Virtual Volunteer Experience in a Nonprofit Organization: A Grounded Theory Study

Abstract: In the United States, nonprofit organizations classified as 501(c)(3) under the Internal Revenue Code (1984) exist to benefit the public for a charitable purpose. In 2021 there were more than 1.8 million 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations in the United States according to federal tax filings (Independent Sector, 2021). Unlike for-profit organizations, nonprofits can legally employ volunteers (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.) and than 30% of adult’s volunteer yearly (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019). Each hour of a volunteer’s unpaid time is valued $29.95 (Independent Sector, 2022) making the overall labor savings of the volunteer labor force an immense benefit. It is estimated that this yearly savings is $193 billion annually in the U.S. alone (Hrywna, 2017).

As one of the key principles of human resource development (HRD) and its Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) is related to the development of individuals, teams, groups, and organizations; I set out to first investigate the nature of nonprofit volunteer development. After an initial scoping literature review, that included all AHRD and nonprofit journals, we analyzed 778 peer-reviewed search results using the PRISMA process (Moher et al., 2011) and an adapted Garrad’s (2011) Matrix Method using the search terms that included nonprofit, volunteer, and development. After analyzing all the peer-reviewed items not a single article included any information related to the development of virtual volunteers in nonprofit organizations despite the fact that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic an increased emphasis of remote working arrangements has been on the rise (McKinsey & Company, 2022).

As such, the purpose of this study is to explore the virtual volunteer experience in a nonprofit organization. To facilitate this study, Charmaz’s (2014) constructivist grounded theory methodology and methods will be used. Between 10-30 participants who are currently or have previously volunteered virtually for the same organizational context will be interviewed via Zoom using semi-structured interview protocols. Supplemental data collection will include publicly available social media streams (e.g. Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, website) and posts of volunteer activities and the organization itself will be incorporated. In addition, memos will be written throughout the entire study at key moments and to capture emerging thoughts. Unique to grounded theory, both data collection and analysis occur concurrently, and thus the goal of the methodological tools is the pursuit of theoretical saturation via theoretical sampling. For the initial stages of analysis, line-by-line in-vivo codes will be generated for each transcript which when combined with the memo writing, categories will begin to emerge. These emergent categories will then be explored in questioning routes to develop as well as refine them. At later stages of data analysis focused and theoretical codes will be used to further stratify categories as well as map them amongst other categories into a theory of virtual volunteer experience in a nonprofit organization.

Keywords: Virtual Volunteer, Nonprofit, Grounded Theory