Volunteer infrastructures as public private partnership: connecting the dots

• In Event: Analyzing different layers of volunteer infrastructure in crisis and beyond

Abstract

Many nonprofits rely heavily on volunteers to provide their services to the communities. However, finding and retaining volunteers has become increasingly difficult for single organizations (Arnon et al. 2022). Reasons for this development are manifold and include – among others – individual mobility which reduces the chances to integrate in changing living environments, increased demands of qualification for specific volunteer tasks, and more complex regulation. Additionally, one can observe a trend to episodic volunteering (Cnaan et al. 2022).
Volunteer infrastructure organizations have been created to support nonprofits in finding volunteers and, vice versa, help interested persons to find a volunteer opportunity. In practice, we find different solutions how these volunteer infrastructure organizations operate. In some countries, they are nonprofits themselves, in others they are public agencies run by communities (van den Bos, Meijs 2008). This studies analyzes a third option based on a single case study from Switzerland: The organization Benevol is a national organization with 16 regional branches (Studer and von Schnurbein 2012). Some of these regional branches are nonprofit organizations, others are public agencies, and the digital platform is run as a profit center. Thus, we ask: How does a volunteer infrastructure function as a public private partnership (PPP)?
Based on data triangulation using existing literature, public data, and interviews, we analyze overlaps and differentiations between the different branches. From a theoretical point of view we test whether the different types of branches can be better explained with path dependency theory or institutional theory: Have specific decisions in the past led to one or the other solution or are the solution a consequence of different institutional setting, e.g. cantonal law or specific funding schemes?
Our findings will add to a better understanding of volunteer infrastructure organizations and the ways, they operate successfully.

References
Arnon, L., Almog-Bar, M., & Cnaan, R. A. (2022). Volunteer Engageability: A Conceptual Framework. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640221132499.
Cnaan, R. A., Meijs, L., Brudney, J. L., Hersberger-Langloh, S., Okada, A., & Abu-Rumman, S. (2021). You thought that this would be easy? Seeking an understanding of episodic volunteering. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 1-13.
Van den Bos C. M., Meijs L. C. (2008, November 19–22). Using volunteer centres to build civil society [Paper presentation]. Annual Meeting of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Philadelphia, PA, United States. https://www.academia.edu/23941586/Using_volunteer_centres_to_build_civil_society
Studer, Sibylle, and Georg von Schnurbein. "Volunteers as unique organisational resources: Conceptualization in practice and management responses: Lessons from Switzerland." International Journal of Voluntary Administration 19 (2012): 40-51.

Author

• Georg von Schnurbein, University of Basel