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Volunteering is big business in the United States. In 2008 more than one-fourth of the population donated an average of 52 hours apiece to a not-for-profit organization. The largest beneficiaries of this generosity were religious, educational, youth service, and community service organizations (Volunteering in the United States, 2008). Volunteers provide numerous benefits to society (Snyder, Omoto, and Lindsay, 2004), not only filling gaps in social safety nets and providing services that communities cannot or will not, but also creating social links among the often diverse members of a community (Stukas, Worth, Clary, and Snyder, 2009). While not-forprofits' reliance on volunteer labor is not new, the pressure to recruit and maintain volunteers has continued to intensify. The expanding need for volunteers, coupled with the low exit barriers associated with volunteering, makes the study of volunteer motivation both timely and important.
Because most volunteers also hold paying jobs, their volunteer work may fulfill only those motivational needs that are not being met at work. Given the numerous differences between volunteers and paid workers, simply exporting motivation research from the for-profit environment to the not-for-profit world appears illadvised. Because of these and other differences between paid workers and volunteers, researchers have conducted numerous studies specifically examining unpaid worker motivation.
For example, not-for-profit managers often offer symbolic rewards to increase volunteer commitment and favorably influence volunteer performance; common examples include thank you letters, prizes, publicity, appreciation dinners, and attendance at a conference, though the complete list is surprisingly extensive and diverse. In one large study, Cnaan and Cascio (1999) evaluated 17 different symbolic rewards for their impact on volunteer satisfaction, organizational commitment, and tenure; their results suggest that individual responses to rewards are quite varied.
Functional theory is one widely studied psychological model that assesses individual motivation. Functional theory proposes that individuals hold certain attitudes or engage in particular behaviors because those attitudes and actions meet specific psychological needs, and that different individuals can hold the same attitudes or participate in the same behaviors for very different reasons (Clary and Snyder, 1991; Katz, 1960; Smith, Bruner, and White, 1956). Previous applications of functional theory in volunteer studies include human resource management studies, in which functional theory was used to evaluate attitudes and their consequences within organizations (Dulebohn, Murray, and...