Volunteering in Dutch leisure, tourism and hospitality organisations

This article was written for Uncover magazine - Meaningful Leisure Experiences. 

Authors: Licia Calvi and Frederike van Ouwerkerk are lecturers and researchers in the professorship of Digital Transformation in Cultural Tourism (BUas Academy for Tourism) and Bertine Bargeman is a lecturer and researcher (BUas Academy for Leisure & Events).

That volunteering is so much needed to guarantee the functioning of a civil society raises the question of how to maintain and collaborate with a healthy pool of engaged and committed volunteers, in view of the challenges that our changing society is facing (Pahus, 2020). Challenges in terms of ageing of the current volunteers pool (Duursma, Losekoot, & De Jong, 2023), of growing diversity in the population (Koolen-Maas et al., 2023), of rapid technological developments, of changes in the motivations for volunteering (Thibault, 2020) and of the restless times we are living in at many levels. A further challenge pertains to the relationship between paid and unpaid staff within these organisations, where volunteers need to work side by side with personnel that is part of the organisation chart and is on the payroll of the institution (whereas volunteers can only receive a standard minimal compensation per year that is defined nationwide), without taking over the paid staff’s tasks and roles (see Arnon, Almog-Bar, & Cnaan, 2023).

CELTH co-financed a project in which Breda University of Applied Sciences and NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences collaborate to study the current situation of volunteerism in Dutch LTH institutions and to offer some recommendations to make volunteering sustainable in the future. While in the literature a quantitative approach to gathering data is mostly used to understand volunteerism, in this project we adopted a qualitative approach. We organised workshops and conducted interviews and focus groups with managers and volunteers of five LTH organisations in Brabant. The information we collected was analysed through thematic analysis. The resulting insights are being discussed and finetuned in a final co-design workshop with managers and volunteers to make sure that they are meaningful in their own practice.

Interactions in the volunteering practice
In our research, we adopted an integrated practice approach (Bargeman et al., 2024), through which to understand the interaction between volunteers, paid staff and management during volunteering. This is also where our project has differed from the literature so far, which has mostly been focusing on either the volunteer’s or the organisation’s perspective and paying little attention to the interactions among all actors and the context-related conditions in these dynamics (cf. Arnon et al., 2023). In our analyses, we focused on the characteristics of the practice itself, such as the relationship between the volunteers and their organisation (i.e. the management) in general and also with the volunteers’ coordinator in particular (where one exists, which was indeed the case in most of the organisations we considered), the relationship between the volunteers and the paid staff, and also the relationship within the volunteers‘ community, with specific attention to whether this is felt as a community where people feel at home and well. 

Diversity and motivation
What emerged from the Brabant context is that the volunteering pool is little diverse in both their profile (that is age and ethnicity) and also in their motivation for volunteering, which remains their urge to stay socially relevant, to give back and to deploy their knowledge and skills. More social reasons like the need to have or increase one’s social contacts and even a form of escapism were also mentioned. Almost all volunteers expressed their positive experiences of being part of a close-knit community. The few Gen Z volunteers that were approached consider volunteering a springboard to their future career, and the few ones with a migration background mainly volunteer to improve their language understanding and to speed up their integration process. But both profiles remain scarce. This is where more interventions need to be made.

Flexibility and involvement
Volunteering is perceived as a rather flexible activity in terms of the time required to dedicate to it, less when it comes to the activities that volunteers are tasked with. With more flexibility on the side of the organisation, younger people, who notably have less time to dedicate to this, would also be more inclined to volunteer, for example with specific and time-bound tasks. Precisely because the majority of volunteers are aged, they would appreciate more involvement in the definition of the vision of the organisation they volunteer at and also, simply, in the choice of activities and changes to be implemented on a day-to-day basis. Our respondents refer to the fact that volunteers have become more articulate citizens. The current generation aged 65+ is different from the previous generations: they have different values and wishes, are often highly educated and had responsible roles during their professional lives. 

Professionalisation and human touch
Volunteering has become more professionalised than it used to be in the past: it is regulated by the rules in the Diversity & Inclusivity Code, the Fair Practice Code and the Code of Governance. In addition, volunteers need to sign a contract setting out their tasks and rewards, and progress interviews are held regularly because volunteering is not without obligations: volunteers are bound by the agreements they have made with the organisation. While they feel valued by the management and by their dedicated coordinator, and this is often expressed through tangible signs of appreciation like a New Year’s party and gift, dedicated activities during the year, and a yearly compensation in some cases, they mainly want to be seen as human beings. They expect transparency in communication, and a clear vision of what the role of volunteers and related rules and restrictions are in the institution they volunteer at (cf. Arnon et al., 2023). They want to be listened to, they want management to allow them to implement their own initiatives and ideas, to develop their talents and to use their career-long competencies more than what is done in most organisations at the moment.

More flexibility and diversity, openness to different voices within the organisation even if not ‘authorised’ by their institutional role, and clear and transparent communication between all actors involved appear to be the aspects LTH organisations need to pay more attention to if they want to keep the volunteers they currently have (in number). And, if they want to make sure they remain happy, committed and well (so they need to care more explicitly about their well-being - volunteers are not a given) and if they want to acquire new and more diverse ones to face the challenges that are increasingly emerging in our society. 

While these conclusions are mostly acknowledged by the actors involved in their practice, it is the first time that they have been studied systematically through a research project.

Acknowledgements 
We would like to thank the following heritage and leisure organisations that participated: 
Alliantie Zuiderwaterlinie, Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught, Van Gogh Village Museum Nuenen, Stichting Wildlife from Safaripark Beekse Bergen, and Het Markiezenhof in Bergen op Zoom. Additionally, we would like to thank Annemiek Messer from MOOIWERK Breda and our partners from NHL Stenden Dr. Rodney Westerlaken and Dr. Geesje Duursma.

Sources
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- Duursma, G., Losekoot, E., & De Jong, G. (2023). The role of volunteers in creating hospitality: Insights from museums. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 54, 373-382.  
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