A Strategic Approach

This book advances research on volunteer management by combining the organizational and volunteer perspectives, provides a guide for volunteer administrators and coordinators, and serves well as text for courses in volunteer management, non-profit management, and human resource management.

Winner of the 2025 Academy of Management Public and Nonprofit Division Book Award and the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) 2025 Outstanding Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Book Award

Volunteers play a critical role in serving communities and delivering public services. Volunteers serve across many areas — in schools, human service organizations, emergency services, and more. By providing services to those in need, volunteers expand the capacity of organizations and can devote extra time to the populations they serve. While research on volunteering has shifted from a focus on recruitment and motivation to management and retention, the focus is largely on universal, one-size-fits-all prescriptions. Volunteer management only recently moved to a contingency perspective focused on organizational needs. However, volunteer management should adapt to meet the needs of organizations and volunteers.

Taking a strategic approach, this book provides an overview of volunteer management from planning and recruitment to engagement and evaluation, considering both organizational and volunteer needs and capacity. We develop a strategic volunteer management approach for volunteering to benefit not only the organizations and communities served, but also volunteers and society more broadly.

This book advances research on volunteer management by combining the organizational and volunteer perspectives, provides a guide for volunteer administrators and coordinators, and serves well as a text for courses in volunteer management, nonprofit management, and human resource management.