In 2014 in the United States, an estimated 62.8 million people, or 25.3% of the population volunteered their time and money to a nonprofit organization, spending around 7.9 billion hours of volunteer time ("Volunteering in 2014("Volunteering in ," 2015. Volunteerism accounts for a significant portion of the workforce, particularly among nonprofit organizations that rely heavily on community support to provide necessary, yet usually unprofitable services. Despite the importance of volunteer practices, volunteer retention is a pervasive issue and can be a time-consuming and costly endeavor for the organization. The current paper provides a review of behavior analytic literature to discuss how behavior science is suited for empirically investigating the origins and maintenance of volunteer behavior. Furthermore, although behavior systems analysis has not specifically addressed volunteerism, this analytic approach could be beneficial to investigate ameliorating volunteer retention on the large scale. The conclusion explores research suggestions and likely implications of expanding behavior analysis further into this domain.
Policing in the United States is irrefutably a component of systemic racism. The history of police brutality against the Black community can be found in our amendments, laws, and cultural practices-it is an infrastructure of oppression. Though police brutality is not a new development, it has reached a fever pitch with the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Recent calls to defund the police puts law enforcement agencies squarely, and rightly, in the spotlight of social justice movements and reform. Current issues operating within law enforcement agencies ensure the perpetuation of a system that reinforces the status quo and gives nothing back to the communities that have been victims of brutality. A philosophical restructuring of how law enforcement agencies interact with the communities they serve is paramount. The purpose of this paper is to propose a behavior scientific model aimed at both the individual and organizational levels of law enforcement agencies using elements of Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) and Elinor Ostrom's core design principles (CDPs), called Prosocial. The Prosocial model promotes clarification of values within organizations and the communities they serve and reinforces valuesconsistent action. The model therefore has the potential to be a useful tool to combat systemic racism and police brutality within law enforcement agencies. The proposed model will be discussed in the context of those who created it (white academicians), who will be implementing it (law enforcement), and ultimately who should benefit from it above and beyond police brutality and without psychological or financial cost (Black communities).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.