Selling volunteering or developing volunteers? Approaches to promoting sports volunteering
This article considers the balance between promoting volunteering in sport by emphasising the personal rewards to prospective volunteers themselves – the dominant management approach – and promoting it by the long-term development of the values of volunteering. We review the motivations and rewar...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
The Policy Press
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/75505 |
| Summary: | This article considers the balance between promoting volunteering in sport by emphasising the
personal rewards to prospective volunteers themselves – the dominant management approach
– and promoting it by the long-term development of the values of volunteering. We review the
motivations and rewards of sports volunteers and how these can be used to promote volunteering
as being a transaction between the volunteer and the organisation. This is contrasted with a
lifecourse approach to understanding volunteering, and evidence that an understanding of the
value of volunteering can be inculcated that underpins continued volunteering. The two approaches
regard potential volunteers respectively as ‘consumers’ and as ‘citizens’. We suggest that a shift
to treating volunteers as consumers can lead to volunteering being regarded as transactional. The
discussion has implications for volunteering in general – in particular, how it can be promoted
in a society where narratives of ‘the consumer’ increasingly dominate over those of ‘the citizen’. |
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