MANAGING VOLUNTEERING BEHAVIOUR: THE DRIVERS OF DONATIONS
PRACTICES IN RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR ORGANISATIONS
Madalena Eça de Abreu
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), UNIDE, Lisboa, Portugal
(mabreu@iscac.pt)
Raul Laureano
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), UNIDE, Lisboa, Portugal
(raul.laureano@iscte.pt)
Sharifah Faridah Syed Alwi (correspondence author)
Brunel University London, UK
(Sharifah.Alwi@brunel.ac.uk)
Rui Vinhas da Silva
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), UNIDE, Lisboa, Portugal
(Rui.Vinhas.Silva@iscte.pt)
Pedro Dionísio
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), UNIDE, Lisboa, Portugal
(pedro.dionisio@iscte.pt)
1
MANAGING VOLUNTEERISM: THE DRIVERS OF DONATIONS PRACTICES
IN RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR ORGANISATIONS
ABSTRACT
The present research deals with donations practices and the extent to which drivers of
donations practices contribute to volunteerism. The paper aims to deepen the
understanding of the relationship between volunteerism and key drivers in donating
behavior and donations practices, thus allowing charities to pursue more efficient ways in
which to elicit volunteer work as well as better manage fundraising practices. It is argued
that gender, age, religious affiliation, compassion, altruism, egoism, and religiosity impact
on the level of volunteerism of the donor.
A sample of 612 Portuguese donors was selected from within a population of donors that
donate regularly to charitable institutions. The key findings of the current study are
grounded on the idea of interaction between the volunteering behavior of a donor and both
his level of religiosity and his religious affiliation. With regard to other drivers of
donations practices, it was found that both altruism and compassion are positively
correlated with donor volunteerism.
KEYWORDS
Volunteerism management, volunteerism, donations practices, pro-social behavior,
religiosity
2
INTRODUCTION
Much attention has been paid to questions addressing volunteering as a vital behavior in a
society (Allison et al., 2002, Fisher and Ackerman, 1998, Wilson, 2000, Briggs et al., 2009,
Becsi and Balasubramanian, 2008, Burns et al., 2006), as an honorable tradition of
community service (Horn, 2012, Cornelis et al., 2013, Eckstein, 2001). Since early history,
volunteering behavior has been a powerful driving force in the betterment of humanity, a
key contributor to the solving of the problems of mankind.
Overall, different types of institutions and organizations have always depended on
volunteering work as a vital resource for the accomplishment of their objectives.
Moreover, amongst other issues that are of the utmost interest to charitable organizations,
including how much people are willing to donate, what are the profiles of donors, and
which charitable causes donors tend and want to support, charitable donations and
donations behavior in general has been thoroughly researched (Bennett and Sargeant,
2003, Ranganathan and Henley, 2008, Webb et al., 2000).
Charities rely heavily on donations as sources of income: volunteerism and donations, or
time and money are highly appreciated. Current research claims that time and money go
hand in hand (Clain and Zech, 1999, Bekkers and Theo, 2008, Lee and Chang, 2007), and
that they are complementary from the viewpoint of charities and their resource
management strategies (Bekkers, 2010). It is believed that time and money, are therefore
required to be considered in tandem by charitable institutions. Truth be told, recruiting
volunteers and obtaining donations are seen nowadays as vital activities for every
organization pursuing its mission in a responsible way. Thus fundraising management
(Hoge et al., 1999) and volunteer management (Penner et al., 2005), demanding such a
solid strategy by general management.
This study has considered different aspects when researching two types of pro-social
behavior: volunteerism and donations practices (Abreu, 2012). Volunteerism and donations
practices are behaviors that emanate from citizens in general and have been under deep
scrutiny from the academic literature for some time, with a recurrent emphasis on the
origin and the exploration of different drivers that can work as explanatory schemata for
the occurrence of these behaviors.
3
Nevertheless, and although there is ample literature on donations practices, studies
centered on the impact of different drivers of pro-social behavior on volunteerism can be
considered to be few and far between. Such key issues as the relationship between people’s
volunteerism and donations practices combined with their level of religiosity or altruism is
drawing more attention nowadays in the literature (Becsi and Balasubramanian, 2008),
which prompts increasing necessary responses. This paper aims to be just one such
contribution.
A deeper understanding of volunteers’ life choices, attitudes, interests, pro-social
behaviors and motivations is indeed required in order to attain a better and more useful
knowledge that better aids volunteering causes and contributes to the survival of charitable
institutions. Better and more in-depth knowledge of donations practices and donor
behavior can aid the charitable organization with obvious gains to society at large.
This paper looks into volunteerism and donations practices: an analysis of the impact of
the donor’s volunteerism into donations’ practices is conducted, which aims to uncover the
relationship between volunteerism in different donors and their donations practices. On this
issue different studies have attempted to illustrate this relationship (Peloza et al., 2009, Lee
and Chang, 2007, Gregory, 2006a) and its usefulness for organizations (Abreu, 2012, Becsi
and Balasubramanian, 2008). The key research question that is elicited here addresses the
impact of different drivers of pro-social behavior on volunteerism. Other questions that are
worthy of investigation are: Is it advisable to consider the joint impact of different aspects
whilst observing the level of voluntarism? Can we use different characteristics of the donor
as proxies for determining who is more likely to be a volunteer?
With all of this in mind, this paper aims to make salient these gaps in the literature, put
together some relevant propositions and subsequently proceed to offer the results of a
survey, its analyses and discussion as well as presenting some worthwhile conclusions
derived from empirical scrutiny.
VOLUNTEERISM AND PRO-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
Volunteerism is considered a form of pro-social behavior (Wilson, 2000), as well as a
widely acclaimed key aspect within pro-social behavior, i.e., an intentional and voluntary
4
behavior valued by society or a significant segment of it (Eisenberg, 1982, Penner et al.,
2005, Piliavin and Charng, 1990).
Pro-social behavior is considered as a broad sort of activities that benefit other people
such as helping, sharing, altruistic behavior and sympathy, cooperation, giving, donating,
and being sensitive and responsive, regardless of personal motivation that would justify
that behavior (Eisenberg, 1982, Penner et al., 2005, De Concillis, 1993). Within this
framework, volunteerism can be defined as a behavior involving a pro-social action in an
organizational context, which is planned and that continues for an extended period (Penner
et al., 2005). Moreover, volunteerism, giving, philanthropy or humanitarianism, have been
applied more or less interchangeably, all terms mirroring the progression of the noble
human tradition of helping the less fortunate though the work of organizations.
The ones that are worried with social problems tend to be associated more with
volunteering activities, and are the ones that engaged more regularly in civic compromise.
And all sorts of people (Plagnol and Huppert, 2010) are contributing their time and energy
in assisting others in a variety of ways. Not surprisingly, volunteering has also been
recognized as a source of well being to the volunteer himself (Binder and Freytag, 2013),
and is believed to have a positive impact on the lowering of the incidence of serious human
conditions including morbidity and mortality (Poulin, 2013).
Moreover, volunteerism is increasingly gaining value at the organizational context.
Likewise, the so-called ‘employer-supported volunteering’ (Booth et al., 2009) makes a
positive contribution to the relationships between employee and employer, both gaining
with regards to the volunteering activity. This situation fosters benefits both at an
individual level, for example increasing job meaningfulness (Rodell, 2013), and at an
organization level (Jessica, 2013). Corporate volunteerism is indeed an advantage for the
corporation due to its image and reputation improvement and to its effect on employer
motivation (Booth et al., 2009).
The array of benefits of volunteerism for society has been acknowledged by different
sources (McCallum et al., 2013, Binder and Freytag, 2013, Becsi and Balasubramanian,
2008), and is an important part of today´s economies, like the leveraging of social values
by volunteerism activities (Agostinho and Paço, 2012). On this issue, both organizations
and society show large gains within volunteerism. CRS initiatives with regards to the
5
trendy ‘employee skill-based volunteerism’ generates economic value for the company
itself indeed, while at the same time, it originates a large benefit for the society (McCallum
et al., 2013).
It is also important to refer that, nowadays, there has been an expansion in the number of
people volunteering for services in different charities, and also volunteering in the socalled third world, especially young people (Cornelis et al., 2013) and elderly retired
people at a more local level. There is also a vivid discussion around whether an action can
be considered volunteering, if and when it is remunerated in some form, and also if
volunteering has a pre-determined intention, or even whether volunteering can be solely
defined as an output (Wilson, 2000).
DRIVERS OF VOLUNTEERISM
Various disciplines have been actively engaged with charities in their volunteering
activities and an understanding of motivation of volunteerism is an important debate
(Bales, 1996, Withers et al., 2013, Bekkers and Theo, 2008, Gregory, 2006a, Clary and
Snyder, 1999, Burns et al., 2006). That is to say, different studies have attempted to
explain the reasons why people engage in volunteering activities (Cornelis et al., 2013,
Clary and Snyder, 1995, Clary and Snyder, 1999, Agostinho and Paço, 2012, Gregory,
2006a). In fact, within the volunteerism and pro-social behavior literature, identifying and
understanding the drivers behind these types of activities has been one of the most debated
topics (Eisenberg, 1982): drivers for volunteerism are extremely important in uncovering
volunteering behavior, understanding volunteers and attracting and retaining them
sustaining organizations. In particular, one can say that the drivers of a specific behaviour
are the set of processes and mechanisms that precede an action. The previous literature has
offered different sets on how the types of drivers can be differentiated for this specific
human behaviour (Allison et al., 2002). For instance, the main motivations for volunteering
can be grouped into individual attributes and social influences (Wilson, 2000).
As alluded to earlier, the literature has been overwhelming in explaining and classifying
the drivers for volunteerism. Demographic attributes have been used as explanatory
variables. Moreover demographic variables have been highly debated in volunteering
6
(Plagnol and Huppert, 2010). Age (Krause and Hayward, 2012, Knowles et al., 2013,
Principia et al., 2012), for instance, has been under inspection, as volunteerism is often
associated with older people (Taghian et al., 2012). Gender is another variable under
scrutiny, but with various outcomes in relation to volunteerism (Wilson, 2000). Allison et
al. (2002) have identified such motives as career, esteem, protection, social esteem or
understanding as drivers for volunteerism.
Within pro-social behavior at large, various terms have been debated, including
compassion, implying feelings, like caring and loving, resulting sometimes in actions such
as sharing, giving, serving, and supporting (Callahan, 1992). Compassion has been related
with benefiting others (Shariff and Norenzayan, 2007, Batson et al., 1979, Callahan, 1992),
and thus, associated with volunteerism. Altruism is conceptualized as a motivational state
with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare (Batson and Shaw, 1991) and a socalled type of pro-social behavior (Clary and Snyder, 1995, Hibbert and Horne, 1996, Hur,
2006, Andreoni, 1990, Magat, 1989, Bruce, 2005, Smith, 2003). Also, altruism has long
been established as one of the motivations for giving to others and also heavily debated
and correlated with volunteerism (Cooper et al., 2013). Moreover, egoism can also be
tested for explaining levels of volunteerism (Horn, 2012).
Lately, the understanding of the origin of altruistic motives to give has been taken up by
different schools such as evolutionary theory and social psychology (Penner et al., 2005) or
socio-biology (Pope, 1994). What is more, empathy has been probably the psychological
mechanism most used in explaining altruistic motivation (Bennett and Sargeant, 2003,
Webb et al., 2000), hence, a source of donations practices and volunteerism. Batson (1987)
further advances the empathy-altruism hypothesis for investigating this phenomenon. The
empathy-altruism hypothesis identifies three different paths to helping (Batson and Shaw,
1991): two egoistic paths and one altruistic path, being it incorporated into the present
research design.
The idea of people helping other people also as part of their religious duties and
obligations has been historically acknowledged, and religious topics have been identified
as the most important drivers for volunteering (Tienen et al., 2010, Bekkers and Theo,
2008, Cnaan and Boddie, 2001, Krause and Hayward, 2012, Saroglou et al., 2005).
Different constructs have been used with regards to this topic including religious
7
affiliation, religiousness, or religiosity. Surprisingly, or not, diverse studies have reported
to some extent different results. Religiosity is been found having a positive relationships
with formal volunteering (Parboteeah et al., 2004). Conversely, Tienen et al. (2010)
concluded that volunteering can be enhanced via a so-called informal spirituality, whilst
religious practice and church attendance are more related with formal volunteering. Einolf
(2013) claims that spirituality is significant as a predictor of volunteerism, irrespective of
attendance of a particular church. But Bekkers and Theo (2008) have found that church
attendance is a key indicator for volunteerism, especially for volunteerism inside the
church. Currently some authors argue for a deeper analysis of the direct or indirect
influence that religion has on people’s volunteering behavior, especially in European
countries that are characterised by a strong decline in religious participation (Bekkers and
Theo, 2008).
DRIVERS OF DONATIONS PRACTICES
In simple terms, one can say that the ‘donation’ is the monetary gift by individual donors
to an organization (Reistma, 2007, Sargeant and Woodliffe, 2007) and often characterized
as a sub-type of pro-social behavior (Burnett and Wood, 1988). Moreover, the marketing
literature has been focusing mainly on two issues around donations practices: the value or
level of giving and the likelihood of giving (Sargeant and Woodliffe, 2007).
Donations practices are extensively covered by the literature of the marketing discipline
(Sargeant &Woodliffe, 2010). Nevertheless donations research has also been approached
through other areas such as the social psychological literature (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2010)
or the exchange paradigm (Belk and Coon, 1993). Donations, analyzed as a process, have
also been examined under a wider literature including social exchange theory, symbolic
interaction, equity theory and resource exchange theory (Burnett and Wood, 1988).
Addressing the organizational side, donations practices have been extensively under
scrutiny in the funding of charities (Hibbert et al., 2007, Bekkers and Wiepking, 2010,
Bennett and Sargeant, 2003) and, like this, a vast amount of studies and reports around this
8
topic have emerged from the organizations´ side, and supplemented by academic insights
(Bendapudi et al., 1996).
A vast literature has also covered the drivers of donations practices (Abreu, 2012).
Sargeant (1999) distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic determinants. Bekkers and
Wiepking (2010) establish a set of eight categories determining donation behavior, e.g.,:
(a) awareness of need, (b) solicitation, (c) costs and benefits, (d) altruism, (e) reputation,
(f) psychological benefits, (g) values, and (h) efficacy. The explanation of the drivers of
this behavior can also be found in philological schema as motivation, values and attitudes
(Gregory, 2006a, Bekkers and Wiepking, 2010). The main reasoned influence, commonly
referred to as the “reason why”, lies in the motivation (Gregory, 2006b). Apart from the
motivation, donation behavior can be studied through other dimensions of reasoned
influences (Watt and Maio, 2001), the most common being researched were attitudes and
values. Therefore, reasoned influences (e.g., attitudes, values, involvement and motives),
unreasoned influences (e.g., habitual giving), and situational influences (e.g., income,
education, etc.) were all capable of explaining donations practices (Belk and Coon, 1993).
In summary, there has been a myriad of studies attempting to understand the reason why
people donate (Watt and Maio, 2001, Ribar and Wilhelm, 2002, Clary and Snyder, 1995).
However, limited research captures the impact of the drivers of donation practices and
volunteerism, which will be further explained below.
GAPS AND CONCEPTUAL MODEL
Consistent with the literature, the gaps identified are: i) the pattern involving
volunteerism and religion stays complex and controversial; ii) there is a need for a deeper
understanding of altruism and egoism motives as predictors of donations practices and
their relationship with volunteerism; and iii) little is known about how the three types of
donors, religious, religious but non-church goer, and secular, are similar or different with
respect to their donation practices, considering their level of volunteerism.
9
The gaps that have been identified lead to an inquiry about the influence and interaction
of different drivers on volunteerism, including age and gender, religious affiliation,
religiosity, compassion, egoism, and altruism.
The scrutiny of the literature has revealed the importance of volunteerism for charities
and the importance of identifying donations drivers that along with some of the
characteristics of individuals tend to be related to volunteerism(Abreu, 2012, Lee and
Chang, 2007, Bekkers, 2010). Moreover, the literature is not unanimous about the role of
religiosity regarding the explanation of volunteerism and, consequently, donations
practices and religious behavior (Batson, 1976, Ji et al., 2006, Reistma et al., 2006).
In this context this study aims to explore and test the role of religiosity and the
relationship between the characteristics of individuals and their volunteerism level, leading
to the following conceptual model (Figure 1) and propositions:

Proposition 1: There is a significant effect of religiosity on the level of
volunteerism.

Proposition 2: There is a significant effect of gender and religiosity on the level of
volunteerism.

Proposition 3: There is a significant effect of age and religiosity on the level of
volunteerism.

Proposition 4: There is a significant effect of religious affiliation and religiosity on
the level of volunteerism.

Proposition 5: There is a significant effect of compassion and religiosity on the
level of volunteerism.

Proposition 6: There is a significant effect of egoism and religiosity on the level of
volunteerism.

Proposition 7: There is a significant effect of altruism and religiosity on the level
of volunteerism.
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Figure 1. Conceptual Model
Gender
Religiosity
Age
Religious affiliation
Volunteerism
Compassion
Egoism
Altruism
METHODOLOGY
Data was collected for the purposes of the current research by means of a survey
instrument conducted next to donors into Portuguese charities. At the beginning, all
Portuguese residents were considered as the target population as it was thought that all of
them (respondents) have the will and are able to contribute to a charitable donation.
Moreover, these respondents are accessible as they could be easily accessed by the
charities as charities keep the records of their donors. Later, we found out that the database
of the Portuguese donors were nonexistent, hence, it is not possible to draw a fair or
representative sample of this population. Due to this limitation the option seen as fair was
sending the questionnaires through the charities, and asking them to send the questionnaire
to the donors on their databases, so as to maximize the respondents and reaching the
individual donor. Thus, our respondents for this study were the individual donors
registered in charity databases. The charities chosen for the current study were based on
five groups following Franco´s (2005) characterization of the Portuguese charities
landscape: (1) Foundations; (2) Holy houses of Mercy (3) Nongovernmental organizations
of cooperation for development; (4) Associations plus Private Institutions of Social
11
Solidarity (IPSS); (5) Museums. Moreover, this sample was considered sufficiently large
since the list of charities obtained was considered to be a quasi total of the total number of
charities in Portugal with an e-mail account. Therefore, a large scale questionnaire was
delivered to these participating organizations on the 3rd of February of 2010, and it stayed
on-line until the 9th of April of the same year. This approach was taken with a view to
capturing a sample that would be representative of the average donor and also to avoid the
possible biases that could possibly arise from directly surveying donors.
Six hundred and twelve donors to Portuguese charities participated in this study, 66.3%
of them female and aged between15 and 77 years old (mean 36.8 years old with a standard
deviation of 11.2 years). Taking into consideration religious affiliation, the sample
comprises 51.4% religious, 28.3% non-church goer and 20.3% secular donors. Thus,
despite the sample selection not being random, it is possible to conclude that the diversity
of the population´s characteristics has been incorporated into the study sample.
To measure volunteerism De Concillis´ (1993) framework of validated items was used.
A 5-point Likert scale was used with extreme points ranging from “totally disagree” to
“totally agree”, the uni-dimensionality of the scale was tested with Principal Components
Analyses (PCA) and a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.824 was obtained. The scale scores that were
obtained were the item averages.
The same procedure was followed for religiosity (Reistma, 2007), compassion (De
Concillis, 1993), altruism and egoism (Batson and Shaw, 1991) scales. Table 1 presents all
the scales Cronbach’s Alpha, suggesting a good level of reliability. For a better
interpretation of the results these scales were re-coded in two categories: low for a value
equal or less than 3 (center point of the scale) and high for values above 3.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the scales used
Scale
Volunteerism
Religiosity Compassion Egoism
Altruism
Cronbach’s Alpha
0.824
0.971
0.723
0.860
0.837
The seven propositions were analyzed with 2-way ANOVA, a statistical procedure to
analyze the influence of two categorical independent variables (the drivers of
12
volunteerism) on one continuous level dependent variable (the volunteerism level). This
statistical procedure has three assumptions (Laureano, 2012): i) the samples must be
independent; ii) the populations from which the samples were obtained must be normally
or approximately normally distributed; and iii) the variances of the populations must be
equal. All of them were verified, except for the analysis of the interaction between
compassion
and
religiosity
where
the
variances
are
significantly
different
(Levene(4;608)=4.931;p=0.002). Each proposition from 2 to 7 is corroborated if the
differences in the mean level of volunteerism for two levels of one volunteerism driver are
not the same across all levels of the second volunteerism driver. In this case, the interaction
between the two drivers is significant.
RESULTS
Tables 1 presents the descriptive statistics for the scales used, namely, volunteerism (as
dependent variable), religiosity as moderator factor, and compassion, egoism and altruism
as independent variables. Volunteerism (mean 2.49) is lower as a type of pro-social
behavior rather than compassion (mean 3.92). Religiosity displaces high values. The mean
level of altruism (3.37) is much higher than for egoism (1.73) suggesting altruism as a
much stronger driver for donation practices.
Table 2. Descriptive statistics of the scales used
Scale
Number
Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Median
Maximum
Volunteerism
612
2.49
0.81
1.00
2.40
5.00
Religiosity
612
3.50
1.28
1.00
3.90
5.00
Compassion
612
3.92
0.74
1.33
4.00
5.00
Egoism
612
1.73
0.51
1.00
1.67
3.89
Altruism
612
3.37
0.92
1.00
3.50
5.00
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The perception of religiosity is related with the level of perceived volunteerism, with the
mean level of volunteerism higher when the donor has higher religiosity (mean=2.60;
standard deviation =0.82) then when he or she has low religiosity (mean=2.24; standard
deviation=0.74), and this difference is significant for 0.05 level (t(610)=5.052; p<0.001).
This conclusion is also supported by all 2-way ANOVA tests where religiosity, as main
effect, is found significant in all of them.
The results of the different 2-way ANOVA performed are presented in the six profile
plot (interaction plot) where the points represent the volunteerism mean values for each
combination of two levels of the two drivers plotted (see Figures 2 to 7).
The results allowed for the conclusion that the interaction between the drivers religious
affiliation and religiosity is significant (F(2;606)=2.726; p=0.066, η2=0.009). In fact, secular
donors vary from low to moderate voluntarism level depending on which level of
religiosity they have. Seculars with low level of religiosity have, on average, a
volunteerism level of 2.23 (standard deviation=0.72) but if their religiosity is high than the
mean level of volunteerism is higher (mean=3.02; standard deviation=0.96).
With previous results we can state that propositions 1 and 4 are corroborated and the
remaining five are not. Although, despite just one interaction effect was found, three
significant main effects were significant, not including the religiosity main effect as just
analyzed:
a) the effect of religious affiliation (F(2;606)=3.341; p=0.036, η2=0.011) as religious
donors have higher perceived volunteerism level (mean=2.64; standard deviation=0.81)
than those that are non church goer (mean=2.33; standard deviation=0.79) or secular
(mean=2.30; standard deviation=0.78), being the differences between these two groups not
significant as showed by the Scheffé post hoc test (p=0.946);
b) the effect of altruism (F(1;608)=30.492; p<0.001, η2=0.048) as donors with high level
of
altruism
have
higher
perceived
volunteerism
level
(mean=2.63;
standard
deviation=0.81) than those that have low level of altruism (mean=2.33; standard
deviation=0.75);
c) compassion effect (assumptions of the test are not verified) as donors with high level
of compassion have higher perceived volunteerism level (mean=2.59; standard
14
deviation=0.81) than those that have low level of compassion (mean=1.91; standard
deviation=0.58).
Figure 2. Perceptions of volunteerism Figure 3. Perceptions of volunteerism
under two levels of religiosity and gender
under two levels of religiosity and age
Figure 4. Perceptions of volunteerism Figure 5. Perceptions of volunteerism
under two levels of religiosity and three under two levels of religiosity and two
levels of religious affiliation
levels of perceived compassion
15
Figure 6. Perceptions of volunteerism Figure 7. Perceptions of volunteerism
under two levels of religiosity and two under two levels of religiosity and two
levels of perceived egoism
levels of perceived altruism
DISCUSSION
The values for volunteerism (see Table 2) are low, with the exception of the value for the
secular donors, when their religiosity is also high. In contrast, the values for compassion,
the other type of pro-social behavior, are much higher. This probably occurs because
volunteering costs time for the donor, it is not a remunerated task (Wilson, 2000), and is
therefore a more difficult type of pro-social behavior to be administered by a charity.
Religiosity, both by its main effect, and while combined with religious affiliation
(interaction effect), does have a positive relation with the level of volunteerism of the
donors. This is also in line with other studies (Bekkers and Theo, 2008) although for the
purposes of this paper volunteering was only applied as a general construct: Tienen et al.
(2010) found that spirituality positively impacts on informal volunteering, and religious
attendance impacts on related formal volunteering.
The demographic characteristics at stake, gender and age, are not associated with
voluntarism, and the interaction effect of religiosity is not found, and thus propositions 2
and 3 are not corroborated. As a matter of fact, different outcomes have been found for the
relationship between gender and voluntarism, or no relationship whatsoever (Winterich et
16
al., 2013) ; on the other hand, getting older has been highly appraised as a condition for
volunteerism (Principia et al., 2012, Plagnol and Huppert, 2010, Krause and Hayward,
2012, Knowles et al., 2013). This study showed that there is a slightly tendency for older
people displacing higher values of volunteerism, but this difference is not significant.
Compassion displays a direct effect on volunteerism, a result also found in previous
studies (e.g. Shariff and Norenzayan, 2007, Batson et al., 1979). Egoism is not related with
voluntarism, and, this relation has been discussed in other studies where egoistic values are
shown as competing with pro-social values and behavior (Horn, 2012). The literature
suggests that altruism can indeed make a difference in volunteerism (Batson and Shaw,
1991) and this study has also revealed that altruism does have a positive effect the other
way around, that is the interaction effect of altruism and religiosity was not found.
CONCLUSION
The aim of this study was to conduct an analysis and develop an understanding of the
relationship between different drivers of volunteerism, in line with a perceived gap in the
literature. There was also an added purpose of the current research in analyzing the
influence of religiosity on volunteerism.
The present study looks at seven different types of drivers of volunteerism: age, gender,
altruism, egoism, compassion, religious affiliation, and religiosity. As far as one can tell,
research papers applying these particular drivers and mixing demographic traits, attitudinal
intentions, and religious variables, are few and far between and to be more rigorous none
were identified.
Grounded on a large scale, this study indicates that religiosity, altruism, and compassion,
can indeed enhance the volunteerism level of the donor. Besides, religiosity positively
influences the volunteerism of a donor, in conjunction with the religious affiliation of the
donor. This conjunction can make a valuable contribution to those practitioners involved in
fundraising campaigns. Indeed, it was said that there is a large tendency, when an
organization is looking for volunteers, like participating in a fundraising campaign, to
address a group of religiously affiliated persons highly engaged within the community and
with an active participation in the religious services. And also the organization can increase
17
the activities for their affiliates to be involved and, in this way, augment their incomes
from donations, and also count these members as more likely volunteers and donors for
future campaigns.
In addition, charities can look at the joint impact of religious affiliation and religiosity:
higher levels of religiosity for the ones who are not religious can increase their level of
volunteerism. This outcome can also be useful when addressing people to volunteer
specifically into secular organizations.
Indeed, these results provide insights and a way for charities to obtain competitive
advantages and achieving their mission and goals. Most importantly, it aids the mission’s
aim to gain volunteers and to raise donations. The implications are important to fundraising
managers as this study demonstrates that religiously affiliated donors can be approached
both by religious and secular organizations. In relation to the fact that religious donors are
willing to help different types of organizations, we advise these organizations to strengthen
their ties and efforts and work more in synergy: the network of religious organizations can
be an important issue to be managed. Moreover, both altruism and compassion are
important drivers for volunteerism and organizations, in general, can tailor their messages
in their campaigns by addressing messages or images focusing behaviours addressing these
issues. As an example, making use of compassion can originate the intensifications of the
drama reported in the news by the organization.
Like most studies, the present study suffers from limitations. First of all, the sample was
not random but rather purposive because of an absence of national databases of donors in
Portugal. Also, the sample was one of Portuguese donors, and there could be different
results in response to questions of religion or volunteering if the questionnaires were
administered elsewhere in Europe; and moreover people that are volunteers and not donors
have been inquired. Besides, future research should take into consideration the use of other
measurement scales.
In spite of the evidence found, the most striking contrast with the existing literature is
that age as a demographic characteristic is no indicator of volunteerism. Perhaps this is due
to cultural differences between Portugal and other European countries and the United
States, where older people tend to be are the highest volunteering group, but this was not
found to be the case in southern European countries (Plagnol and Huppert, 2010). This is
18
therefore an issue that can be the subject of further scrutiny in subsequent studies. Another
opportunity for forthcoming research is to seek a deeper understanding of the intricate
relationship between different sorts of volunteering (formal and informal), religiosity and
religious affiliation.
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