Volunteer coordinators' leadership plays a central role in the efforts to retain volunteers and increase their commitment to an organization; however, research on volunteers' perceptions of their leaders is scarce. Given the challenges of leading volunteers, we present two studies to investigate the effectiveness of consideration and initiating structure for volunteer coordinators. First, we theorized and tested how well findings from the business and government sectors fit today's volunteer domain by studying volunteers' perceptions of their current coordinators' leadership. Using a sample of volunteers across the nonprofit sector, we found that consideration and initiating structure were related to different criteria. Initiating structure was positively related to volunteers' feelings of competence and to role clarity, while consideration was negatively related to burnout. Both leader behaviors were positively related to volunteers' satisfaction with their coordinator. In our second study, using a different sample of volunteers in nonprofit organizations, we employ a vignette study design to show how the gender of the coordinator influences the perception of his or her behavior. By manipulating the coordinators' gender via vignette descriptions, we found evidence of the communality‐bonus effect for men as men coordinators' leadership effectiveness was rated higher than women coordinators' effectiveness when displaying gender stereotype incongruent consideration behaviors. On the other hand, there was no difference between leaders' genders regarding initiating structure. Volunteers' satisfaction with their coordinator did not differ significantly based on coordinators' gender. We share several practical and theoretical implications of these findings for leaders of volunteers.
Retaining productive volunteers is an essential issue nonprofit organizations face, as volunteers help extend nonprofits' services to their target populations. The current study examined two facets of communication, perception of voice (i.e., upward communication) and satisfaction with communication (i.e., downward communication), as well as training, as important volunteer management practices with respect to facilitating volunteer engagement and commitment using both psychological contract and social exchange theories as the framework. One‐hundred and seventy‐one volunteers from two nonprofit organizations were surveyed to assess their satisfaction with the communication processes at their respective agencies, as well as their level of engagement, commitment, and perception of the training they received for their volunteer roles. Volunteer perceptions of both upward and downward communication were found to be indirectly related to organizational commitment through engagement. In addition, results indicated that volunteer training practices moderated the effects of upward and downward communication on engagement and commitment. Findings suggested that upward and downward communication are important predictors of volunteer engagement and commitment. Furthermore, providing training may help to strengthen these indirect effects.
Volunteers are essential to the operation of many nonprofits, but some experience challenges in retaining their volunteer workforce. The Volunteer Program Assessment (VPA) seeks to address this issue by helping organizations to identify strengths, growth areas, and recommendations for improving volunteer experiences. To maximize the effectiveness of VPA's mission, the organization is moving toward a collective impact (CI) approach. Although not developed as a CI effort, the program currently exemplifies many of its characteristics, which have been instrumental in expanding reach to more organizations. We examine VPA's alignment with collective impact and outline how VPA will continue to improve efforts.
The societal and cultural issues facing humanity are far greater than any nonprofit, for-profit, university, or government agency to address adequately alone. Whether poverty, water shortages, socio-economic inequality, natural disasters with lasting effects, or any number of other challenges facing our communities, organizations must band together to secure the impact needed to truly create change.Increasingly, communities are turning to collective impact as an approach that brings together the collective resources of multiple institutions to address a community-identified problem or need. While a somewhat new approach, there is a growing body of evidence of supporting the effectiveness of using the collective impact approach to addressing wicked problems (Bridgeland et al., 2012; Christens and Inzeo, 2015; Kania, Hanleybrown, and Splansky Juster, 2014).As anchor institutions, Metropolitan Universities have a unique opportunity and responsibility to initiate and promote social change in a way that also advances their mission. Unlike other institutions for higher education, Metropolitan Universities are most suited for targeting social change because of the type of communities they serve and their location within large municipalities. Participating in collective impact is increasingly seen as one approach to this. This issue includes case studies and practical papers to prepare Metropolitan University administrators, faculty, and staff to initiate, facilitate, and strengthen collective impact initiatives in their communities.
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