What is beyond the choice and the invitation? – recommendations for a demand- and supply-side approach to volunteer recruitment based on the literature

Réka Nagy – Anna Mária Bartal

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the application of volunteer management methods in Hungary has increasingly become not only the prerogative of large, well-professionalized organisations. We chose recruitment as the topic of the methodological study using a volunteer management approach because it concerns all non-profit civil society organisations that employ volunteers, regardless of size or level of professionalisation. When recruiting volunteers, we can actually talk about the "market" of volunteers and civil non-profit organizations, which is theoretically regulated by supply and demand. When recruiting volunteers, we can actually imagine a "market" of volunteers and non-profit civil society organisations, which, in theory—like any market—is driven by the forces of supply and demand. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that both volunteers and civil non-profit organizations play a dual role in the recruitment process, i.e., they can be both buyers and sellers in this market at same time. Nevertheless, the focus of theoretical studies on volunteering is primarily on examining the supply of volunteers. From this perspective, the recruitment process is determined by the extent to which this volunteer supply matches the needs of civil non-profit organisations. In our study we examine the efficiency aspects of personnel recruitment from a different perspective, namely from the perspective of organisational management – based on the relevant literature findings. For the sake of transparency of the analysis, we separated the demand and supply characteristics of organisations when recruiting volunteers and presented them in two separate models. To describe the demand side of recruitment, we analysed "who" and "how" organisations look for volunteers when they need them. In contrast, we examined the supply side of the organizations' recruitment process from the perspective of "what," i.e., what they offer, what management conditions they must meet, and what methods and practices they can use to recruit volunteers. On this basis, we would like to highlight new aspects for volunteer management in Hungary that organisations can use in practice as a complex approach to recruitment from an organisational perspective.

Keywords: recruitment, demand, supply, volunteer management, volunteers, civil-nonprofit organizations