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Michelle Cleveland1, Debra Gray2, Rachel Manning3, and Kim Bradley-Cole4
1University of Chichester, UK, 2Kingston University, London, UK, 3University of Worcester, UK, 4University of Winchester, UK
“We want to volunteer because we want to be part of making the difference”
“We are all there for each other”
“I’m doing this because I don’t want to let my colleagues down”
Experiences of volunteering often highlight depth of commitment. This commitment is often collective in nature: We do it together, we do it for others. We do it because we are part of a ‘we’. And yet, while experiences of volunteering often highlight the profound impact on – or, indeed, how volunteering is part of – people’s identities, volunteers leave. So how well do we understand what volunteers expect from the organisations they give their time to?
Commitment to volunteering is finite and breakable. Volunteering commitments are not straightforward commitments: they are often conditional and are part of reciprocal expectations. Volunteer-organisation relationships also differ from employee-employer relationships in a variety of fundamentally different ways (Nichols, 2013). Volunteers don’t leave because they will get paid more somewhere else.
Continue reading ““I know where my boundaries are”: Understanding volunteer psychological contracts “
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