrinsic
motivations are associated with lower persistence and lower wellbeing.
Fortunately, research also suggests that helpers who are intrinsically and autonomously
motivated do report greater wellbeing.35 For this reason, self-determination theory
researchers have recommended that volunteers be provided with autonomy-support in
their roles.36 That is, additional features that provide choice to volunteers and support
them to make their own decisions about how their activities should be carried out. This
is one way to ensure wellbeing benefits, as SDT proposes that wellbeing arises from the
satisfaction of three needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence.37 Organisations
would do well to provide volunteers with opportunities to fulfil each of these needs. For
example, choice and freedom to contribute to how volunteering activities are carried
out, respectful treatment by leaders and paid staff, opportunities to develop meaningful
relationships with clients and other volunteers, and the ability to demonstrate and improve
skills. It may not be surprising that these needs are somewhat implicitly present in the six
30 Whillans et al., 2016
31 Stukas et al., 1999
32 See Grant, 2012
33 Gebauer et al., 2008
34 Deci et al., 2017
35 For example, Weinstein & Ryan, 2010
36 Gagne, 2003
37 Deci et al., 2017
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 9
motivations identified by the VFI, suggesting that there could be individual variability in
the importance granted to each need by different volunteers. Again, the lesson is to know
one’s volunteers and their needs and motivations.
Recommendations for Volunteer Involving Organisations
Returning to the question of health and wellbeing benefits, our recommendation is that
organisations do not advertise these as being available to all volunteers, given such
benefits may depend on an array of contextual factors, such as features of the task and
the individual volunteer, including their motivations. At present, whilst the literature shows
that volunteers who hold self-oriented motivations may leave sooner than other-oriented
volunteers, the goal of volunteer involvement is not to keep people as long as possible.
For many, volunteering is a pathway to employment, education, or other outcomes, and
this does not invalidate the importance of their contribution. Instead, as the functional
approach recommends, we would suggest that organisations focus on ensuring that
volunteers can fulfil their goals through the activities assigned to them, remembering that
volunteers may have multiple motives, both self- and other-oriented, and that motives
may change over time. One line of thinking argues that attracting volunteers using self-
oriented benefits (and even explicit requirements or rewards) may get them in the door
for “action” where later they can look back and, upon “reflection”, subsequently develop
more intrinsic and other-oriented reasons for volunteering, connecting their service
activities to deeper prosocial and humanitarian values.38 If their service persists further,
it may even contribute to a “role-identity” or role-person merger (considering the role
of volunteer to be an important part of who they are) that will sustain activities into the
future, even from organisation to organisation.39
This role-person merger is associated with several outcomes. Once a volunteer
assimilates their role into their self-definition and self-evaluation, they tend to devote
more time to their volunteering activity, they extend their role-related social ties, and
they display role-appropriate behaviour.40 The role-person merger predicts behavioural
intentions and stability, which can be leveraged by organisations to foster performance,
satisfaction, and retention. Such an outcome may require careful cultivation of volunteers
with specific attention to their primary motivations, the ways in which organisations can
help them to be fulfilled, and the respectful acknowledgement of volunteers as important
partners in the achievement of organisational goals. And whilst many volunteers
will be satisfied by knowing their involvement makes a difference and supports their
38 Clary et al., 1998b
39 Grube & Piliavin, 2000
40 ibid
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 10
organisation’s mission (as well as their own values), other volunteers may depart
prematurely if their role is not matched to their needs. This underscores the importance
of organisations needing to keep tabs on their volunteers and understand what they want
out of their service.
Public Policy Implications
The research on volunteer motivations has several implications for public policy. As
evidenced in the literature, volunteers are motivated to contribute for a myriad of reasons,
and these motivations can be both self- and other-oriented. Career advancement
is an oft-cited self-oriented motivation, and whilst volunteering can be a pathway to
employment, public policy initiatives that require participation in volunteering must
consider the potentially adverse effects of “mandatory volunteerism”. For example, mutual
obligation requirements that pressure people into community service might achieve the
short-term outcome of funnelling jobseekers into voluntary activities, but could have a
negative long-term impact by removing prospective volunteers from the volunteer pool
due to the undermining of intrinsic motivation or because of reactance to pressures.
Further, as research has not yet clarified the factors that ensure wellbeing benefits will
be derived from volunteering, governments and volunteer involving organisations alike
should be cautious about over-emphasising wellbeing benefits in recruitment campaigns.
Gaps in Knowledge and Future Research Possibilities
This paper outlines what we currently know about individual motivations for volunteering,
but there are some key gaps in our understanding. New studies that assess and track
motivations, perceptions of motive fulfilment, satisfaction, and future intentions over time
and in an organisational context would enhance our understanding of the predictors of
volunteer satisfaction and retention. Motive fulfilment as a construct is understudied;
research in this area might enable the identification of tasks or roles that provide a
‘match’ for volunteers with particular motives, or at the very least, ways to highlight how
tasks match up with important and/or varied motives, encouraging subjective perceptions
of motive fulfilment.
Volunteer effectiveness is another understudied construct, but a deeper understanding
of what enables effective volunteering (and how to define effectiveness) would likewise
contribute to satisfaction and retention. As SDT argues, demonstrating competence
is an essential predictor of wellbeing and effective volunteers very likely perceive
themselves as mattering more. Research in these areas may help us to understand
whether and what motivational variables predict performance and how this relates to
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 11
volunteer satisfaction. For example, it would be good to know whether volunteers with
self-oriented vs. other-oriented motivations differ in their effectiveness. Finally, as the VFI
was not created to distinguish between self- and other-oriented motivations to volunteer,
measures that better capture this distinction are needed.
Further research is also required on the relationship between volunteering and wellbeing.
Although we can conclude that volunteering may boost the wellbeing of volunteers, this
effect seems to be moderated by several factors that have not yet been clearly explored.
In particular, we are yet to understand whether wellbeing effects are homogenous
and investigating the diversity of benefits is required to understand which types of
volunteers benefit the most from their participation and what types of benefits they
receive (if any). Do certain tasks boost wellbeing more than others? Do benefits accrue
only for volunteers with certain motivations? Is the impact on wellbeing long-lasting or
temporary? More research is needed to clarify effects. At a time when volunteer involving
organisations and policy makers are continually espousing the positive mental health
benefits of volunteering, it is critical to understand when and for whom volunteering
is a predictor of mental wellness. With such knowledge in hand, it will then be crucial
to apply our understanding to extend benefits to those experiencing disadvantage for
whom participation in volunteering has the possibility to improve their life across several
indicators, including economically, socially, and psychologically.
Conclusion
Contemporary public policy tends to ignore volunteering entirely or continues to position
it as a vehicle to achieve alternate outcomes such as paid employment. This detracts
from recognising that volunteering is an end unto itself and undermines the critical role
that volunteering plays in creating inclusive and resilient communities. Volunteering
is a unique activity because it serves multiple beneficiaries in tandem: governments,
volunteers and the organisations that involve them, service users, and the broader
community all benefit simultaneously from volunteering. This amplifies the return on
investment in social, cultural, and economic terms and provides a salient argument for
the importance of investing in sustainable volunteerism.
Given formal volunteering has been declining for decades, public policy must consider
the ramifications of positioning volunteering as a factor of production and focusing on
the economic contribution (and savings) generated through volunteering. The takeaway
message for volunteer involving organisations is that understanding and servicing the
motivations of volunteers will likely have a demonstrable effect on volunteer performance,
satisfaction, and retention, and is therefore a worthy investment of time.
Understanding Motivations to Volunteer 12
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