Measuring Volunteerability and the Capacity to Volunteer among Non‐volunteers: Implications for Social Policy

Abstract

As volunteering and its benefits gain global recognition, social policymakers can sustain and increase volunteering through social policy, legislation and other types of involvement. A key performance practice is to measure the rate of volunteering based on the percentage of the population that volunteer or the number of hours donated. The focus of this article, however, is on the capacity to volunteer by non-volunteers as well as by volunteers. The concept and theory of volunteerability (an individual's ability to overcome related obstacles and volunteer, based on his or her willingness, capability and availability) offers a richer understanding of how people can be assisted to overcome barriers to maximize their volunteer potential and thus increase volunteering. The article details the definitions and benefits of volunteering and covers examples of related social policy, as well as explaining the concept of volunteerability and how it can be measured using existing and new scales. Based on a mixed methods study in Australia, the article offers specific measures to examine the concept of volunteerability and reveals important differences between volunteers and non-volunteers. The article also details major barriers to volunteering and how social policies can be developed to overcome them.

Immigrant Integration Through Volunteering: The Importance of Contextual Factors

“…Our findings, that immigrants and native-born volunteers were similar on most volunteering indicators, suggests that the main barrier for immigrants’ volunteering lies in their transition from non-participation to participation. In other words, if the participation threshold is crossed by immigrants, the differences in other indicators of volunteering are reduced (Haski-Leventhal et al , 2017). The challenge for immigrant integration through volunteering is not about what volunteer activities immigrants undertake, but more about whether or not they are able to cross the participation threshold.…”

Volunteering research in Australia: A narrative review

“…Overall, we note the lack of research in this domain and encourage future investigations. A promising recent development is a study by Haski‐Leventhal, Meijs, Lockstone‐Binney, Holmes, and Oppenheimer () who introduced the concept of volunteerability, which offers a richer understanding of how people can be assisted to overcome barriers to maximise their volunteer potential and thus increase volunteering.…”

Conceptualizing corporate identity in a dynamic environment

“…It shows that top management attempt to engage regularly in symbolic representational leadership in through actions and words (Balmer, 2017;Schmeltz, 2014), which influences employee identification and how they interpret and respond to corporate social initiatives (Sharma, 2000) as shown in Figure 1 Thus, as revealed by the findings, employee engagement in voluntary actions is driven by their identification with their organization and recognition of areas of similarity in objectives and beliefs (Boros, 2008). This leads to higher employee motivation and commitment to organizational goals which could be translated into co-operative and citizenship-type behaviors such as engaging in volunteering programs (Piehler et al, 2016) relevant to CSR objectives (Balmer, 2017;Haski-Leventhal et al, 2017). This is shown in Figure 1, as reflected in the relationship between employee identification and corporate social behavior.…”

“…Gleaned from ten interviewees, the founder played a leadership role and had impacted organizational culture, identity, behavior and commitment to dedicated social areas, even decades later (Christensen et al, 2014;Haski-Leventhal et al, 2017 In this example, the founder of the company, through his value-based leadership and role as a 'cultural architect' (Hillestad et al, 2010), influenced and formed a culture emphasizing social responsibility in general, and environmental awareness in particular, by taking a leading position in the development of environmentally friendly cars in the automotive industry, (of course the term 'environmentally friendly' has to be seen in what was acceptable at that time). This position supports our claim that the founder has a direct influence on corporate social behavior and indirect impact through cultural values, as shown in Figure 1.…”