Volunteer Management: A Strategic Approach

Winner of the 2025 Academy of Management Public and Nonprofit Division Book Award and the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) 2025 Outstanding Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Book Award

Volunteers play a critical role in serving communities and delivering public services. Volunteers serve across many areas ― in schools, human service organizations, emergency services, and more. By providing services to those in need, volunteers expand the capacity of organizations and can devote extra time to the populations they serve. While research on volunteering has shifted from a focus on recruitment and motivation to management and retention, the focus is largely on universal, one-size-fits-all prescriptions. Volunteer management only recently moved to a contingency perspective focused on organizational needs. However, volunteer management should adapt to meet the needs of organizations and volunteers.

Taking a strategic approach, this book provides an overview of volunteer management from planning and recruitment to engagement and evaluation, considering both organizational and volunteer needs and capacity. We develop a strategic volunteer management approach for volunteering to benefit not only the organizations and communities served, but also volunteers and society more broadly.

This book advances research on volunteer management by combining the organizational and volunteer perspectives, provides a guide for volunteer administrators and coordinators, and serves well as a text for courses in volunteer management, nonprofit management, and human resource management.

Jaclyn S. Piatak is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and teaches courses in the Gerald G. Fox Master of Public Administration Program, including Volunteer Management. Her research focuses on public and nonprofit management, including human resource management and volunteering. She currently serves as co-editor of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly as well as on nine editorial boards, including Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory and Public Administration Review. Her professional experience includes working in the federal government at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and at the Corporation for National and Community Service, now AmeriCorps. Her MPP is from Johns Hopkins University and her PhD in Public Administration is from American University.

Jessica E. Sowa is a Professor in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy & Administration at the University of Delaware. Dr. Sowa received her Ph.D. in Public Administration in 2003 from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on public and nonprofit management with an emphasis on human resource management. She is the co-editor-in-chief of Perspectives on Public Management and Governance.