Browsing by Subject "kampanjointi"

The Aim of this BA thesis/study is to explore professional volunteer management in campaigning organizations. I examine what kind of tasks and work areas does volunteer management include in a campaign organization. I also survey the challenges that the volunteer managers are meeting on their work. In the theoretical part I begin by presenting the current phenomenons of volunteer work in the society. Based on the literature, I describe some current changes in the nature of volunteer work: it seems that volunteering has become more episodic and driven by individualistic motives during the last decades. In the second part of the literature view I dive into the topics of volunteer management. It seems that professional volunteer management is a growing post, there are more paid volunteer managers working for organizations than before. The earlier research in volunteer management is emphasizing good practices. Although the literature points out too, that the good management practices are varying, based on the nature and aim of the work of the organization. At the end of the theory part, I’m presenting one theoretical model to examine different styles of volunteer management in different kinds of organizations. The research material consists of four interviews of the volunteers managers in four large campaigning organizations in Finland. The interviews have been conducted as thematic interviews. My method is content analysis, in which I use a content-grounded classification. In the light of my research, the duties of volunteer managers are multiple in campaign organizations. I have named the key tasks as communication with volunteers, training of the volunteers and planning of the upcoming work, campaign work, participation on the organization’s office practices and ”additional tasks”, like duties that are not part of the job description. The volunteer managers found time management as one of the main challenges in their work. The second major challenge is related to the commitment of volunteers: how to find and keep committed and self- contained volunteers in the organization. The key finding of the study is, that there is a contradict between the ideal of self-contained volunteers and the controlled management style of the organizations. Based on the earlier research, tightly controlled management methods might not attract independent volunteers. Solution for the challenge could be maintaining different styles of management and various volunteering tasks, and opportunities within one organization.