Why do participants in voluntary organizations leave? Exploring the relationship between value congruence and length of stay

Recognizing the importance of values and the specific characteristics of participants and situations in voluntary organizations, we examine how value congruence—the fit or compatibility of values between participants and the organization, or among participants—interacts with personal and situational factors to predict participants' length of stay in their organizations. Introducing the case of a voluntary organization that offers shared housing, we measure value congruence through textual similarity in the self‐introduction documents of 49 participants and the organization's mission statement. This approach differs from the self‐reported measures based on participants' perceptions or recalled interactions used in previous studies. In line with expectation‐disconfirmation theory, participants with the strongest beliefs in organizational values had shorter lengths of stay. The amount of intraorganizational communication also moderated the relationship between value congruence and length of stay. This study provides theoretical and methodological implications for nonprofit management by considering personal and situational factors and evaluating value congruence by textual similarity.     

When Nonprofit Organizations Meet Information and Communication Technologies: How Organizational Culture Influences the Use of Traditional,Digital, and Sharing Media

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In contrast to previous studies that emphasized how resources and institutional forces influence nonprofit organizations...     

How does a board of directors influence within‐ and cross‐sector nonprofit collaboration?

Board members play a significant, yet largely unexamined, role in nonprofit collaboration. Processes, such as finding prospective partners, creating common ground with a partner, and establishing appropriate collaborative governance implicate nonprofit board members. In contrast to the scholarship of the role of interlocking directorates as potential networks for nonprofit collaboration, this paper examines the role of board members' social and human capital on nonprofit collaboration with other nonprofits, businesses, and government agencies. Drawing on online survey data from 636 nonprofit organizations, this paper finds that board social capital—but not board human capital—is positively related to the presence and number of within‐sector and cross‐sector nonprofit collaboration. However, board human capital enhances nonprofit‐government collaboration, when board social capital is also high. The results provide a novel perspective in nonprofit collaboration and board management research.     

How Perceived Costs and Benefits of Initial Social Media Participation Affect Subsequent Community-Based Participation

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Focusing on the low-cost nature of social media participation, previous studies have described social media as providing...     

Classifying and Relating Different Types of Online and Offline Volunteering

The contemporary media environment allows for online volunteering where volunteers can participate without being physically present or being affiliated with a traditional organization. Challenging the traditional types of volunteering and accounting for the new trends, this study identifies different types of online and offline volunteering and examines the relationship between them. Drawing on online survey data from 816 U.S.-based volunteers, this study finds that active online volunteers are also active offline volunteers, suggesting that volunteering in one sphere can complement volunteering in the other sphere. This study discusses implications for understanding volunteering as a complex activity where individuals engage in varied organizational contexts to different degrees and extend their participation to both online and offline spheres.