Institutional Facilitation in Sustained Volunteering among Older Adult Volunteers

As more nonprofit organizations rely on older adult volunteers to provide services, it is important to retain volunteers for an extended period of time to ensure service quality and the beneficial outcomes of volunteering. Nonprofit organizations are positioned to facilitate older adult volunteers' role performance. Based on an institutional perspective on volunteering, this study explored what institutional facilitations are needed for sustained volunteering. The sample included 401 older adult volunteers from 13 programs across the nation. Data were collected by means of self-administrated questionnaires. Institutional facilitation was captured by volunteer role flexibility, incentive, role recognition, and training. With volunteers' age controlled for, two-level hierarchical linear models were used to assess the relationship between volunteer duration (level 1 variables) and institutional facilitation (level 2 variables) in the volunteer program. Results demonstrated that a higher level of volunteering duration was associated with institutional facilitation factors of more role recognition and more training hours. Duration was also associated with less incentive. These findings suggest that certain facilitators from organizations contribute to an extended period of commitment among older adult volunteers. KEY WORDS: institutional facilitation; older adult volunteer; role recognition; sustained volunteering; training ********** As the first of approximately 77 million baby boomers have entered their 60s, nonprofit organizations are faced with unprecedented opportunities to tap this potential volunteer pool. Volunteers have made significant contributions to U.S. society. It is estimated that in 1999, 26.4 million volunteers age 55 years and over contributed more than 5.6 billion hours at a value of $77.2 billion (Independent Sector, 2004). As baby boomers age, there will be a great potential for volunteering to tackle some of the most troubling social problems, such as failing schools, environmental degradation, youth drug abuse, and child maltreatment (Morrow-Howell, 2006). Statistics demonstrate that older adult volunteers are more committed than their younger counterparts (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics [DOL,BLS],2007) and that people increase volunteer time commitment with age up to age 75, at which point volunteer participation stabilizes (Hendricks & Cutler, 2004). As shown in a recent national survey, in 2006 those age 65 and older devoted a median of 104 hours annually, compared with a median of 52 hours across all age groups (DOL, BLS, 2007). Among all adult volunteers, older volunteers are actively involved in a wide range of volunteer activities--from mentoring at-risk school children in poor urban communities to engaging in environmental conservation activities, teaching computer skills, and providing professional services (Morrow-Howell et al., 2006). The individual benefits associated with volunteering have been well documented in the literature, especially health-related benefits to older adult volunteers. Compared with nonvolunteers, older adult volunteers are likely to experience higher levels of life satisfaction, enhanced well-being, decreased physical dependency, and lower rates of mortality (for example, Greenfield & Marks, 2004; Musick & Wilson, 2003; Van "Willigen, 2000). As baby boomers reach retirement age, older volunteers who directly benefit from volunteering also represent an organizational resource with the potential to increase capacity to provide services and expand public support (Corporation for National and Community Service, 2005). Sustained volunteering is important to maintaining or improving the benefits and service quality linked with volunteering. Volunteer turnover is costly to an organization, to service delivery, and potentially to older adult volunteers themselves (Stevens, 1991).Volunteer performance and retention varies across organizations; the challenge is to assess what factors lead to retention of an individual in the volunteer role (Brudney, 1999). …