No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of how a grass root initiative evolves to become a Non-Governmental Organization based on the example of Refugees Welcome to Malmö and to explore how and why people become volunteers, how the volunteers describe their motivation and experiences of becoming and to be a volunteer in this context, and finally how they think and reflect upon their engagement four months later. Based on semi-structured interviews with ten volunteers who helped asylum seeking refugees in the fall of 2015 in Malmö, this study shows that the main reason for how and why they became volunteers was a combination of an inner motivation and will to help and the possibility to easily get engaged in voluntary action with others. The theoretical framework in the study is Christoph Spurk’s identification and characterization of the seven functions of civil society, and the analysis of the empirical material includes a dialog with relevant findings in previous research. By using a narrative design and a thematic analysis the empirical material has been analyzed, organized and presented. The results speak of a perceived humanitarian purpose even though the volunteers’ engagement could be interpreted as political, in the context of a polarized political climate with racism and political violence against refugees. Refugees Welcome to Malmö fulfilled civil society functions such as service delivery, building community, socialization and intermediation and facilitation between citizens and state. The study shows that volunteering and aiding asylum seeking refugees have been a positive personal and emotional experience, and that the civil society action resulted in new social networks between individuals, organizations and official actors. However, alongside cooperation over religious and political boundaries social processes of conflict and prestige existed in the background.

No description available.

In recent decades numerous nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are undergoing the process of professionalization characterized by increased attention to efficiency, accountability, and the adoption of “business-like” tools and practices. At the same time, the majority of NPOs rely on volunteer labor. Most nonprofit scholars focus on traditional volunteering in which one volunteers doing something other than their professional work. These studies see volunteerism and professionalism as two completely separate systems. Meanwhile, the subset of skills-based volunteers, i.e., volunteers who provide professionally-related skills or services in nonprofit settings is understudied and their views of NPOs' professionalization are generally unknown. The present thesis aims to help fill this gap by exploring how skills-based volunteers perceive their roles and increasing the professionalization of nonprofit organizations. The study is guided by two research questions: (1) how do skills-based volunteers react to the rise of NPOs' professionalization? and (2) how do they navigate possible tensions between professionalism and volunteerism? The study is an ethnographic case study of skills-based volunteers at Engineers WithoutBorders Sweden. The data is collected through 14 semi-structured interviews with working and retired volunteers complemented by my participatory observations as a part-time employee at the organization. To analyze and interpret the study findings, the thesis employs a boundary work framework. The empirical findings indicate that, contrary to traditional volunteers, skills-based volunteers react to NPOs’ professionalization positively. The professionalization helps them to integrate their roles as volunteers and professionals, thus, facilitating boundary blurring. At the same time, working and retired skills-based volunteers perceive student volunteers as a barrier to professionalization, consequently, emphasizing differences in competencies and reliability between themself and students and performing demarcation work.

No / Lay involvement in public health programmes occurs through formalised lay health worker (LHW) and other volunteer roles. Whether such participation should be supported, or indeed rewarded, by payment is a critical question. With reference to policy in England, UK, this paper argues how framing citizen involvement in health only as time freely given does not account for the complexities of practice, nor intrinsic motivations. The paper reports results on payment drawn from a study of approaches to support lay people in public health roles, conducted in England, 2007e9. The first phase of the study comprised a scoping review of 224 publications, three public hearings and a register of projects. Findings revealed the diversity of approaches to payment, but also the contested nature of the topic. The second phase investigated programme support matters in five case studies of public health projects, which were selected primarily to reflect role types. All five projects involved volunteers, with two utilising forms of payment to support engagement. Interviews were conducted with a sample of project staff, LHWs (paid and unpaid), external partners and service users. Drawing on both lay and professional perspectives, the paper explores how payment relates to social context as well as various motivations for giving, receiving or declining financial support. The findings show that personal costs are not always absorbed, and that there is a potential conflict between financial support, whether sessional payment or expenses, and welfare benefits. In identifying some of the advantages and disadvantages of payment, the paper highlights the complexity of an issue often addressed only superficially. It concludes that, in order to support citizen involvement, fairness and value should be considered alongside pragmatic matters of programme management; however policy conflicts need to be resolved to ensure that employment and welfare rights are maintained. / National Institute for Health Research Service Delivery and Organisation Programme (project number 08/1716/206).

This dissertation examines three relationships between nature centers and their local communities. First, what are the values provided by local centers as perceived by community members? Second, what factors lead community members to support local centers? And third, what are the constraints to visiting local centers as perceived by community members? We surveyed random samples of community members living around 16 diverse nature centers across the United States and conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses to address these questions. Chapter one introduces the study and provides a literature review of theories and empirical research related to the research questions. Chapter two reports the results of an exploratory factor analysis on the level of importance communities assign to fourteen nature center services. The factor analysis revealed four underlying values: environmental connection, leisure provision, civic engagement, and community resilience. Chapter three tests sixteen hypothesized predictors of community support for nature centers. All these variables were significant, suggesting people volunteer at, donate to, or respond to threats at nature centers for a range of reasons. These include those related to supporting nature center missions (e.g. environmental connection significance and commitment to nature) but also other reasons such as friends' and family's perceptions of nature centers and assessments of the center staff members. Chapter four explores constraints that emerge during different stages of the decision-making process people go through when considering whether or not to visit a local nature center. The greatest constraints emerge in early stages (e.g. center awareness) and late stages (e.g. limited finances, transportation, and time) of decision-making. Chapter five discusses the study's implications to theory, including ecosystem service and educational leisure setting valuation, environmentally significant and charitable support behavior, and leisure constraints, as well as nature center practice. Centers that consider these implications might better serve their local communities and achieve their missions. / Ph. D.

5 Abstract The dissertation thesis occupy by defining of volunteering characteristics. There are some questions about what the volunteering should be and what shouldn't be, what is volunteering motivation and what is volunteering background in Czech Republic. Afterwards it is occupy by of volunteering management for purposes of quality management, specifically in recruitment, education, audit and evaluation, risk management or quality standard defining. There is a research of managers and volunteers from profit and non-profit organisations about their access to volunteering and to each other. Afterwards there is an analysis of interviews and their evaluation. The conclusion contain some description of new phenomenon of volunteering in Czech environment and there is also evaluation of its' practical impact.