Similar to other generations, millennials are attracted to organizations whose causes align with their interests, yet millennial college students' participation in nonprofit voluntary organizations is declining in the United States. Little academic literature explores the causes for the declines in participation, particularly related to civil rights organizations on college campuses. As a result, grassroots civil rights organizations are viewed as dying. Using Howe-Straus' generational theory as a foundation, this case study was to gain the perspective of 20 millennial generation students born between 1980 and 2000 on three college campuses and three civil rights organizations in the southeastern United States. Data were collected from 20 millennial generation students in two phases. Participants completed Clary and Snyder's volunteer functions inventory prior to being interviewed with a focus on understanding the factors that motivate or serve as a disincentive for the millennial generation to volunteer in civil rights organizations on campus. Survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics; interview data were transcribed, inductively coded, and subjected to a thematic analysis procedure. Findings indicate that participants perceive that civil right organizations overlooked opportunities to engage in effective outreach and recruitment of millennial students by focusing on causes that are perceived to be of value to this population. Furthermore, organizations underutilize millennial-friendly outreach, including use of social media campaigns. The positive social change implications stemming from this study include recommendations to engage in recruitment activities that are appealing to the millennial generation in order to garner the contributions of this population of students.

Ego-identity development has long been regarded as an important developmental process for late adolescents. According to existing literature, ego-identity achievement or committing oneself to a set of identity components after having explored viable identity alternatives (e.g., in matters of relationships, political philosophy, etc.), is conducive to a wide array of positive outcomes for individuals, families, and entire communities. The objective of this study was to examine the extent that college experiences and participation in LDS missionary service (i.e., moratorium experiences) were associated with ego-identity development, specifically in terms of identity exploration and commitment. A sample of late adolescents (N=425), all of whom had participated in at least some college and of whom 122 had volunteered as LDS missionaries, provided information about their moratorium experiences that could be related to identity development and reported their levels of identity exploration and commitment according to the Extended Objective Measure of Ego-Identity Status (EOMEIS-2). Independent-samples t tests and chi-square tests were used to examine demographic and identity differences between LDS postmissionaries and LDS non-postmissionaries. LDS postmissionaries and LDS non-postmissionaries differed significantly only in the variables of sex and age. Univariate ANOVA and regression were used to examine the extent to which college and missionary service were associated with overall identity scores. Bothe college studies and LDS missionary service were significantly associated with the four EOMEIS-2 subscale scores of diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium experiences differed significantly in the magnitude and/or direction of their prediction of identity outcomes only in moratorium and foreclosure scores. Both experiences were similarly positively associated with achievement scores and negatively associated with diffusion scores. Stepwise linear regression was used to examine the extent to which certain features of college studies and missionary service were associated with identity scores. After controlling for age, sex, income, and years of education, numerous features of the two experiences, such as motives for participation, funding, frequency of weekly experiences, and learning a foreign language were significantly associated with identity scores. College features shared the greatest amount of variability with diffusion scores, and mission features shared the greatest amount of variability with foreclosure scores.

No description available.

Although research has been conducted on marriage and volunteerism in later life, little is known about the impact of volunteerism on marital quality, particularly intense volunteer experiences. Missionary couples for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) leave their homes for a period ranging from 6-18 months and dedicate the majority of their time to working in church assignments. Qualitative interviews were collected from couples who had served senior couples missions for the LDS Church and returned home in the last year. The mean age of participants was 69, and the mean length of marriage for couples was 37 years. Twelve couples were interviewed conjointly about the experience of their missions, and their perceived marital quality before, after, and during their missions. Qualitative analysis was conducted on these interviews, and several themes emerged from the data, as well as subthemes. The themes were divided into those that occurred prior to serving a mission, those that occurred during the mission, and a separate section for marital themes. Pre-mission themes included factors affecting decision to go on a mission, prior experience. Mission themes included type of mission, adjustments, things enjoyed, and things not enjoyed. Marital themes included arguments, closeness, power, and stress. Each section included an in-depth discussion of what each theme incorporated, as well as quotes from the interviews. Overall, couples felt like their missions had a positive impact on their marriages. Comparisons were done among couples serving different types of missions, as well as couples in first, second, and third marriages. Type of mission and number of marriages had little overall impact on a couple's perception of the effect of their mission on their marriage. Therapists can use these results to inform couples who are contemplating an intense voluntary experience.

Volunteerism is positively associated with various benefits to university students. Perhaps for this reason, some educational institutions are paying students to participate in volunteerism. Conversely, the cognitive evaluation theory suggests that monetary rewards may undermine intrinsic motivation and decrease the likelihood of future participation in volunteerism. However, there has been little empirical research done regarding this issue. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of monetary rewards on university students' intrinsic motivation to participate in a volunteerism activity. While the findings indicated a subtle trend supporting the cognitive evaluation theory, an analysis of the data demonstrated no statistical significance, thus suggesting that further research is needed in order to understand the application of the cognitive evaluation theory to volunteerism.

Volunteers have been present in healthcare settings for centuries, however there is little empirical evidence supporting the impact that volunteers make on hospital performance. Since the 1990s, hospitals in the United States have had a great deal of pressure to produce high quality care at minimum expense. With the pressures of managed care and accrediting agencies, the benefits of using volunteers in a hospital setting are multiplied. Furthermore, as the population of the United States grows and the aging population creates more healthcare needs, the need for volunteers in hospitals may increase. This study utilized multiple regression analysis to explore the belief that the volunteer workforce is cost effective and can greatly enhance quality in a hospital setting. Hospitals throughout the state of Florida were invited to participate in the study by completing a brief questionnaire about their volunteer programs. Performance indicators of profit margin, volunteer cost savings, and patient satisfaction scores were analyzed using American Hospital Association and Agency for Health Care Administration data sets along with data obtained from the questionnaire. Results indicate that the use of volunteers offer significant cost savings to hospitals. Furthermore, the assignment of volunteers in patient settings can enhance a hospital's patient satisfaction scores. It also suggests that there is a need to further explore the impact of volunteers on other performance measures. Future research opportunities and policy recommendations are suggested.

Program sustainability is a major issue for nongovernmental organizations. Sustainability depends on the ability of an organization to maintain its capacity, which can be severely hindered by high rates of personnel turnover. This is especially true for turnover in nonprofit organizations that offer volunteer-led programs and are consequently heavily reliant upon those individuals to carry out their missions. Creating a strong institutional memory for both tacit and explicit knowledge and properly managing volunteers are two critical elements in creating the capacity needed to maintain a high-quality program. This thesis analyzes the case of a youth center in Macedonia that is dependent upon its volunteers to function and is afflicted by sustainability and discontinuity issues in its programs due to a regular rapid turnover of its volunteers. The center promotes youth development through informal education of its participants, primarily high school youth. Interviews, participant observation and document analysis provided insight into the program sustainability issues present at the youth center. I present a series of scenarios that highlight the issues of volunteer management and institutional memory loss concerning volunteer turnover that I discovered in my analysis. I conclude by calling for better preservation of institutional memory, more targeted recruitment and training that emphasizes creating routines and establishing volunteer expectations to enable improved program sustainability. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

This dissertation attempts to answer how social and economic mechanisms operate in individual, community and state levels to impact volunteering. Both social processes and economic factors significantly impact the amount of volunteering. However, researchers have a tendency to explain volunteering only by one of these factors. As both theories are equally important in explaining volunteerism, the development of a coherent theory is necessary to combine economic and social theories. This dissertation suggested that, when evaluated together, the influences of the economic factors on volunteering diminish as individuals get more connected with the other members of the society. The three-level analysis of the volunteering largely supports the primary hypothesis of the dissertation that economic concerns for volunteering are crowded out when individuals or the society is highly connected. This finding can help practitioners design better strategies to enhance volunteering such as creating opportunities for the members of the society to interact with each other.

No description available.

No description available.