Voluntas最新文献

The article examines how nonprofit organization staff navigate organizational mission as they encounter complex systems problems outside their area of expertise, focusing on environmental organizations encountering homelessness in river watersheds. Drawing on surveys from seventy-three individuals from forty-three organizations and interviews with seventeen nonprofit staff, I find that staff who demonstrate systems thinking are more likely to describe integrating complex systems problems into their mission and activities in meaningful ways. Not interacting with systems issues due to lack of skill is most often explained with language of mission adherence and avoiding mission drift.

This article addresses what motivations volunteers have for volunteering for refugees and whether these motivations differ from or complement motivations to volunteer in general, such as included in the widely used measurement instrument, the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI). We organized eight focus groups with volunteers for refugees (N = 44) and interviewed five involved coordinators, all working in one city in the Netherlands. Results show that humanitarian concerns and social justice were highly relevant for people's motivations, next to volunteering to obtain or improve knowledge and skills. We find support for the earlier suggested extension of the VFI with the social justice motivation. Next, the current study expands existing analysis on volunteer motivations by identifying four areas that require further attention: (1) volunteers for refugees seek a meaningful role in life; (2) are motivated by the pragmatism of this volunteer work; (3) have emotional reasons; and (4) are motivated by media exposure.

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) contribute to vital neighborhoods by building communities of citizens and acting as intermediaries between citizens and organizations. We investigate how NPOs' engagement in social and systemic integration is shaped by neighborhood characteristics, and how it relates to the organizational practices of managerialism and organizational democracy. We combine survey data with administrative data from a representative sample of NPOs in a major European city. To measure the effect of neighborhood on organizational integration, we separated the city into 7,840 grid cells characterized by population, per capita income, share of immigrant population, and density of organizations. Findings indicate that managerialism positively relates with systemic integration, as organizational democracy relates with social integration. Neighborhood characteristics, however, are not related with NPOs' engagement in integration. Our findings contribute to research on urban social cohesion by illuminating the interplay between NPOs' organizing practices, local neighborhoods, and contributions to both forms of integration.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11266-023-00571-1.

Volunteering provides unique benefits to organisations, recipients, and potentially the volunteers themselves. This umbrella review examined the benefits of volunteering and their potential moderators. Eleven databases were searched for systematic reviews on the social, mental, physical, or general health benefits of volunteering, published up to July 2022. AMSTAR 2 was used to assess quality and overlap of included primary studies was calculated. Twenty-eight reviews were included; participants were mainly older adults based in the USA. Although overlap between reviews was low, quality was generally poor. Benefits were found in all three domains, with reduced mortality and increased functioning exerting the largest effects. Older age, reflection, religious volunteering, and altruistic motivations increased benefits most consistently. Referral of social prescribing clients to volunteering is recommended. Limitations include the need to align results to research conducted after the COVID-19 pandemic. (PROSPERO registration number: CRD42022349703).

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11266-023-00573-z.

Migrant community-based organizations (MCBOs) are key mediating structures between immigrants and host societies. However, when implementing this role in host societies, MCBOs often face a number of challenges that reduce their chances to be effective in promoting social justice. This paper aims to analyze the challenges that MCBOs settled in Milan (Northern Italy) experience and the coping strategies that they use in order to provide some guidelines on how to support them. In-depth interviews, observations and document analysis with 15 MCBOs were conducted. Based on a situational analysis, we present the main challenges perceived by MCBOs at three levels: internal (i.e., surviving), inter-organizational (i.e., collaborating) and community (i.e., being recognized as mediating actors). We provide specific guidelines for action on how to address such challenges and thus foster the role of MCBOs as mediating structures in receiving societies.