How Do We Define Volunteering? I’m Not Sure Anymore.

2025-11-25

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For most of my career, I thought I knew exactly what volunteering meant. A clear definition. A neat set of boundaries.A shared understanding across our sector. But the more I paid attention to how people actually show up for each other in community, the messier — and more interesting — the word became. In this episode, I explore why volunteering has never had a single agreed definition — not in research, not in practice, and certainly not in everyday community life.I dig into decades of debate, my own subc...

For most of my career, I thought I knew exactly what volunteering meant.

A clear definition.

A neat set of boundaries.

A shared understanding across our sector.

But the more I paid attention to how people actually show up for each other in community, the messier — and more interesting — the word became.

In this episode, I explore why volunteering has never had a single agreed definition — not in research, not in practice, and certainly not in everyday community life.

I dig into decades of debate, my own subconscious bias, the rise of consumer language in volunteer engagement, and the shift toward seeing volunteers as citizens rather than customers.

At its core, I’m realising volunteering is far less about programs, roles, and organisational pathways… and far more about belonging, identity, connection, and our deeply human desire to contribute to something that matters. And once you see volunteering as a human behaviour — not just a sector construct — the old definitions begin to unravel.

I don’t land on a neat answer in this episode. I’m not sure I want to.

Because the real question I’m sitting with now is:

If volunteering lives in community, not just in organisations... then who gets to define what it means?

Join me in the messy middle as I rethink one of the most fundamental words in our field… and maybe invite you to rethink it too.

Mentioned:

Cnaan, Handy & Wadsworth; Defining Who is a Volunteer: Conceptual and Empirical Considerations (1996)
D.J Cronin; Let's Not Kill Volunteering (2011)
Andrew Hoffman; Volunteers ARE Consumers — Part 2 (2015)
Annette Maher; The Evolution of the Volunteering Infrastructure and Volunteering Australia (2015)
Susan J. Ellis; That Pesky Word Volunteer (2017)
Laurie Mook; Volunteer as 'Consumer:' A Marketing Perspective to Understanding Volunteer Choice (2020)
Ruth Leonard; Ethical Considerations Framing Volunteers as Consumers or Citizens (2024)

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