Super-Volunteers: Who Are They and How Do We Get One?

Abstract

This article investigates super-volunteers, defined as individuals who volunteer 10 or more hours per week with a single organization. We conducted interviews with 25 super-volunteers to explore what motivates them to become super-volunteers and how they choose the organizations for which they volunteer. We also interviewed nine volunteer managers to explore the advantages and disadvantages of employing super-volunteers and what best practices they recommend for supervising them. Most super-volunteers in our sample were highly educated and had retired from careers that involved helping and supervising other people. Most decided on their own to pursue volunteering and then searched carefully for an appropriate organization. The super-volunteers chose nonprofits that they thought were effective, matched their values, and were willing to work with them to develop a meaningful and substantive volunteer position. Volunteer managers stated that super-volunteers brought great value to their agencies and had few disadvantages. However, managing super-volunteers did require more flexibility, time, and one-on-one attention than managing regular volunteers.