Written by over 200 leading experts from over seventy countries, this handbook provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of the latest theory and research on volunteering, civic participation and nonprofit membership associations. The first handbook on the subject to be truly multinational and interdisciplinary in its authorship, it represents a major milestone for the discipline. Each chapter follows a rigorous theoretical structure examining definitions, historical background, key analytical issues, usable knowledge, and future trends and required research. The nine parts of the handbook cover the historical and conceptual background of the discipline; special types of volunteering; the major activity areas of volunteering and associations; influences on volunteering and association participation; the internal structures of associations; the internal processes of associations; the external environments of associations; the scope and impacts of volunteering and associations; and conclusions and future prospects. This handbook provides an essential reference work for third-sector research and practice, including a valuable glossary of terms defining over eighty key concepts. Sponsored by the International Council of Voluntarism, Civil Society, and Social Economy Researcher Associations (ICSERA; www.icsera.org), it will appeal to scholars, policymakers and practitioners, and helps to define the emergent academic discipline of voluntaristics.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the latest theory and practice for volunteer involvement. It represents a milestone for knowledge of how and why volunteers become involved and will be essential reading for practitioners, policy makers and funders. Offering exercises and examples from practice, it introduces concepts for understanding volunteers’ agency and for critically assessing ways in which those who seek to involve volunteers can respond to rapidly changing environments. The authors draw on a combination of theoretical perspectives and practical experiences to develop approaches based on individuals and community strengths and assets, underlining the need for conviviality, respect and enjoyment in volunteer involvement.

"Reviewed here is global research on how 13 types of Voluntary Membership Associations (MAs) have significantly or substantially had global impacts on human history, societies, and life. Such outcomes have occurred especially in the past 200+ years since the Industrial Revolution circa 1800 CE, and its accompanying Organizational Revolution. Emphasized are longer-term, historical, and societal or multinational impacts of MAs, rather than more micro-level (individual) or meso-level (organizational) outcomes. MAs are distinctively structured, with power coming from the membership, not top-down. The author has characterized MAs as the dark matter of the nonprofit/third sector, using an astrophysical metaphor. Astrophysicists have shown that most physical matter in the universe is dark in the sense of being unseen, not stars or planets."--Page 4 of cover

Migration has changed the social, cultural, political, and economic landscape of many countries. Mutual aid organizations, ethic-oriented religious organizations, hometown associations, and various other types of ethnic and immigrant organizations emerged to respond to the particular needs of immigrant communities. For countries with a tradition of civic participation, integrating immigrants into civic life becomes an important issue. This article reviews the literature on ethnic/immigrant associations and minorities’ or immigrants’ voluntary participation in major developed countries that have experienced a significant increase of immigrants, particularly after the 1990s. In terms of ethnic/immigrant associations, the author reviews the historical background of research in this area, the size and scope, the formation and development, the memberships, and the financial well-being of these associations, the roles they play in helping immigrants acculturate into the host countries, and the classification of ethnic/immigrant associations. Particular attention is given to immigrants’ mutual aid organizations, ethnic cultural organizations, ethnic-oriented religious organizations, and hometown associations. The author also reviews the literature that examines the factors influencing minorities’ and immigrants’ voluntary participation, their formal and informal volunteering, as well we immigrant youth’s voluntary participation.

This timely handbook examines the most contemporary, controversial and cutting-edge issues related to the involvement of volunteers in the fields of events, sport and tourism. Split into thematic sections, the primary areas covered include: key disciplinary approaches to understanding volunteerism, international contexts, managing volunteers, the impacts and legacies of volunteering and future trends in these sectors including online and digital volunteering. Commonalities and differences of volunteering in these sectors are drawn out throughout the volume. A diverse range of case studies are examined including the 2007 UEFA Under 21 Championship hosted by Poland, the development of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the Vancouver, London and Pyeong Chang Olympic Games, Belgium’s National Day in 2019, the Puffing Billy railway in Australia, as well as many other examples looking at destination services organizations, museums, grassroots associations, corporate events, community events and visitor attractions. Drawing on the academic and practical expertise of over 50 authors from across the globe, the handbook provides an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in volunteering in these sectors, encouraging dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study in order to advance volunteering research and practice in the fields of events, sport and tourism.

Underscoring the complex relationship between civic engagement and education at all stages of life, this innovative Handbook identifies the contemporary challenges and best approaches and practices to encourage civic engagement within education.

Civic participation is an ideal concept in most democratic societies. People are encouraged to support neighbors, communities, and causes that combined contribute to the quality of life in their environment. However, too often the study of civic participation is carried out in a narrow intra-disciplinary manner that prevents a real understanding of what civic participation is and how to assess it. In this review, Cnaan and Park document how key writings are limited in scope and are either nonprofit, political science or environmental studies oriented. They then review many definitions of civic participation and form one that best captures the concept. They follow this with a set of six major forms of civic participation, each with numerous sub-categories and relevant statistics illustrating their occurrences. Cnaan and Park conclude with a call for future research of civic participation to be both comprehensive and sensitive.

This review paper focuses on volunteers in community sports associations (CSAs). Such associations are a major context of sports volunteering across Europe, Canada and Australia—the countries in which a multitude of sports clubs are represented by governing bodies of sport. Their importance is not only in the large numbers of volunteers involved but also in the benefits of such associations to society. The clearest of these is the provision of opportunities to take part in sport, at a cost subsidized by the efforts of volunteers and thus contributing to physical health. However, the benefits extend more broadly to the quality of life and the rewards the volunteers themselves receive from association. Many community sports associations have a significant number of members who, while they do not actually play sport themselves, provide opportunities for others and also enjoy the social rewards of membership. The aim of this broad-ranging review is to introduce the reader to community sports associations as an example of small, volunteer-led associations, and to make links between academic theory in this area and the more general study of volunteering. The breadth of the review allows readers to follow-up supporting references on individual topics. The author’s extensive experience, primarily of England and Europe, has inevitably led to more examples being drawn from these areas; however, broader international work is also incorporated. It is hoped this review will stimulate readers’ thinking about volunteering in their own country.

Social science research on self-help/mutual aid groups and organizations from 1960 on is reviewed. Voluntary peer-run mutually supportive groups’ diversity illustrated through Alcoholics Anonymous, mental health groups and others. Socio-political contexts shape self-help/mutual aid. Borkman’s autoethnographic narrative highlights her participation.

Publications on arts-related amateur, hobbyist, some professional, and mixed-member associations and some agencies are reviewed. Their mission is to foster, present, and sometimes chronicle the art its members prize. Excluded from this review are the studies of art support organizations.