Volunteer Management in Charity Storehouses: Experience, Congestion and Operational Performance

Abstract

We study volunteer management at a charity storehouse operated by a large faith‐based organization. The storehouse runs entirely on volunteer efforts. We investigate the role of volunteer experience and storehouse congestion in the preparation of orders using a multi‐method approach. First, we conduct a field study to explore these relationships and collect data at the level of volunteers’ teams. These teams can pair volunteers with either different levels of experience (mixed pairing) or equal levels of experience (no‐mixed pairing). Second, we estimate the effects of volunteer experience and storehouse congestion on the order processing times empirically. Third, we build a simulation model to study how operational decisions—volunteers’ pairing in teams and whether to allow or impede storehouse congestion—affect two performance metrics: on‐time order preparation rate and additional time to prepare the orders, in steady conditions. Then, we simulate disaster conditions at the storehouse, that is, simultaneous surges in supply of volunteers and demand of orders. Contrary to extant literature on team collaboration, we find that no‐mixed pairing outperforms mixed pairing under disaster conditions with storehouse congestion. In fact, no‐mixed pairing improves the on‐time order preparation by 4.32% and the additional time to prepare the orders by 14.42% compared to mixed pairing. Moreover, under disaster conditions, a “controlled congestion” policy at the storehouse delivers the best performance metrics.

The role of volunteer experience on performance on online volunteering platforms

“…For instance, Urrea et al. (2019) classified volunteers as experienced or inexperienced, while Batt and Gallino (2019) classified workers' experience as low, medium, or high. To disentangle the effect of online volunteers' experience better, we follow Batt and Gallino (2019) and distinguish volunteers as belonging to one of three experience levels: beginner, intermediate, or advanced.…”

“…A recent study by Urrea et al. (2019) is an exception that examines the link between the experience of offline volunteers and operational performance. We build on this work by exploring volunteering in an online context, which is fundamentally different from the offline context.…”

“…One reason is that online volunteers often work individually, making the experience of teams, as examined by Urrea et al. (2019), less relevant. In addition, many of the policies of offline volunteer management are bound by the capacity of physical spaces, whereas space and congestion are not meaningful constraints on online volunteering platforms (Amichai‐Hamburger, 2008; Liu et al., 2016).…”

Orchestrating Coordination among Humanitarian Organizations

“…We follow the "overview, design concepts, and details" protocol (Grimm et al, 2010;Urrea et al, 2019) to describe the model detailed below. The overview specifies the purpose, entities, state variables and scales, process overview, and timing.…”

Optimal Control of Parallel Queues for Managing Volunteer Convergence

“…Lastly, VLA in DOM is often characterized by a large number of unaffiliated volunteers who lack training and experience, and a smaller number of experienced volunteers who are affiliated with official responding agencies. Using an agent-based simulation model, Urrea et al (2019) examine polices for pairing inexperienced and experienced volunteers in a relief storehouse while also taking volunteer congestion into account.…”