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A Volunteer Communications Strategy: 13 Steps to Driving Recruitment, Engagement and Leadership (Case Study)

When it comes to recruiting and motivating volunteers to ever higher and more effective levels of engagement, no organization has its work more cut out for it than New York Cares.

As New York City’s leading volunteer organization, New York Cares runs volunteer programs for 1,000 New York City nonprofits, city agencies, and public schools, enabling more than 50,000 volunteers annually to contribute their time, expertise, and energy to a wide array of organizations that address critical social needs citywide.

In order to ensure that its massive and complex operation runs smoothly, the staff at New York Cares has spent considerable time developing and refining their volunteer recruitment strategies, whose lynchpin, not surprisingly, is communication.

I’ve spent some time talking with the folks at New York Cares recently, and as you’ll see below, their strategies can be put to work to boost your organization’s volunteer recruitment, engagement and retention rates, no matter the size of your organization.

The challenges facing volunteer communications

In the recent past, New York Cares realized it faced three challenges that limited its ability to grow the base of volunteers serving its nonprofit partners.

1) They needed to raise “activation rates” of attendees who came to learn about New York Cares volunteer opportunities. Only 45% were immediately signing up for an assignment after their informational orientation.

2) They needed to increase the levels of volunteer engagement. The great thing about New York Cares is that it’s a one-stop shop for want-to-be volunteers to learn about opportunities to help a broad range of nonprofits, and register for a project that has a commitment level of as little as just a few hours.

But New York Cares needed and wanted volunteers to come back again and again for more of the meaningful volunteer assignments they offered. “We needed to increase the average number of projects volunteers completed in order to grow the services we provide to nonprofit partners,” says Colleen Farrell, senior director of marketing and communications at New York Cares.

Farrell notes that New York Cares also needs a volunteer team leader for every project they start.

3) They needed to create new leaders . “We wanted and needed a higher percent of our volunteer base to step into leadership roles. Taking a leadership role is the ultimate form of engagement and is critical to our expansion,” says Farrell.

What follows is a group of key principles for volunteer communication strategies I’ve gleaned from my observations of New York Cares’ work. I want to thank executive director, Gary Bagley, as well as Colleen Farrell, for volunteering their time and insights on how they’ve achieved their success. Where credit is due for brilliant insights and ideas, it is theirs alone; for anything less, I take responsibility.

New York Cares’ volunteer communication strategy

1) Understand that all volunteers aren’t the same . Every group of volunteers incorporates various segments, each with distinct wants, needs and interests.

2) Get to know each segment well—very, very well. And keep in touch on an ongoing basis.

3) Use targeted interactive communications. They’re the best way to move volunteers from one level of engagement to the next.

New York Cares segmented its audiences and developed communications plans for each. “We focused in on volunteers, segmenting them by commitment level, and developed a new framework for our engagement with them over the course of their involvement: the Volunteer Engagement Scale (VES ),” says Farrell.

The VES enables New York Cares to pinpoint the best way to motivate volunteer movement from episodic to more engaged participation. This targeted, personalized approach is now the cornerstone of all volunteer communications.

4) Plan communication activities for each segment based on what you know . Planning enables you to focus on what’s important in the long term, rather than be distracted by what just hit your inbox.

5) Speak directly to the “wants” of each segment.

6) Roll out more frequent, targeted communications to build engagement and motivate volunteers to act.

New York Cares developed its Volunteer Lifecycle communications program —aligned with the VES —to provide key information at each stage and encourage deeper relevant engagement, such as more frequent volunteering. The plan specifies how to communicate to recruit volunteers and cultivate them from their first experiences to long-term engagement. For example, only volunteers who have demonstrated a significant commitment to New York Cares are engaged with leadership development messaging.

The plan also defines triggers for outreach including thank you emails, calls to volunteer leaders and special letters and awards for volunteers who reach key milestones in their volunteer lifecycle.

case study volunteer

Here are some of the ingredients that make this plan work:

  • Online communications are the backbone of New York Cares’ outreach, a focus that enables it to manage and deliver targeted communications at a moderate cost.
  • Messaging focuses on volunteer impact and outcomes (vs. outputs, such as number of meals served, volunteer hours etc.).
  • Increased use of storytelling, imagery and more emotional language does more to engage New York Cares volunteers.

Chart— Volunteer Lifecycle Communications Program

7) Make the ask—Converting interest in volunteering, just as in fundraising, swings on it.

8) Focus on your volunteer orientation program to ensure you’re maximizing your communication activities in this critical engagement activity.

New York Cares took a three-pronged approach to increase its “activation rate.” Bagley and team:

  • Revamped the orientation process from start to finish. One striking change was that orientation leaders aimed to have most participants signed up for a project before they left the room.
  • Streamlined communications with volunteers.
  • Ensured that communications were clear and consistent, and that follow-up support was in place.

9) Put the 80-20 rule to work for your volunteer program .

New York Cares focuses on the 20% of volunteers who are most highly engaged to motivate them to become even more involved, and leverages them to more effectively engage less-connected volunteers.

10) Train colleagues, volunteer leadership and board members as messengers to expand the reach of your volunteer communications.

New York Cares increased the number of staff members focused on volunteer leadership development and training. The staff also strengthened its relationships with current team leaders via increased communication, and with prospective team leaders through personal and direct asks. For example, the staff is focusing now on getting team leaders more involved by inviting them to serve as organizational ambassadors.

11) Remember that your audience’s perspective, wants, needs and interests change over time.

12) Establish an active volunteer feedback loop. It’s the only way to know what’s relevant, what’s working and what’s not, and how to do it better.

13) Track outreach—responses to specific emails, changes in messaging or channels—to supplement the feedback loop. Your findings will highlight what is effective so you can do more of it.

Here’s how New York Cares’ tracks its communications impact on increasing engagement and retention:

  • Its in-house technology infrastructure enables New York Cares to track and measure volunteer engagement in real time. Farrell aligns communications metrics with the VES and tweaks continually.

It’s unlikely your organization has this kind of resource in-house, but online communications platforms, from e-newsletters to Facebook, provide insight into what is working for your review.

  • This real-time tracking “enables New York Cares to make real-time adjustments to both communications and program delivery,” says Farrell. “For example, we added more orientations and projects to the schedule last year to accommodate the influx of new people wanting to volunteer.

Tracking is supplemented by New York Cares’ volunteer feedback loop. The staff keeps in close touch with its volunteers’ satisfaction level and wants via monthly online polling, periodic surveys and focus groups. In addition, its volunteer advisory council provides input on an ongoing basis.

Create your own volunteer communications strategy

These 13 steps are making a huge difference for New York Cares. Any or all of them will do the same for your organization.

Don’t be put off by New York Cares’ size and sophistication. You can put these strategies (or some of them) to work for your organization, no matter its size. Select one or two steps to start with, and add more over time. Now get to work!

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Committing to change? A case study on volunteer engagement at a New Zealand urban farm

  • Open access
  • Published: 13 April 2023
  • Volume 40 , pages 1317–1331, ( 2023 )

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  • Daniel C. Kelly   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2391-4422 1  

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Urban agriculture is a promising avenue for food system change; however, projects often struggle with a lack of volunteers—limiting both their immediate goals and the broader movement-building to which many alternative food initiatives (AFIs) aspire. In this paper, I adopt a case study approach focusing on Farm X, an urban farm with a strong volunteer culture located in Tāmaki-Makaurau Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. Drawing on a significant period of researcher participation and 11 in-depth interviews with volunteers and project coordinators, I first contextualise and explore the history of Farm X, then offer themes to describe key factors which help or hinder their volunteer engagement. Engagement is helped by strong leadership , learning by doing, socialising around plants, and contributing to a movement. Conversely, engagement is hindered by time scarcity, economic hurdles , and struggles over direction . Drawing on McClintock’s (Local Environ 19(2): 147–171, 2014, 10.1080/13549839.2012.752797) insights into the hybrid and contradictory nature of urban agriculture as a tool for social change, the paper continues with a discussion of two important trade-offs involved in both farm management and the movement building promoted by Farm X: focused leadership verses volunteer agency; and asking more verses less of volunteers. Finally, I suggest several avenues that may be useful for other urban agriculture projects interested in movement building.

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Assessing and Communicating the Risks and Benefits of Community Participation in Urban Agriculture

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

“We’ve tended on this planet to live against nature… the greatest challenge I think always is to work and live within nature—within, not just with but within—and you do that… you do that when you commit to a garden” (interview participant E, male)

Introduction

Food systems are contested territory. Despite decades of agri-business dominance, industrial and globalised food systems are now routinely critiqued, and their power, processes and outcomes challenged (e.g., Commerce Commission 2022 ; Joy et al. 2022 ; Vermeulen et al. 2012 ). Many options for different systems exist (e.g., Ajl 2022 ), but for city-dwellers, an increasingly common pathway is urban agriculture (Sage et al. 2020 ). Defined broadly as the production of food in urban areas (Ackerman 2012 ), urban agriculture is often described as a movement—reflecting its association with ‘alternative food initiatives’ (AFIs): a range of practices claimed to challenge the hegemony of industrial-capitalist food systems and the negative social, environmental, and economic outcomes with which they are associated (Harré et al. 2022 ; Sharp et al. 2015 ).

More specifically, Sharp et al. ( 2015 ) describe participation in urban agriculture (including urban farming, community gardening, and school gardening) as sitting at the intersection of three key AFI domains: food production, food supply, and increasing access to (and experience of) food in ways that differ from agri-business. Efforts here have been celebrated for such factors as increasing access to fresh food (McClintock 2014 ), showcasing ecologically accountable forms of production (Taylor and Lovell 2014 ), increasing community cohesion (Firth et al. 2011 ) and demonstrating alternative economic models for sales and distribution (King 2008 ). As Sage et al. ( 2020 ) argue, urban agriculturalists are increasingly aware of this social change potential, and organising as a movement to achieve their goals.

Despite this, ideas of ‘urban agriculture a movement for social change’ have also been critiqued, with scholars pointing out the ways certain projects reproduce neoliberal ideas, further perpetuating the status quo (McClintock 2014 ; Pudup 2008 ; Webb 2020 ). Using the example of state-sponsored school gardens in California, Pudup ( 2008 ) explains how the neoliberal logic behind calls to ‘eat local’ and ‘vote with your fork’ elevates individual consumption as a singular pathway to (market-based) change. In the process, structural inequities are side-lined, leaving individual citizens “in charge of their own adjustment(s) to economic restructuring and social dislocation through self-help technologies centered on personal contact with nature” (Pudup 2008 , p. 1229). Similarly, Rosol ( 2012 ) suggests that Berlin’s once-disruptive community gardening movement has now shifted towards “a form of voluntarism” (p. 557) supported by municipal governments as a way to capitalise on free labour, maintaining green spaces otherwise neglected by neoliberal cuts (Rosol 2012 ).

While these responses highlight risks associated with existing power co-opting urban agriculture’s social movement potential, McClintock ( 2014 ) points out that such singularly critical perspectives can themselves limit possibilities for change. As a result of economic pressures linked to urban land prices, labour costs and the ‘cheapening’ of food perpetuated by agri-business’ global disregard of externalities (e.g., water health, soil quality, atmospheric stability, labour etc.; Patel and Moore 2018 ), urban agriculture projects have been forced to experiment with a range of different, innovative and sometimes contradictory approaches, involving varying degrees of state support, market integration and volunteer labour (Classens 2015 ; Ernwein 2017 ; McClintock 2014 ). In light of this reality, McClintock ( 2014 ) argues that urban agriculture is by necessity both neoliberal and radical: a diverse, complex and contradictory space that, as with capitalism more generally, contains both opportunities for difference and obstacles which limit this change. Echoing Gibson-Graham’s ( 2008 ) call for research which “helps us see openings [and provides] a space of freedom and possibility” (p. 619), this insight shifts inquiry away from the pursuit of a single and morally ‘right’ strategy—as if any one ‘solution’ could ‘solve’ a complex problem (Rittel and Webber 1973 )—and into a richer, more contextual space, inviting us to consider multiple perspectives, strategies and scales, and ultimately to focus on the processes by which difference enters the world; in McClintock’s ( 2014 ) words “on how and where urban agriculture arises” (p. 157).

Volunteering in urban agriculture

Farm labour is central to urban agriculture; however, many AFIs operate outside of the formal economy and so must find ways to attract and retain sufficient volunteers to achieve their goals (Cohen and Reynolds 2015 ; Drake and Lawson 2015 ; Earle 2011 )—a requirement that varies considerably. Some AFIs are highly dependent on volunteers and wouldn’t exist or function in their absence; for example, community gardens (Cohen and Reynolds 2015 ) and activist networks organising explicitly for food system change (Massicotte and Kelly-Bisson 2019 ). For other (often more commercial) AFIs like urban farms, volunteers may be useful but not strictly necessary, enabling additional work beyond the core commercial tasks undertaken by paid staff (Ekers et al. 2016 ); for example, expanding productive capacity and/or increasing consumer awareness of alternative food (and by extension, its market penetration).

These differences are complicated further by AFIs’ inherently political nature. While AFIs require volunteers to help achieve their day-to-day work (for example, growing seedlings, weeding, harvesting), there is also a sense in which volunteers help to facilitate the broader work of movement building with which AFIs are associated, whether the volunteers actively support this or not. At a base level this includes the material ‘prefiguring’ of a world centred around local sustainably produced food (e.g., Rutt 2020 ), but may also extend to more movement-oriented requirements to “educate, agitate, organise” (The Democratic Federation 1883 ), mobilising resources to achieve common goals (McCarthy and Zald 1977 ) and enabling the expansion necessary to challenge the hegemony of industrial agriculture.

In this paper, I’ll argue that this distinction—between supporting existing projects and actively growing the movement—is crucial to understanding volunteer engagement in urban agriculture. Following Wilson ( 2000 ), I define volunteering as “any activity in which time is given freely to benefit another person, group, or organization” (p. 215), noting that considerable differences exist between the commitment of those volunteering in support of existing projects and those volunteering to develop, lead and launch a project. In this sense, Diani’s ( 1992 ) social movement definition is useful. Diani ( 1992 ) defines a social movement as “a network of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in a political or cultural conflict, on the basis of shared collective identity” (p. 8). This suggests a higher threshold for ‘movement participants’ beyond more casual volunteers, including shared awareness of the issues with food, and an associated collective identity.

Further challenges relate to the framing of volunteering under neoliberalism (Dean 2014 ; Eliasoph 2011 ). As Dean ( 2014 ) explains, the rise of neoliberalism has seen volunteering increasingly promoted as a pathway to individual ‘career development’ and/or ‘skill building’, reframing otherwise (or additionally) altruistic tendencies within a singularly competitive, alienated and market-based logic. This promotion of instrumental or extrinsic motivations can sit at odds with the deeper commitment and collectivity demanded by social movements (Dean 2014 ); for example, Handy et al. ( 2010 ) shows how student volunteers who prioritised resumé building volunteered less time overall than those with more altruistic motivations. Similarly, Bauman ( 2007 ) notes that such individualistic approaches can increase the likelihood for people to “abandon commitments and loyalties without regret’ (p. 4)—raising a fundamental question for those who promote urban agriculture as a social movement: not just how to attract volunteers, but how to engage them to stay with, promote, and ultimately grow urban agriculture as a movement?

Existing research on AFI volunteer engagement suggests a range of important (sometimes contradictory) factors, from socialising (Teig et al. 2009 ) through to an individual drive for independence from corporate food (Turner 2011 ). While some volunteers do connect their participation to a movement for social change—for example, in Melbourne (Kingsley et al. 2019 ), Oakland (Lyson 2014 ), and Edinburgh (McVey et al. 2018 )—such motivations sit alongside less radical aims like the provision of food and stress release (Kingsley et al. 2019 ), a diversity reflecting the broad and multi-functional nature of many AFIs (Sharp et al. 2015 ). By way of contrast, research noting limits to participation highlights factors like inter-personal disputes about garden management (Drake and Lawson 2015 ), the often-underestimated and challenging realities of growing food (Drake and Lawson 2015 ), barriers created by participant homogeneity and its associated racial and class privilege (Lyson 2014 ), and modern society’s undervaluing of a connection to food production (Rose 2013 ).

In line with Pudup’s ( 2008 ) critique of general terms like ‘community gardening’, this research reveals no singular type or motivations, but rather stresses the importance of context and more specific, nuanced analyses of not just volunteer engagement, but AFIs more generally (London et al. 2021 ; McClintock and Simpson 2018 ; Okvat and Zautra 2011 ; Sharp et al. 2015 ). This need for deeper research is particularly important in New Zealand (Sharp et al. 2015 ). A small number of studies have explored New Zealand initiatives, for example, farmers markets (Parkins and Craig 2009 ), community gardens (Webb 2020 ), Māori food production (Piatti 2015 ), dumpster diving (Sharp et al. 2016 ), and food policy councils (Haylock and Connelly 2018 )—with recent research emphasising the lack of funding and legislative oversight that these initiatives operate within (Hanna and Wallace 2021 ). However, urban agriculture research in New Zealand pales in comparison to that overseas, reflecting both the relative infancy of organised AFIs in New Zealand, and a paucity of research on initiatives that do exist (Sharp et al. 2015 ; Webb 2020 ).

The case study

In this paper, I focus in on the factors that have helped and hindered volunteer engagement at one (locally novel) AFI in Tāmaki-Makaurau Auckland: a self-described urban farm and teaching hub, referred to throughout as Farm X. Consistent with calls for increased specificity in both urban agriculture (McClintock 2014 ; Sharp et al. 2015 ) and volunteering research more generally (Wilson 2000 ), I adopt an in-depth case study approach (Yin 2009 ), combining significant researcher participation at the farm with 11 semi-structured interviews with volunteers and key project organisers. Drawing upon recent scholarship on “people-focused” systems (Harré et al. 2021 ), I start from the assumption that Farm X has been successful in that they have attracted the volunteers necessary to establish and maintain the farm, and that it is worthwhile to consider how this has been achieved, for both the project’s own sustainability and other organisations with similar goals. In addition to considering volunteer engagement more generally, particular attention is paid to Farm X’s emphasis on volunteering as supporting a ‘delicious (r)evolution’ and the tensions, contradictions, and possibilities involved in promoting urban agriculture as a social movement against industrial agri-business.

Approach to knowledge

Consistent with my training as a community psychologist (Riemer et al. 2020 ), I highlight and practice an epistemology that values subjectivity, specificity and nuance; what Kidder and Fine ( 1987 ) call big Q qualitative research. Big Q research doesn’t just emphasise the qualitative techniques used to gather and analyse data (e.g., open-ended questions), but also a qualitative worldview where all knowledge is contingent, incomplete and partial, and where the outcomes of the analysis are significantly informed by my own positionality and the ongoing revising, refining and reinventing that characterises a big Q approach to research (see also Braun and Clarke 2021 ).

Researcher positionality and participation

My involvement with Farm X began as a volunteer myself, attending regular working bees during the farm’s establishment—some two years prior to the formal research. Alongside many others, I sweated for and ate of the site, digging rocks from beds, planting cover crops and propagating seedlings, raising mounds of hot compost, harvesting fruits and leaves, developing friendships and deepening my understanding of both the potential and challenges associated with growing food as a tool for change. Like many (but not all) volunteers, I was then younger than 30, university-educated, and, having returned from a significant period of volunteering on other farms overseas, in-between other commitments.

In line with Brannick and Coghlan’s ( 2007 ) take on ‘insider research’, these experiences provide insights “not only through the detached observational role but through the subjectively immersed role as well” (p. 66). From regular attendance at the working bees held in late 2018 to establish farm infrastructure through to decreased but still semi-regular involvement over 2019, these experiences helped to shape the formal period of study and its emphasis on volunteer participation as one key limitation/enabler for growing urban agriculture as a movement. In line with Harré’s ( 2019 ) ingredients for community research, my (practiced and ongoing) commitment to this movement provides an important degree of “skin in the game… a compelling sense of personal recognition rather than just wanting to help [a community] with their problems” (p. 84).

Further insights come from deeper participation over the 8 months of formal engagement, spanning from July 2020 through to the end of February 2021. During this period, I was more closely involved in the work at Farm X than ever before, attending bi-weekly harvest sessions organised around preparing food boxes and regular evening working bees focused on planting and maintaining the garden. As a result, the analysis presented here is also informed by a huge range of informal conversation and observation, both in-person and online. In combination with the formal interviews and regular field notes taken after each day of farm work, these help to provide the “thick description” sought by ethnographers (Geertz 1973 , p. 3), grounded in the direct words of garden participants, promotional materials shared by Farm X online, and my own experiences and subjectivity.

Interview details

As an insider researcher, I drew on the above experiences to shape not just the analysis but also the research focus, the specific questions asked of interviewees, and to ensure that those recruited were at least broadly representative of volunteers at the site. While representativeness isn’t a focus of Big Q qualitative research per se—reflecting criticisms of its claims to generalisability verses qualitative research’s more contextual engagement (Braun and Clarke 2021 )—I wanted to include some of the volunteer diversity that has been involved at Farm X, both for its own sake and for the nuance that differences here introduce (McClintock 2014 ).

In addition to the targeted recruitment of key organisers (the project’s self-described ‘Vision Holder’ J, an artist promoting urban agriculture and a key driver of both organisational goals and funding relationships; and day-to-day Garden Manager V), nine other volunteers were recruited via public presentation of the research aims and recruitment posters at the farm. Interviews took place from November 2020 to May 2021 and ranged in length from 45 min to 2 h. For the project organisers, interview questions focused on the goals, establishment and challenges of the project, with an emphasis on how (and why) they have sought to engage volunteers and what their hopes are for the project moving forward. In contrast, interviews with volunteers focused on how they came to hear of the project, why it appealed to them, the work they’ve been involved in, how they’ve found the experience of being on-site, any challenges or barriers they’ve faced in their efforts to be involved, and their future aspirations for both the project and their own involvement in growing food.

Of those interviewed, some were involved at the project’s conception (T, C, H, E), while others were more recently engaged (S, Q, P, K, F). Gardening experience and awareness of the politics of food varied considerably amongst interviewees, as did their frequency of engagement. In terms of demographics, those interviewed were largely (but not exclusively) younger than 30 and identified as Pākehā/NZ European—aligning with my general experience of participants at the site; a relative homogeneity reflecting some combination of neighbourhood demographics, self-similarity in social networks (e.g., de Klepper et al. 2010 ), and the racial and class privilege associated with ‘spare’ time for activities like gardening (e.g., Lyson 2014 ; Meenar and Hoover 2012 ). In contrast to my observations at the site, 7 interviewees out of 11 identify as male, a bias that likely reflects my own gender and approachability, and one that risks misrepresenting the considerable presence of female volunteers at the farm. A demographic summary of the research participants is provided in Table 1 . In the analysis to follow, they are identified using a letter of the alphabet and their self-described gender.

Consistent with Braun and Clarke’s ( 2021 ) six stage approach to reflexive thematic analysis, I first familiarised myself with the data, transcribing the interviews before entering an iterative process of reading, note-taking, and coding in NVivo. This began with a deliberately broad and inductive ‘bottom up’ approach (Braun and Clarke 2006 , 2013 ) focusing on semantic or direct meanings offered by interviewees, for example, ‘haven in the city’, and ‘what people have learned there’. As my familiarity with the data increased, I began to notice and code more latent meanings—described by Braun et al. ( 2019 ) as “a deeper, more implicit or conceptual level of meaning” (p. 853)—for example, ‘caring for nature’ and ‘dissatisfaction with modernity’. After several iterations, I had 97 separate codes.

I then constructed themes—used here to describe “clusters of meaning” (Braun et al. 2019 , p. 855)—focusing on the various factors that help and hinder volunteer engagement across individual, social, and cultural levels. Potential themes were built and rebuilt in an iterated process assessing completeness, distinction and the ‘story’ they told (Shostak 2022 )—informed by feedback from my PhD supervisor Professor Niki Harré, participants at two online conferences, and the anonymous peer reviewers who helped direct and refine the analysis shared here. Over the course of this feedback (including multiple revisions while writing; Braun and Clarke 2021 ), my analysis evolved and deepened, grappling with complexity of efforts for social change under neoliberalism, eventually encompassing the seven core themes shared below. While still partial and contingent (for such is the nature of knowledge in a big Q qualitative worldview; Kidder and Fine 1987 ), the analysis shared here is nonetheless one I hope will contribute to the development of urban agriculture as a self-conscious movement, both in New Zealand and elsewhere.

First, I provide some context for Farm X then describe key themes detailing factors that have helped and hindered their volunteer engagement.

Farm X is located in Tāmaki-Makaurau Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, on a small 600 m 2 site near the central city. At the time of its 2017 conception, urban farming was locally novel (in an economic sense distinct from community gardening; Giacchè et al. 2021 ), reflecting the economic dominance of industrial export-oriented agriculture and New Zealand’s history as a settler-colonial nation developed (in part) to provide food for the British Empire (Belich 2001 ). Farm X was instigated by an arts-based non-profit who had previously run a number of smaller projects focused on plants, education and sustainability. Responding to an invitation from Auckland City Council to pitch for a neglected community garden site, the non-profit proposed to trial a micro-enterprise focused on sustainable food that would be able to pay a manager’s wage; as Farm X’s ‘Vision Holder’ J—also a volunteer—described in our interview, “an urban farm that actually creates jobs, that proves that these systems that we’re talking about actually work.”

While approved in principle, a year of meetings passed with no formal lease signed. Key issues were fundraising and obtaining a lease long enough to justify the proposed infrastructure spend—a seeming paradox. No lease would be granted without funds to establish infrastructure, but without a lease the project was insufficiently secure to raise the necessary funds. Frustrations grew and eventually the group turned to direct action. As Farm X’s Garden Manager V explained, “[Vision Holder J] called me up and said look, someone’s just got to step up and do it”. So V—who, while part of the planning group, wasn’t then employed as manager—organised a number of working bees to prepare growing beds and began, with significant volunteer input (and no formal permission), to grow food on the site.

Efforts here had the desired effect, with regular weekend working bees in spring 2018 transforming the site from grass into a number of rows for production: “once we did start digging… then it started really gaining momentum” (H, female). A one-year lease was secured, water connected, and funds raised to cover wages for some of Garden Manager V’s time, much of which was initially volunteered. Farm X’s capacity to grow and sell produce increased, building relationships with local chefs and working towards a position where farm income could cover the manager’s wage. However, the administration involved with supplying restaurants sat at odds with the farm’s small scale, and as their capacity grew a decision was made to shift towards a community-supported agriculture (CSA) scheme, providing weekly food boxes to local residents in exchange for a larger ‘seasonal’ payment upfront. As Garden Manager V explains, it meant “every leaf we grew could get out to people… it’s another way to engage with the community”.

This engagement has been central to the project’s success. In addition to selling 35 produce boxes weekly under a paid CSA subscription scheme, Farm X (which continues to sit under the umbrella of the original arts-based non-profit) now also runs a paid composting service, a CSA scheme selling seedlings at the start of each season, and a week-long paid course in sustainable farming. At $35NZ per box per week, CSA shares are an affordable if exclusive option, sold preferentially to those within in walking distance of the farm—a relatively affluent and densifying suburb on the urban fringe. The project pays no rent or water utility bills, using the income generated to employ 1.5 full time equivalent staff: Garden Manager V, and a paid apprentice; part of the non-profit’s succession plan and ambition for future sites. These employees are supported by an ‘open-gate’ policy for drop-in volunteering, regular working bees run early on Tuesday and Friday mornings (where produce is harvested and prepared for the CSA boxes), and more education-focused evening working bees on Wednesdays, from 5–7 pm in summer and 3.30–5.30 pm in winter.

Volunteer numbers vary week to week and season to season, but are consistently higher for the evening working bees, ranging from just a few volunteers (for example, when raining in winter) through to regular groups of 10–15 in summer. Paying CSA members may occasionally volunteer, but for the most part those who volunteer in the garden are distinct from those who pay for produce (and volunteers only occasionally receive left-over produce themselves). New faces are a regular occurrence, as are returning volunteers; however, the frequency of engagement varies considerably: some come regularly and intensely for a short period; others are less frequent but have longer histories of engagement. While volunteers were crucial for a majority of work during farm establishment, the farm’s core tasks are now largely within the capacity of their paid staff. Volunteer labour remains important for harvests and further intensification (e.g., helping to establish the seedling CSA) while also contributing to the farm’s goals of education and outreach. Variation in attendance at harvest time is buffered by the combination of paid staff and a ‘core crew’ of more committed volunteers: one (H) who has been reliably and regularly present since the farm’s inception; others who have been involved deeply but for shorter periods in an informal intern-type relationship. Occasionally, larger organised groups of up to 30 people (e.g., a workplace) may visit for a one-off day of volunteering (Fig. 1 ).

figure 1

Overview of the various avenues for engagement offered by the site (as at July 2021)

Factors that help volunteer engagement

Results from the interview analysis are organised into two categories, capturing themes which help volunteer engagement ( strong leadership, learning by doing, socialising around plants, and contributing to a movement ); and themes which hinder volunteer engagement ( time scarcity , economic hurdles , and struggles over direction ) (Fig. 2 ).

figure 2

Overview of the themes and subthemes that help and hinder volunteer engagement

Strong leadership

The first key factor that helps volunteer engagement at Farm X is strong leadership , reflecting clear organisational goals and the on-site impact of Garden Manager V, both coordinating and inspiring volunteer input. Further detail on the nature of this leadership is provided by the sub-themes asking your networks for help and being flexible.

Asking your networks for help refers to the ways that Garden Manager V’s leadership at Farm X has embraced and communicated their need for volunteer participation, helping to create a project in which many feel involved and indeed, important. This asking was most explicit in the establishment phase of the project, but has also featured throughout as volunteer numbers (and the need for them) have waxed and waned. As one longstanding volunteer described it, directness here can help to ‘up-rank’ Farm X relative to other commitments: “suddenly volunteers turn up who might not have even thought about turning up, but because they know that we need an extra pair of hands, they drop everything and come” (H, female).

Requests for help can be split between more general (‘one-to-many’) communication over social media facilitated by Garden Manager V—such as the Facebook events used for the initial working bees—and more specific (‘one-to-one’) shoulder-taps focused on certain tasks. While these requests are necessarily limited by the networks of those involved, for example, excluding those who are less online (and likely skewing participation towards younger demographics), for those reached, these provide powerful incentives for participation. For example, one interviewee, a novice gardener with social network ties to V, explained how “I just went one random day and [V] was pumped that I was doing building and wanted me to build a table for him… I like doing little building projects” (Q, male). While limited in the time demanded and often just a one-off, such help has been crucial to the farm’s establishment and is notable for the ways in which it relies less on an interest in gardening (or a political analysis of the issues with agri-business) and more on communication and the social relationship between volunteer and garden coordinator.

This combination of communication and personal networks also played a significant role in Farm X’s establishment where, in addition to a broader call out, Garden Manager V drew heavily upon friends and the community connected to the shared house where V lived. In V’s words, “it was a Facebook event on the [Farm X] page… and then we invited [the non-profit’s] people, but really, to be honest, the people that started that site off were my immediate kind of community, heaps of my friends and friends of friends”. While the vast majority of this group have had limited involvement since, they provided labour and enthusiasm at a crucial time—a tension/opportunity for movement building explored further in the discussion.

Being flexible refers to the ways in which Farm X’s open-gate policy and relaxed approach to volunteering makes it easy for participants with different levels of availability and interest to each be involved in their own way at different times, increasing or decreasing participation as their circumstances change. In particular, participants enjoyed being part of a larger ‘wrap-around’ community, and the welcoming, non-bureaucratic nature of volunteering facilitated by Garden Manager V. This wasn’t just the case during farm establishment but has continued into its functioning week-to-week. For example, “they’re always so good about you know, like, just come when you can, which I think is really nice because previous places I’ve volunteered, it’s kind of like, these are the times you come and go and they kind of felt like there was a bit of pressure to be there” (F, female); “I think there’s always such a big cycle of people there that that’s, you know, it’s not really like a big responsibility to be there or anything like that” (S, female); “that is a big part of [Farm X], it’s super chill, it’s super relaxed” (Q, male). Important factors here were a range of different activities, a large community of occasional volunteers, and a range of regular times when volunteers were welcomed on site.

Learning by doing

A further theme that enabled volunteering was the importance of learning by doing, reflecting the education Vision Holder J describes as a core aim of Farm X: “This project is really about building capacity… there is no movement if you haven’t created capacities at multiple levels, so capacity to imagine, capacity to do, capacity to share… that’s very intentional”. Crucially, this education is hands-on, providing a welcome point of contrast from other more distant modes, for example, “I found the garden and I was like, this is so much better, so hands on compared to like, watching a YouTube video” (F, female); “I tend to retain it, just cause you’ve immediately put it into practice sorta thing” (Q, male); “We planted the whole row so we were able to see the work from scratch… we learnt a lot in that one session” (K, male). As one of the more experienced interviewees noted, this focus is common to many gardeners: “the strongest force that I have in terms of actually finding new pathways, new ways of doing things… it’s through experiential learning, it’s actually learning by doing” (E, male).

Responses here are further divided into two sub-themes, reflecting key differences in the type of ‘learning by doing’ prioritised: expert guidance , and collective experimentation . Expert guidance refers to the ways volunteers are engaged by Garden Manager V’s experience (as evidenced by the site’s commercial outputs) and his skill and willingness to share farming knowledge via a classic teacher-student hierarchy. For example, “what [V] has done is the true knowledge… that’s the true production we the urbanised people need to know” (P, male); “even when we’re super busy [V] will spend time, you know quality time with people explaining what’s going on, and answer any questions” (H, female); “I guess it’s just good to learn from someone who does know” (Q, male). Alongside informal volunteer instruction, Farm X’s focus on expert-led education has since expanded to include a paid, multi-day course offered several times throughout the year.

This approach can be contrasted with collective experimentation , referring to a more organic and participatory process extending beyond the specifics of market gardening and into a realm of both physical and social transformation, for example, during the direct action that created the farm. Volunteering was less formalised during this period and V’s leadership left considerable space for agency and a sense of ownership amongst those keen to participate. For example, T—who helped build much of the farm’s infrastructure before becoming less engaged—describes how “it felt a lot more ramshackle at first. Like we were figuring out what we were trying to do with the space before we really even knew too much of how to do it”. More than any growing knowledge, T notes that this period taught him “about existing with a group of people that have different thought patterns to your own.” Similarly, C—another early and enthusiastic volunteer who eventually stopped participating—pointed out how the dynamic early on was one of learning to function together, taking those involved beyond a backyard growing scale and into a zone of novel collaboration at odds with top-down plans for professional infrastructure. In C’s words, distinguishing that experience from the teacher-student dynamic in the sub-theme above: “it was a space where I did learn, through the process, and we learnt together—it’s not [V] taught us it, because he went through that process too”. For volunteers of a particular type, this sense of agency, possibility and having a collective project is a significant motivator, albeit one that came to clash with the top-down direction later taken by Farm X (explained further in the theme struggles over direction ).

Socialising around plants

Socialising around plants refers to the interpersonal aspects enjoyed by volunteers and the way that Farm X’s physical location and focus on plants facilitates a point of commonality that helps transcend other differences. For example, H—an older but highly committed and longstanding volunteer—described the enjoyment she gets from being part of the Farm X community, noting that while “there’s mostly young people that come in… there doesn’t seem to be an age thing in the garden, you know everyone’s just accepted for who they are.” Similarly, other interviewees all made reference to the social dimension of the project; for example: “it’s a place for social things, like new friends… experiencing something in common, finding like-minded people” (P, male); “every person that I meet there, I really like” (S, female); “if I didn’t gel with people I wouldn’t go back the second time” (F, female). This was something clearly apparent to Garden Manager V: “I think a lot of people come and continue coming because of the community and because of the feeling of involvement and togetherness that they can get from it…like farming and the veggies are the mediator. what’s actually happening is the people that are there.”

Participant responses raised two further sub-themes: passion is contagious and working together helps community grow. Passion is contagious refers to the ways that enthusiasm in a social context can be both inspiring and infectious. Many participants spoke about how their volunteering was a source of excitement, linking this back to the passion for gardening shared by both Garden Manager V and the other volunteers. For example, “It’s kind of exciting because you’re like planting seeds and you’re making things grow” (S, female); “the real ones… the true [Farm X] followers [laughs]… they’re very inspiring to be with” (H, female); “we have kind of learned together… one person gets an obsession and that draws other people in” (C, male); “it’s fun, it’s exciting … you want to be part of it” (K, male); “I literally leave and I’m like, buzzing just cause I really enjoy being there” (F, female). In this sense, Farm X can be understood as a ‘third place’—a public zone distinct from work and home (Firth et al. 2011 )—where people can meet, interact, and in doing so, create and deepen points of interest; a crucial element for movement building.

Relatedly, working together helps community grow refers to the ways in which the material changes and collective work involved in gardening (a bed cleared of weeds, a compost heap built) helps to create a sense of shared progress, achievement, and ultimately a social network made up of those participating. This was particularly the case in the project’s establishment phase, but also extends to Farm X’s functioning week-to-week—with interviewees emphasising their sense of productivity and the social layer that shared work involves, for example: “it’s quite enjoyable getting some physical exercise done while doing something useful” (Q, male); “it seems like you do a lot in the hour there but it’s because there’s, you know, heaps of other people there” (F, female); “I mean four people, or even two people doing the micro-greens is way more fun than having to do the whole thing on your on your own” (H, female). Others explicitly linked this progress (and sense of fun) with the social network Farm X has helped make. For example: “there is… a community of people who have grown up around it who know each other who wouldn’t have otherwise” (C, male); “you’ve got people who obviously have got relationships now with [Farm X]… they all bring something to the garden” (E, male).

Contributing to a movement

The last major factor driving volunteer engagement is contributing to a movement —referring to reasons for volunteering linked to supporting the existence and prefigurative aspects of Farm X, most significantly as a functioning alternative to industrial agri-business but also as part of a broader movement for social change, described in Farm X’s promotional materials as a “delicious (r)evolution”. As one volunteer explained, affirming the initial ambitions of farm management and the ways these aligned with his own politics, “it is prefigurative… it’s small urban food production, organic… showing people what’s possible” (C, male).

Specific motivations here were multiple and often overlapped within a single volunteer, from upholding a generalized and altruistic ‘volunteer identity’ to valuing the farm’s commercial viability and/or the political statement of growing organic food in an urban setting. For example, F—a sub-30-year-old corporate professional with aspirations of starting a growing-based business—linked her participation to a longer practice of volunteering in environmental conservation: “it’s wanting to do my part… we’ve spent a lot of time volunteering, like even when we were in Australia, we had our regular volunteering every weekend fortnight.” However, F was also specifically attracted by Farm X’s economic orientation and its significance, both for challenging agri-business dominance and expanding her own future options: “I like how it’s run, how they do like the boxes, and then that pays their way… I think I had really like low expectations… I was quite blown away by the whole system there”.

More explicitly politicised interviewees connected volunteering to larger struggles like climate change and decolonisation, emphasising close links between the personal and structural benefits associated with participation. For example, S—a university student who had recently moved from a rural town to the city—explained her interests in food sovereignty, climate action and the practical usefulness of growing food: “I just had a lot of climate anxiety and stress… and you’re like oh my god, I gotta find somewhere that’s doing something good”. Similarly, C—a highly politicised volunteer and generation above the 20–30 year old cohort most common at the site—emphasised the practical value of supporting Farm X: “I’d say predominantly people that are attracted to keep coming back are the people who can clearly see that the society that we inhabit is unjust and is on a suicide path, and it’s a place to actually, you know, be active in your opposition to that” (C, male). Though never the ‘exclusive’ factor, political motivations here align closely with the ways volunteering has been promoted by Farm X, with social media posts making regular references to movement building, local food, climate action, and the creation of urban farms as a form of “climate-change-ready infrastructure”. As Garden Manager V notes, “we want to see a movement of urban food production”.

Factors which hinder volunteer engagement

Responses here are divided into three themes: time scarcity, economic hurdles, and struggles over direction.

Time scarcity

Time scarcity refers to the range of interests, opportunities and obligations that volunteering at Farm X competes with. Interviewees almost all described time constraints as a key barrier to participation, with paid work a recurrent issue. For example: “it’s quite hard to [garden] especially when you work full time” (F, female); “sometimes I haven’t finished my work… that’s the only reason to stop going back” (P, male). As Garden Manager V explains, a common pattern with volunteer engagement is that the volunteer shows up, becomes obsessed and volunteers regularly for a short period before being pulled back to other commitments. Similarly, volunteers described other commitments that limited their involvement, from team sports to family, moving homes, and study. For example, “there will be times, you know when there’s family dramas or things like that… of course you just drop everything and the garden has to come second” (H, female) .

Economic hurdles

Economic hurdles applies specifically to volunteers interested in farming careers, and refers to challenges raised about the economic viability of urban farming; something Farm X’s movement-orientation hopes to change. Responses here had two prongs: one pointing out the difficulty of establishing urban agriculture projects and how this limits the associated job prospects available; the other acknowledging a disconnection between the money associated with farming and the high cost of living in New Zealand. In particular, interviewees drew links between New Zealand’s housing crisis and the prohibitive effect high rent has, for example: “there’s going be food in the city but of course.. land has value and value equates to profit by developers and so forth” (E, male); “part of me really wants to learn about it, and then like, the more sensible listening to my parents sort of side of things is like, it’s gonna be hard enough as it is to be able to buy a property… work in urban agriculture isn’t going to be the most lucrative profession” (Q, male); “probably the overarching thing holding us all down is the price of making mistakes… so like to play and make a mistake, you’ve got to be paying rent like [laughs] it’s a heavy cost, it has to work” (T, male).

Struggles over direction

Struggles over direction refers to the way individual differences in emphasis and values can lead to disagreements and/or, in some cases, disengagement. While mentioned rarely, responses here revealed a tension between the collective work required by Farm X and their top-down management—which, while incredibly welcoming and supportive of volunteers, remains focused on a specific ‘vision’ for the site that limits the opportunity for deeper, more collaborative engagement. For example: “that’s one thing I struggled with… this old school not-for-profit style, which just feels super top heavy to me” (T, male); “I’ve kind of made a conscious decision at some stage that I didn’t really want to be involved in non-democratic spaces… a democratic structure, a participatory structure for the people who are participants is the thing that I would kind of love to have seen added to the mix” (C, male). This is a tension acknowledged by Vision Holder J, who flags it as a necessary trade-off for achieving the site’s specific and pre-determined outcomes (i.e., a market-oriented farm paying its manager’s salary): “I have a very specific contention of this project and I don’t want it to get side-tracked by…just human dynamics which you know… probably people would see that as a fault, but I wanted to really like get this project to be generating as many possible outcomes from itself as quickly as possible.” This tension is explored further below.

Volunteers play important roles in urban agriculture, but many organisations report difficulty attracting and retaining sufficient numbers to achieve their goals (Cohen and Reynolds 2015 )—limiting both project functioning and broader aspirations for movement building (Sage et al. 2020 ). Following participation alongside and interviews with farm volunteers and organisers at a single, locally novel urban farm in Auckland New Zealand, I generated four major themes which help volunteer engagement: strong leadership, learning by doing, socialising around plants, and contributing to a movement . These sit alongside three themes which hinder volunteer engagement: time scarcity, economic hurdles, and struggles over direction. Considered holistically, these themes tell a story consistent with other volunteering literature (e.g., Wilson 2000 ): from the initial alignment of interests and pre-existing social connections which attract volunteers to Farm X, to the positive experiences and learning enjoyed while present, the social connections made, and ultimately, the other realities that volunteering competes with.

While Farm X’s approach is validated by successes to-date, its dual aims—showcasing a functioning economic alternative to industrial agri-business and building a movement to further challenge that hegemony—raise a number of tensions, reflecting key and inescapable trade-offs (e.g., McClintock 2014 ). Here I focus on two important tensions for volunteer engagement that emerged from the themes: the importance of focused leadership verses having space for volunteer agency, and demanding commitment verses being flexible.

Focused leadership verses volunteer agency

Leadership is an important part of Farm X’s success. In line with existing work on the importance of paid professional help for community gardens (Fox-Kämper et al. 2018 ), interviewees all noted the impact of Garden Manager V and his networks, flexibility and passion, described by one participant as a “key man risk” going forward. Similarly, Vision Holder J’s leadership off-site has been crucial for honing the farm’s commercial elements; in J’s words, proving “that these [alternative agricultural] systems that we’re talking about actually work”. This focus has seen Farm X emphasise their status as a managed ‘urban farm’ paying its own manager’s wages while still needing and welcoming volunteers.

In contrast to purely commercial operations, this hybrid arrangement is justified by both the positive impact of Farm X’s social movement framing (captured in the theme contributing to a movement) and the idea that exposure to (and participation in) alternative systems is in itself revolutionary, showcasing difference while building capacity to expand (e.g., Nettle 2014 ; Sharp et al. 2015 ; Tornaghi 2014 ). As Vision Holder J explained, there are a number of newer projects that “have been influenced by having had a space to come to, by spending time on it, by imagining what’s possible.” However, while Farm X’s commercial aspects have been particularly successful for attracting volunteers interested in learning growing techniques from experts (as in the subtheme expert guidance ), the close management and singular vision behind their commercial outputs has also operated as a source of conflict for volunteers who would prefigure an alternative world in a governance space as well as in the garden (captured in the theme struggles over direction ).

This tension—between focused leadership and volunteer agency—is common to many community projects. For example, in their work exploring community garden governance structures, Fox-Kämper et al. ( 2018 ) contrast top-down approaches, where a certain group’s outcomes are prioritised and enforced, and bottom-up approaches, which are more open, collaborative and ultimately community-led. Similarly, research in North Carolina raises tensions between garden management styles that are directive, where volunteers have little room for strategic input, verses collaborative, where garden goals emerge more collectively (Gilbert et al. 2020 ). In both cases, these researchers note that while tighter management is often associated with the uniform outputs required for market competition (and thus income to support professional help), the lack of agency risks alienating volunteers who wish to have greater say. In this sense, it is telling that those volunteers (C, T) who enjoyed Farm X’s less formal establishment phase and the greater room for agency and experimentation it involved (captured in the subtheme collective experimentation ) were also those who struggled with its later top-down approach (captured in the theme struggles over direction ).

As McClintock ( 2014 ) suggests, such difference can’t be resolved, but rather speaks to alternative (and in many ways complimentary) strategies for change; a recognition that complex problems require multiple, sometimes contradictory, approaches (e.g., Hassan 2014 ). For example, while Farm X has prioritised a single vision at the expense of some volunteers continuing, that vision has also inspired many others to participate, facilitating the creation of a highly visible and successfully functioning AFI: a small-scale, organic vegetable farm organised around a CSA scheme that all are welcome to participate in. Similarly, while various researchers emphasise the ways such formal openness can be hamstrung by both racial and class dynamics (e.g., Aptekar 2015 ; Lyson 2014 ; Meenar and Hoover 2012 ), the relative homogeneity of Farm X’s participants (including age) shouldn’t be viewed as a reason to reject their efforts but rather a reminder of the importance of distributing power and resources, helping to support similar (self-led) opportunities in other communities (Esteva and Prakesh 1998 ; Penniman 2018 ), i.e., those where not receiving food in exchange for labour might be a more significant barrier to participation. Nonetheless, while Farm X attracts certain demographics more than others and utilises a governance structure similar to that of most commercial farms, their growing techniques, scale, market approach and flexibility with drop-in volunteers sets them apart—achieving the educational aims of their social change agenda on multiple levels. These include teaching specific food production techniques to interested volunteers, ‘doing difference’ in an economic sphere via the Farm’s CSA (Gibson-Graham 2008 ) and ultimately increasing awareness of alternatives to industrial agriculture via encounters with the farm’s physical use of urban space.

Despite this, in pursuing such a singular vision, Farm X has—by necessity—foreclosed other more socially radical pathways, leaving them for other projects. As one of the lapsed volunteers noted, “I think we should be really positive about [Farm X] whilst at the same time learning from what could be added to that to make more resilient spaces… we don’t know what else might have been achieved with more imaginations at the table” (C, male). This emphasis on plurality and collective decision-making speaks to the deeper interpersonal and often neglected dimension of social change, the idea that we don’t just need to transform how and where our food is produced, but also how we relate to one another: how decisions beyond ourselves are made and ultimately, who gets to have a say (e.g., Holloway 2010 ; Prilleltensky 2014 ; Stein 2019 ). Indeed, in Patel’s ( 2009 ) discussion of the differences between food security (defined by the United Nations) and food sovereignty (envisioned by peasant-led movement La Via Campesina), he points out that if food sovereignty is about people’s right to define their own food and agricultural systems, then its realisation requires a transformation of the forces which currently limit that right: “a society in which the equality-distorting effects of sexism, patriarchy, racism, and class power have been eradicated” (p. 670). While lofty in aspiration, recent work by Graeber and Wengrow ( 2021 ) draws on longstanding feminist scholarship to emphasise that such transformation begins at the interpersonal level, in the intimate spaces (the gardens?) where we meet, work and live day-to-day (see also Holloway 2010 ). In New Zealand at least, the potential for more collective and democratic forms of agriculture remains under-explored.

Demands made of volunteers

A further tension concerns strategic differences between demanding deeper commitment of fewer volunteers verses asking less of a wider pool. For Farm X—locally novel, centrally located, and interested in minimising barriers to participation—asking less has been a successful strategy, enabling a wide group of volunteers to be involved on a casual basis, most significantly during the farm’s establishment, but also during their ongoing business week-to-week. As explored in the theme being flexible , interviewed volunteers enjoyed this relaxed ‘drop-in’ volunteering, matching participation with their interest and availability. This was contrasted against stricter experiences elsewhere, for example, with volunteer rosters and fixed start and finish times. However, while such flexibility has its upsides (in terms of making participation available to a wider range of participants and minimising risks of volunteer burnout), it sits in tension with the commitment and consistency demanded by both the business side of an established urban farm and aspirations for movement building. As Bauman ( 2007 ) notes, while neoliberal prioritising of individual benefits—like Farm X’s emphasis on volunteering as a pathway to learn from expert growers—may attract volunteers, such instrumental framing risks a shallow and ultimately fickle level of commitment, especially given the difficulties of finding paid urban agriculture work (captured in the theme economic hurdles ).

This commitment (and the associated development of a change-oriented “collective identity”) are particularly important for movement building (Diani 1992 ). As Vision Holder J explains, the demands of leadership are significant and require far greater commitment to change than volunteers showing up for a novel experience: “It has to be a calling—more than just oh this is fun or more than this is a good thing to do—it has to be a calling for… those initial people.” For example, while Farm X’s establishment was a labour-intensive period relying on many different people, the majority casual volunteers, it was itself driven by regular and committed volunteering on the part of J, V and the organising group. However, in line with McClintock’s ( 2014 ) claims about urban agriculture’s contradictory nature, the significance of this committed leadership sits at odds with the commitment facilitated by Farm X’s flexible approach to volunteers, revealing a key tension between their dual goals of establishing a functional alternative to industrial agriculture and also growing the movement. While top-down management has provided a strong and appealing vision that has helped to attract many casual volunteers, most significantly during the exciting period of farm establishment—a model that may well help initiate more farms that can later pay key staff to sustain operations beyond that first push—it has also alienated several of the more committed volunteers involved early on. Taken together, these factors beg the question, central to all movement-building and ripe for further research: how to preserve the focus and appeal of strong leadership while still leaving space for interested volunteers to deepen their commitment?

I end with a brief discussion of an alternative strategy: one that balances increased demands with increased support. Research on the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement—linked to La Via Campesina—emphasises the importance of establishing a formalised support network, helping to buffer the precarity associated with AFIs’ ‘economic outsider’ status (and the privilege otherwise required to engage) by prioritising solidarity, mutual aid and peer-to-peer learning within a democratic and identity-providing framework (Massicotte and Kelly-Bisson 2019 ). Similarly, work by Flachs ( 2022 ) on farming cooperatives in India explains the ways in which such democratically-organised agricultural programs help to provide stable alternatives to models of destructive economic growth through “local social institutions, diversified socioecological life, and local control”. These approaches offer elements New Zealand urban farms may wish to consider (but which Farm X did not provide). For example, supporting committed volunteers with formalised training programmes, regular food in exchange for their labour, regular social engagements and/or more say in project governance; a hybrid model of increasing commitments and agency alongside the flexibility and openness that has characterised Farm X’s successful approach to date. As research from Peru shows, such ongoing participation in community gardening’s physical work can help to galvanise a specific “organic subjectivity” previously absent, drawing participants into efforts for political change (Cody 2019 , p. 105) and encouraging the “collective identity” argued to be crucial for social movements (Diani 1992 ). To this end, future research might explore differences in politicisation amongst garden participants over time, and the various factors that can contribute to or detract from efforts here.

As McClintock ( 2014 ) points out, there are limits to what we can ask of a single project. By inviting volunteers to learn by doing, Farm X have not only attracted sufficient numbers to achieve their immediate goals (the creation of a functioning farm) but also helped to educate and expose far more to the viability and possibilities of urban agriculture; an important aspect of movement-building. Per Gibson-Graham ( 2008 ), it’s vital that these efforts be celebrated, but in the same breath, it’s important to acknowledge the tensions raised here. To truly build urban agriculture as a movement, organisations will need to walk the fine line between asking a little and asking a lot, balancing strong leadership and focus with space for agency and responsibility—not just ‘leveraging’ volunteer labour, but creating pathways that help to build and sustain a collective identity for the movement (Diani 1992 ). This will, by definition, extend beyond the bounds of any one project or vision—for such is the task associated with breaking neoliberalism’s hold. As Escobar ( 2021 ) explains, echoing the Zapatista call, responses here ultimately require “a world where many worlds fit” (p. 9; see also Holloway 2010 ). For urbanites interested in social change, farm volunteering might hold the seed.

Abbreviations

Alternative food initiatives

Community supported agriculture

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to Professor Niki Harré, my primary supervisor, for her close guidance and feedback on this manuscript. Credit is also due to Dr. Shiloh Groot, my secondary supervisor, for her support and advice conceiving the project, and both Professor Christa Fouche and PhD candidate Sean Nicholas for their spirited discussion in our meetings on some of the issues with food explored further here. Lastly, I wish to thank both the organisers and volunteers of Farm X (including my generous participants!) and indeed all involved in food system change; your commitment helps makes this world new.

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Case study | The value of volunteers

case study volunteer

It is amazing what can be achieved with the support and efforts of a group of dedicated volunteers, and now more than ever they are essential to the on-going success of local museums and cultural organisations.

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It was so successful that the model became an exemplar structure of coordinated volunteer work used throughout England. The programme boasts almost 1,600 members, and is organised and coordinated by NPO coordinator Jacqui Harding.

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They answered the challenge to help create The Lace Trees, which is now in-situ at Stockwood Discovery Centre.

case study volunteer

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Luton has one of the best collections of old lace and patterns for Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire bobbin lace at Wardown House, with materials reflecting every facet of an industry that was once of considerable economic and social importance across the East Midlands.

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A photographic exhibition organised by University of Bedfordshire students, which will be displayed at Stockwood Discovery Centre.

Lace in Fashion

A display of garments at Wardown House, which was curated by another team of Museum Makers.

The Museum Makers participating in the Lace Trees project were challenged first to crochet large-scale patterned squares with a nylon cord, then to sew the crochet pieces together ultimately forming the canopy of the two Lace Trees structures.

The lace pattern was inspired by a selection of lace from the trust’s collection.

This project was an opportunity for Museum Makers and other volunteers to use or learn crochet and lace patterns, connecting memories of the past with the people from the area; to create a sense of community; and to create a beautiful work of art for the town.

Key challenges

These included:

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  • Remotely upskilling volunteers.
  • Adopting new ways of working with volunteers (due to pandemic restrictions)
  • Communicating with and organising more than 200 volunteers.

Outcomes and lessons learned

Impacts from the project included:

  • More than 100 Museum Makers signing up to the challenge.
  • An additional 130 volunteers getting involved (from creating the individual crochet squares to the final build).
  • 3,600 hours contributed by Museum Makers and additional volunteers.
  • Two large public art displays installed at Stockwood Discovery Centre, one measuring 5.8m tall by 10m wide and the other 7m tall by 4.5m wide.
  • New skills learned and shared (including two volunteers who have completed a beginners’ crochet course at the Culture Trusts art venue The Hat Factory).
  • New friendships made with volunteers meeting in gardens when lockdown restrictions allowed to encourage and support each other.
  • A positive impact on the mental health and people’s wellbeing.
  • 400 Christmas tree decorations were created for Wardown by 20 crocheters, which formed part of an annual Christmas tree display. As well as leaving a legacy from the project, this helped engage the volunteers at a point in the project where the panels had been created but not yet installed.
  • Three Museum Makers becoming participants in an art installation in Busan, Korea, with Choi + Shine.

The project owes much of its success to the expertise and in-depth experience of Jacqui Harding and Luton Culture’s cultural programmer Hafiza Mohamed.

Their rapport with the volunteers and the architectural artists respectively were crucial. Having a clear point of contact, clear messaging, personalised communication and an understanding of the local community underpinned this success.

Adapting quickly to the restrictions the global pandemic created, Jacqui and Hafiza maintained regular contact with the volunteers, keeping them updated on the project. They concentrated on digital communications, via private social media groups to maintain morale and enthusiasm so the volunteers could produce their crocheted square panels remotely, and the artists could support them directly.

Once restrictions were lifted, Museum Makers were able to get together to stitch the crochet panels together, forming the canopy of the Lace Trees.

Jacqui said: “I feel this project had a positive impact on mental health during the pandemic, reducing the isolation and giving us and our Museum Makers a sense of purpose. One volunteer was encouraged to participate because I personally took the time to drop off materials and resources to their home, giving her the confidence to get involved.”

One volunteer later remarked that the project “took me out of my comfort zone, but with some encouragement I made it. So proud” and that it “made me feel part of a team and not on my own during lockdown”.

Others commented: “We wanted to give something back after visiting so often” and that they were “proud to be a part of something so special”.

A well-run project resulted in many desirable outcomes and a legacy for all involved.

Amanda Evans is a communications writer

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Volunteering Case Studies

  • Equipping Professionals
  • Volunteering in NHS Scotland
  • Case Studies

The following stories and videos describe the many potential benefits of volunteering.

The benefits can include:

  • improving the health or experience of recipients of care
  • improving services for other people
  • engaging with patients to free up staff time, and
  • beneficial impacts on volunteers themselves.

Barbara Tucker Giving Back for NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde

Barbara decided to volunteer as a way of "giving back" to her community after the kind assistance her late husband, Colin, received from volunteers whilst an in-patient at Inverclyde Royal Hospital.

Peer educators

Kidney Research UK has used volunteer peer educators of different faiths to raise awareness of kidney health and organ donation within South Asian communities in Edinburgh and Glasgow

NHS Tayside volunteer activities during COVID-19 pandemic

Following the suspension of face-to-face activities due to the pandemic, NHS Tayside has continued to engage with its volunteers to help them stay connected, reduce feelings of isolation and make them feel valued.

Gathering information to support the rollout of Virtual Visiting

Public partners reviewed 16 NHS boards' websites in November 2020 to establish how accessible current information and resources about Virtual Visiting were to patients and members of the public.

David, allotment volunteer, Fife

Volunteering can have a positive benefit on mental health. David, who volunteers with an NHS allotment in Fife, shares his experiences.

Walk leaders, Western Isles

Volunteer Walk Leaders in NHS Western Isles are supporting people with lived experience of cancer, or who have family members going through cancer treatment.

Art in the Gart - gardening volunteers

Volunteers help maintain the gardens at Gartnavel Royal Hospital in Glasgow, providing a welcome haven for the local community during lockdown.

Volunteering in the NHS: COVID-19 response volunteers in NHS Tayside

NHS Tayside created a COVID-19 response volunteer role during the pandemic, providing a range of support for patients and staff

COVID Response Volunteer – Shopper at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital

COVID-19 Response Volunteer positions were created to enable volunteers in a variety of roles to continue to support their communities safely throughout the pandemic.

Role of the Voluntary Services Manager

Voluntary Services Managers are responsible for the recruitment and support of volunteers in health settings. They play an important role in NHS Scotland.

Vaccination Clinic Volunteers, NHS Dumfries & Galloway

Volunteers play a vital role supporting flu clinics across NHS Dumfries & Galloway so that they ae safe and efficient for patients and staff.

Positive effect of volunteer visitors, Glasgow

Regular visits from volunteers helped reduce the isolation and anxiety felt by an elderly patient in Glasgow.

Mandeep and Subah, multilingual volunteer visitors, Glasgow

Students Mandeep and Subah are fluent in several languages. They visit patients in Glasgow and help to overcome isolation and language and cultural barriers.

Helen, volunteer visitor, Ayrshire & Arran

Former patient Helen describes how the care and treatment she received during her stay in hospital inspired her to become a volunteer visitor following her recovery.

Mealtime volunteers, Borders

Mealtime volunteers in NHS Borders assist nurses with duties around mealtimes, including filling out menus, delivering trays and arranging food so that patients can eat independently.

Breastfeeding in Borders Support (BiBS)

Volunteers in NHS Borders provide peer support, advice and guidance about breastfeeding to new mums.

Anne and Willie, InS:PIRE volunteers, Fife

InS:PIRE is a rehabilitation programme designed to help support patients and their loved ones after a stay in intensive care. Anne and Willie are InS:PIRE volunteers at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy.

Allan, volunteer visitor and Sunday Escort, Grampian

Allan is a volunteer with NHS Grampian's Chaplaincy department. He visits patients at the main mental health hospital in Aberdeen and helps them to attend worship services.

Mark, ABLE Youth Volunteer, Glasgow

Mark, 17, volunteers with ABLE Youth, a Glasgow-based initiative to educate young people about risk-taking behaviours and empower them to access health-related information.

George, carer and public rep, Borders

George tells how he began volunteering with NHS Borders once his caring responsibilities had finished and describes the support he received as a carer.

Invernevis House care home, Highland

Volunteers at an NHS care home in Highland support the quality of life of residents through social activities and community links. This allows staff to focus on clinical needs.

Gordon, stroke peer support, Ayrshire & Arran

After suffering a number of strokes, Gordon volunteers with a peer support group. As well as supporting and encouraging other patients this has helped his own physical and emotional recovery.

Community Chaplaincy Listening Volunteers

NHS Tayside and NHS Forth Valley support GP patients with a listening service run by trained and supervised volunteers.

Therapeutic Touch Volunteers, Tayside

Volunteers provide a "therapeutic touch" service to support patients, carers and staff at Cornhill Macmillan Centre in Tayside.

Stewart, hospice driver, Fife

Volunteers help in a number of roles at Victoria Hospice in Fife. Staff greatly value the support volunteers give to patients and the Volunteer manager explains how volunteers are recruited.

Public Partners, Healthcare Improvement Scotland

Healthcare Improvement Scotland's volunteers provide a valuable public perspective. They help with hospital inspections, translating technical language and checking that communities are involved.

Mental Health Volunteers, Forth Valley

In NHS Forth Valley, volunteers with experience of mental health conditions provide support to current patients. Getting involved has had a positive impact on volunteers' own mental health.

Connect Group – community based volunteering in NHS Fife

In February 2020, Lisa visited the Connect Group in Kirkcaldy. The group is for people with a life-limiting illness, who have been discharged from palliative care day service.

Spiritual care volunteering, Western Isles

Spiritual care volunteering offers support to people of all faiths and none. A volunteer in the Western Isles helps patients to attend weekly Sunday services in the hospital chapel.

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Effective Altruism Forum EA Forum

Case study: volunteer research and management at allfed.

This post has been crossposted to my blog .

There are limited opportunities for volunteer research within the EA community. One organisation that does provide such opportunities is ALLFED . In a series of career change interviews I conducted last year (upcoming), ALLFED was mentioned by 3/19 of our interviewees and I had heard of a few other EAs mention it as well.

Given that they have been running volunteer-based research for many years, I thought it would be useful to interview Dr. David Denkenberger who co-founded ALLFED, on their volunteer management strategy. Sonia Cassidy, ALLFED’s Director of Operations, also provided further details.

About ALLFED

  • ALLFED is a EA research organisation that "seeks to provide practical food solutions so that in the event of a global catastrophe governments and communities can respond quickly, save lives and reduce the risk to civilization."
  • Their publications to date are 15 papers, with 6 under review (some David published some before ALLFED was founded)
  • They have about 12 active researchers. Some are paid (these researchers typically started out as volunteers) and some are volunteers.
  • Historically, most volunteers have been EAs, and some have been Dr. Denkenberger's students.

How does ALLFED do research?

  • ALLFED's basic model for research is that a generalist researcher does initial research and collaborates and/or is guided by experts
  • Requirements for research questions
  • Research questions that don't require a lot of specialized background knowledge
  • Project size is variable, and can range in size from a small project to a thesis

Idea generation

A few volunteers I spoke to noted that ALLFED’s long list of concrete projects made it easy to choose topics, so I asked about ALLFED’s process for idea generation.

  • Collected over time through research in this space
  • Some ideas from research proposals when they needed to write research proposals in the past - what to do with the money, prioritise projects
  • Take suggestions from academic experts to get started (papers)
  • Specific examples
  • Surveying different foods that could be:
  • rapidly scaled, reasonably priced
  • how much the project would cost to implement, how much closer to feeding everyone
  • Research on catastrophes that could disrupt electricity or industry (including non-food examples )

Research Process

  • Volunteers choose a project from the suggested projects list in consultation with a senior researcher
  • The volunteer builds a spreadsheet of relevant information
  • The volunteer reach out to relevant researchers - for example, a group OPP funded group gave them climate model results, and then another person to collaborate
  • Throughout the process, there are weekly calls with the whole research team, and additional weekly calls with 2-3 other researchers working on related projects
  • In the smaller groups, the other researchers are very familiar with each others’ research, since they see the research being developed from the get-go

Volunteer Management

Who manages the volunteers: Dedicated volunteer/team coordinators (either ALLFED employees or senior volunteers).

Time spent on volunteers: David estimates that a volunteer spending 5 hours a week would attend only the smaller research meeting, and present for about 20 minutes, and have some interactions outside the meeting of about ~10 minutes. So the organisation spends about 10% of a volunteer’s time managing them.

Taster Tasks: As of 2020, prospective volunteers are asked to complete “Taster Tasks” where volunteers complete a small task that’s representative of their research/placement being sought, which gives them a “taste” of potential collaboration before progressing to more substantial project work.

Time Tracking: ALLFED is currently testing opt-in time-tracking for volunteers, so as to gather project and resource allocation data and also better understand and recognise volunteer contribution , but is not in a position to make any observations yet.

Volunteer Retention

Accountability: The two weekly calls mentioned above help keep volunteers engaged/accountable

Handover Process: If a volunteer leaves, then the other researchers part of their smaller group calls could potentially take over their work. Where this is not possible, a norm has been set that you will need to do a handover process if there are no researchers familiar with your work.

Flexibility: If desirable, volunteers can transition internally to/from other areas of the organisation (ALLFED also has communications, operations, finance, planning & preparedness volunteers).

Internships: ALLFED is currently looking into setting up an Internship Programme, which would provide an additional pathway to career development and involvement.

For reference, a copy of ALLFED’s volunteer policy can be found here .

If you’d like to learn more about ALLFED’s volunteer program, or volunteer yourself, you can contact them at [email protected].

More posts like this

Some of AllFed's theory of change comes from change in government policy, through increasing resilience of food production to large risks. I am sceptical of the ability of research conducted by generalists outside of the academic system to be effective in this goal. Is there another way that Allfed is aiming to cause change, or is volunteer research helpful for another reason, providing ideas and analysis for more credible (to govts.) to compile

Thanks for your feedback. People inside the academic system ( Joshua Pearce and myself) are advising most of this research and we publish mostly in peer reviewed journals . As for the policy engagement, we are working with government experts such as Tim Benton . You can see some of our recent policy-related work here .

50 Years of the Volunteer Force

This month marks the 50th Anniversary of the all-volunteer force. On January 27, 1973, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced: “The Armed Forces henceforth will depend exclusively on volunteer soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Use of the draft has ended.”

In honor of the occasion, we’re reprinting with permission from the U.S. Naval Institute an article from Proceedings magazine, September 2021. It marked another 50-year milestone on the way to the all-volunteer force.

Fifty years ago this month, President Richard Nixon signed into law the bill that would be the death knell of the draft. The Military Selective Service Act nearly doubled the pay of first-term recruits, which Nixon hailed as “a significant step toward an all volunteer armed force.” On this anniversary, we would be well served to consider the transformation made possible by the all-volunteer military: the professionalization of the enlisted force.

Whether measured by training and education, level of experience, or mindset, the career enlisted forces are much more professional than their draft-induced predecessors. In recent years, 97 percent of recruits across the services have held a high school diploma , compared with 71 percent in the last decade of the draft. These better-educated young men and women are equipped to take advantage of a vast increase in training and education. The percentage of Navy recruits sent to A-schools to train for specialist occupational ratings has jumped from about 60 percent to more than 90 percent. The expansion of enlisted education has culminated in the current plan to have all enlisted sailors and Marines enrolled in the new U.S. Naval Community College on enlistment.

These investments in human capital have given the services ever-greater incentives to hold on to their forces. For fiscal year 2020, according to the Navy, 69 percent of sailors serving six years or less decided to reenlist. Compare that with the year before the draft ended, when fewer than 16 percent of sailors reenlisted at the end of their first terms.

As the draft ended, some predicted that troops motivated by wages would be ill-disciplined. In fact, nonjudicial punishments and courts-martial have plummeted from 184 per 1,000 troops in the last year of the draft to just 33 per 1,000.

None of these results was foreordained. The first years of the all-volunteer force were rocky, with high attrition and deep concerns about the quality of recruits. Years passed before Washington found the political will to spend enough to attract and retain enlistees. Even more important, the armed forces needed answers to tough questions about how to recruit, pay, retain, train, and measure the effectiveness of volunteers in ever-changing economic and strategic environments. A survey of those questions tells the story of the creation of the professional enlisted forces.

Which Recruits Have Professional Potential?

Soon after the Military Selective Service Act was signed into law, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo Zumwalt declared, “Recruiting is my top priority.” The Navy had not relied directly on the draft for many sailors, but recruiters had benefited greatly from draftees enlisting to avoid service in the Army. Making up those numbers was an early priority.

But numbers alone would not make a professional force. Selection criteria were critical. Until the mid-1970s, selection had focused on recruits’ aptitude for different specialist ratings. But a couple of years into the all-volunteer force, only 42 percent of recruits were completing their first term of service, and the Navy asked the Center for Naval Analyses at CNA to develop a model for estimating which potential recruits were likely to complete their enlistments.

Economist Bob Lockman built a mathematical model based on the data of nearly every recruit from 1963. He examined a wide range of factors, but one stood out. Recruits with high school diplomas were far more likely to complete their terms than those who dropped out or tested out with a GED certificate. So that factor was weighted heavily in the Success Chances of Recruits Entering the Navy (SCREEN) tables he developed. The Navy adopted SCREEN for recruiting in 1976, requiring each recruit to qualify with a score of at least 70.

Decades of research have followed to connect the qualities a recruiter can measure to the long-term success of enlistees. Repeatedly, these studies have upheld the predictive value of a high-school diploma, which appears to indicate whether a young person finishes what he or she starts. One 1988 study found that diploma holders were twice as likely to be promoted and a quarter as likely to desert. Of course, averages can hide exceptions, as the author of that study, Aline Quester, learned the hard way. After briefing her results to Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda, then the Chief of Naval Personnel, she recalls him saying, “Well, I want you to know that I joined the Navy as an enlisted dropout.’”

In time, analysts uncovered other predictive factors. A 1986 analysis of the Navy’s Delayed Entry Program found recruits who took at least a month before reporting for boot camp had an 83 percent chance of completing a five-year obligation, compared with 70 percent for those who shipped within a couple of weeks. Greater numbers of delayed-entry recruits did pull out before boot camp, but that is “cheap attrition” compared to losing a sailor on active duty.

As recruitment planners used these analyses to enlist a higher-quality force, a new dynamic set in. Former Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Bernard Rostker wrote in  I Want You!: The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force , “By focusing on quality, the all-volunteer force became a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the quality of the force increased, it became easier to recruit quality people, and those who were recruited were more willing to stay and reenlist.”

And the notion that the enlisted forces were a reformatory for young delinquents finally died — a slow death. I still remember one judge in 1995 sending a young man to my recruiting office with a choice: prison or the Marines. When I sent a message back that the Corps no longer accepted parolees, he threatened to hold me in contempt of court.

What Makes A Productive Enlistee?

Quantifying military productivity was such a daunting challenge that few analysts attempted it, but a major consensus of a 1982 conference at CNA on naval manpower research was that “productivity analysis and substitutability questions were central to determining whom to enlist, train, reenlist and retire.”

One of the first such studies, the Maintenance Personnel Effectiveness Study, began in the late 1970s. Economist Stanley Horowitz studied casualty reports for a wide variety of equipment on 91 cruisers, frigates, and destroyers. He could correlate downtime for equipment with metrics for their maintainers — their intelligence, education, training, age, and experience. Only one of those characteristics stood out as affecting material readiness no matter the kind of equipment: experience.

Small shifts in the most experienced crew could have dramatic effects. For example, missile downtime was reduced by 50 hours per month if a ship’s missile maintenance crew was 62 percent petty officers second class and above, rather than 57 percent. “The thrust of that work is that more experienced people are just better, and the services — not just the Navy — ought to think about how to staff a force that is not so dependent on the rapid turnover of junior personnel,” Horowitz says today.

After years of further research, Horowitz wrote in a memo to the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower, Personnel, and Training: “Every thousand petty officers added to the Navy’s combat and engineering ratings increased the proportion of combat-ready surface combatants by 1½ percentage points. That is almost like buying an extra two or three ready ships.”

How Can The Military Retain The Right People?

Just as the value of experience was being quantified, the armed forces were beginning to suffer the consequences of placing too little emphasis on reenlistments. Christopher Jehn, a CNA analyst from that era who went on to become Assistant Secretary of Defense in charge of personnel issues, says, “The last thing you want is for these people, as they get more and more valuable, experienced, useful to the service, to leave. It seems obvious to me now, but it wasn’t obvious to everybody at the time.”

By the late 1970s, Navy leaders worried about an emerging “20,000 petty officer shortfall.” Reenlistment rates would have to improve. Congress authorized the armed forces to employ Selective Reenlistment Bonuses (SRBs), but would they work? Targeting those bonuses to incentivize the right mix of experienced troops was a complex task.

One of the first studies of SRBs found that every additional $1,000 in bonus payments was associated with a 1.38 percentage point increase in first-term reenlistment rates on average. Another study compared the costs of SRBs with the savings from retention. It found that a dollar spent on first-term reenlistment bonuses saved more than two dollars in replacement costs: recruiting and training new four-year enlistees. Returns varied according to the quantity of training invested in each sailor.

Analyses repeatedly recommended larger and more targeted reenlistment bonuses, and both Congress and the Navy have made good use of this guidance. Though SRB levels have varied widely over the years, the current maximum reenlistment bonus of $100,000 is twice as large today as it was in the early years of the all-volunteer force (in constant dollars).

What’s The Right Pay For The Right Force?

Real earnings of sailors had fallen in the late 1970s, as high inflation eroded the pay raise Congress granted at the launch of the all-volunteer force. Income for the family of a corporal or petty officer third class had fallen below the official poverty level; Army commissaries were frequently seeing food stamps. Admiral Thomas Hayward, who began his tenure as Chief of Naval Operations in 1978, famously warned of a “ hemorrhage of talent .”

In research for the Third Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation and the President’s Commission on Military Compensation established by President Jimmy Carter, CNA economist John Warner developed what he called the Annualized Cost of Leaving model.   The model relates a service member’s perception of the cost of leaving the armed forces to his or her perception of the difference between military and civilian pay over some future time horizon. It has been widely used for analyses of military compensation ever since.

Applying the model, Warner found that general compensation was particularly influential on reenlistment rates after the second term of service. His analysis projected that a 10 percent raise would improve the reenlistment rate by 10 to 40 percent. (The sensitivity of different categories of sailors varied.) He suggested the Navy’s shortfall in experienced personnel could be mitigated with a 15 percent raise for petty officers second class and higher. Warner summed up his results succinctly: “Pay does matter!”

Congress enacted a military pay raise of 11.7 percent for fiscal year 1981, followed by another 14.3 percent the next year. “That made the system work again,” says Horowitz. “And it’s worked pretty well since — with a few hiccups.” What about the 20,000 petty officer shortfall? By 1984, improved retention had pushed it down by more than half, and it continued to decline.

How does quality of life affect retention?

In recent years, retention analyses have broadened out to consider squishier, quality-of-life issues, including time at sea and operational tempo. In 2019, CNA economists Daniel Leeds and Ann Parcell studied the impact of the 2015 expansion of maternity leave on reenlistments. Their results indicated that longer paid maternity leave in the Navy increased the number of female sailors who reenlist, reducing what had been a small but persistent gender gap in reenlistment rates in a cost-effective manner. Their estimates showed that by accepting a small additional loss of 8,500 weeks of work time by new mothers, the Navy could be gaining three times as many total workweeks from the additional sailors who reenlisted after the increase in maternity leave.

How Should The Force Be Learning?

When the all-volunteer force was launched, much of the training in the Marine Corps and Navy was accomplished on the job. On the face of it, formal courses were clearly more expensive. But analyses in the 1970s and 1980s examined hidden costs of on-the-job training. The time senior personnel lost supervising untrained sailors and the lower productivity of those seamen both indicated that spending for A-schools could save in the long term.

Nearly unheard of in the conscription years was education for enlisted forces that went beyond practical military skills and could lead to college degrees. Since the late 1980s, the Marine Corps has been at the forefront of enlisted education, inspired by Commandant General Alfred Gray and carried forward by his successor, General Charles Krulak. Academies for noncommissioned officers were established and brought together under Marine Corps University. Enlisted professional military education became a central criterion for promotion at all but the most junior ranks.

Education for Seapower Strategy 2020   explains: “The growing strategic importance of the most junior non-commissioned officers . . . will accelerate as warfighting becomes more technologically complex, the pace of combat decision-making accelerates, and ship crews become smaller and more versatile.”

The Navy also has seen growth in enlisted education through Navy College, established as Navy Campus in the first years of the all-volunteer force. Voluntary education course enrollment jumped from 86,686 in 1985 to 132,786 in 2018, despite a smaller pool of sailors. Many officers in the Navy had concerns that college credits would open the doors to civilian careers and reduce reenlistments, but those fears were laid to rest in 1998 after a CNA study of the Navy Voluntary Education Program . Analyst Federico Garcia found that sailors with 60 college credits had a reenlistment rate of 55 percent, versus 31 percent for those with no college education. In fact, for each dollar invested in tuition assistance and instructor-led Program for Afloat College Education, the Navy received two dollars’ worth of improved retention.

Rostker refers to this research in his book on the all-volunteer force: “When I was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, the people preparing the annual Navy budget wanted to cut this program. When they saw the results CNA reported, they instead expanded the program.”

How Would The Force Perform In Battle?

Throughout the first two decades, skeptics questioned the quality of the all-volunteer force. Even during the buildup to the first Gulf War, memos circulated about the need to renew conscription. Analysts had argued for years that the all-volunteer force was a better fighting force, but it took a war to silence the critics.

In his memoir,  The Line of Fire , former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral William Crowe Jr. summed up the observations of many:

The main reason we did so well once we got there was the skill of our people. That was the result of many factors, but primarily it is the great benefit of having a volunteer professional force. The men and women who participated in Desert Shield and Desert Storm were members of the oldest, most experienced (in length of service) fighting force the United States has ever fielded. It was also, not coincidentally, the best-trained force we ever deployed.

The questions are not all answered, nor the challenges all addressed. Great power competition makes new demands on troops, and a long period of low unemployment — interrupted by the pandemic — has been luring potential enlistees to civilian careers. But the fundamental question of whether a professional, all-volunteer force can deliver has been settled. If leaders continue to ask the right questions and respond with proper support, the enlisted men and women of the U.S. armed forces will prove that these first 50 years were only a prelude to greater days ahead.

Jeffery Peterson is the Vice President and Director of CNA's Resources and Force Readiness Division. The final assignment of his 30-year career in the Marine Corps was as executive assistant to the Deputy Commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. Don Boroughs is senior advisor, Communications, at CNA.

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Case Studies

Volunteer management case studies: better volunteer outcomes through expert support.

While each of our consulting projects is different and tailored to our clients’ needs, we thought it might be helpful for you to see examples of our process and results. Here are a few Tobi Johnson & Associates volunteer management case studies for you to view. To view more information on each case study listed below, simply click on the solution button and you will be redirected.

Volunteer Case Studies

How a New Volunteer Program Strategy was Launched to Help Vulnerable Seniors

Problem: A Medicare counseling program was struggling to reach consumers in all corners of their state. Despite the hard work and dedication of their staff, they did not have enough time to serve a sufficient number of clients. When compared to their peers throughout the country, their productivity was far below average. They needed to expand their volunteer base.

How a Statewide Volunteer Program Radically Improved its Performance in One Year

Problem : A statewide network of healthcare navigation services was interested in increasing their performance in order to generate additional funding to expand programming. An analysis of program outcomes revealed that, although the total number of active volunteers had increased, the total number of clients served had not. They needed to improve their impact.

How a Volunteer Program Assessment Helped This Organization Find Clarity

Problem: An advocacy program instituted a new volunteer initiative to expand engagement and revitalize its volunteer management framework, but the transition met with mixed results. In some regions, they experienced a smooth transition to the new structure. But in others, the result was a gradual decline in volunteer involvement. They needed to understand what was going on.

Case Western Reserve University

Because TB is a lung disease and infection occurs by inhalation of the organism, we are also interested in the ability of lung cells to contain Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (TB). These cells are obtained using the procedure of fiberoptic bronchoscopy, as described below. For many studies, we also obtain blood samples in order to compare the immune responses of lung and blood cells from the same individual.

Requirements for Participation

We are seeking healthy non-smoking subjects to participate in our laboratory's studies of human immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis), the organism that causes tuberculosis (TB). We are specifically recruiting subjects who have a history of inactive (latent) M. tuberculosis infection (LTBI), as demonstrated by a positive TB skin test (also known as PPD or tuberculin test) or a positive blood test for TB (known as QuantiFERON testing). We are also recruiting volunteers who have received the TB vaccine BCG and do not have evidence of LTBI, as well as healthy-nonsmokers who have no history of LTBI.

Subjects aged 18-50 can participate. We cannot include individuals with asthma or other chronic lung diseases in our studies. Individuals with disorders of the immune system or who take medications that may interfere with normal immunity may be ineligible as well. If you have specific questions relating to your own medical history, please feel free to contact us.

Types of Studies Performed

Skin testing and blood testing for tuberculosis infection.

In interpreting our studies, it is important for us to know whether volunteer subjects have a history of exposure to Mtb. This is determined by performing PPD skin testing and, more recently, by QuantiFERON blood testing. Although many people have been tested previously, we usually request that new volunteers undergo testing for LTBI in our lab prior to participating in other parts of the study. The QuantiFERON blood test is more specific for Mtb infection than skin testing. As a result, this is the main test we current use in the lab to determine whether or not a volunteer been infected with M. tuberculosis.

For some studies, it is specifically required that subjects undergo PPD skin-testing, even if it has been done previously. For research purposes, we perform skin testing with the standard doses of PPD, as well as with a diluted dose of PPD and a dose of salt water alone. Subjects must return 48 hours later to have the skin-test sites examined.

Blood Drawing

In many of our studies, we look at the responses of subjects' blood cells to M. tuberculosis and M. tuberculosis proteins. Blood is obtained in sterile fashion from a vein in the arm. Generally we request donations of 60-150 mL (2 to 5 ounces) of blood, which is between 1/8th and 1/3rd of the amount of blood given in a standard Red Cross blood donation.

Research Bronchoscopy Procedures

Because TB is a lung disease and infection occurs by inhalation of the organism, we are also interested in the ability of lung cells to contain M. tuberculosis. To obtain these cells, we perform research bronchoscopy. The bronchoscope is a flexible tube that is similar in width to a pencil and is approximately 24 inches long. The procedures of bronchoscopy involves passing the bronchoscope through the nose or mouth into the breathing tubes. We then collect lung cells by putting salt water into a small area of the lung and then suctioning the salt water back out. The procedure is performed in a special floor of University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center dedicated to research-related projects. Volunteers typically spend 90 minutes in the research facility, but most of this required time is spent in preparation for the procedure and observation afterwards. Subjects receive $150 for undergoing research bronchoscopy.

We also have an additional, and relatively new, project in which we are trying to assess how protective immune cells move into the lung in response to antigens of M. tuberculosis. This study involves 2 bronchoscopy procedures. In the first procedure, a small amount of the skin-test material PPD is placed into a localized area of one lung and salt water is placed into a similar area of the opposite lung. We then ask subjects to return for repeat bronchoscopy in which we wash out these same lung regions to see what cells have accumulated. Subjects receive $150 for each bronchoscopy procedure performed in this study.

General Information

We would like to emphasize that the actual Mtb bacteria will only be used in laboratory studies and that subjects will not be exposed to Mtb during their participation. Agreeing to participate in one part of our experiments does not imply that a volunteer has agreed to any additional parts of the study, and volunteers may choose to end their participation in at any time. We hope that this summary will be useful in explaining the goals of our studies and what is involved. If you are interested in participating or have further questions, please contact us for more information at silverlaboratory@uhhospitals. org or by phone at 216.368.0531.

Consent Forms for Study Participation

To learn the more details about study procedures, you can review the consent forms used in this study at the links below:

  • Skin testing and blood testing for latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI)
  • Blood donations
  • Research bronchoscopy with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL)
  • Clinical Evaluation
  • Bronchoscopy with bronchoscopic challenge with PPD 

Case Studies

Learn about the success organisations have had using Volunteero through some of our case studies.

Events volunteers

Pride cymru.

Volunteero is the compass that guides passion towards purpose. It has transformed how we manage our volunteers making it easier and quicker to find the right opportunity for the right person, helping us further the impact of our charity

Measuring Impact

Sexpression.

Before the integration of Volunteero, Sexpression grappled with a myriad of systems, making volunteer management time-consuming, complex, and hindering the organisation's ability to fulfill its core mission of supporting young people

Digital Inclusion

British motor museum.

"I've got volunteers who are in their late 80s / early 90s using the app. I'm very pleased that everyone at the museum is embracing the system"

Engaging Young Volunteers

Tsl kirklees.

Volunteero has been extremely useful for me as the coordinator to quickly see who we have signed up to each event and saves me a huge amount of time emailing out individual rotas etc for each event especially when most of our young people have said they don’t read their emails anyway!

Hospice Volunteering Transformed

Ardgowan hopsice.

Moving from a world of big confusing spreadsheets to Volunteero has saved this hospice time and vastly improved their volunteer engagement

Volunteer Adoption

The association of jewish refugees.

Implementing a volunteer management system is a significant change. It requires a well-thought-out plan. Read more to learn how AJR successfully implemented Volunteero 

Digital transformation

Citizens advice.

The challenge of managing over 2,000 Volunteers across more than 250 locations across England and Wales

Switching systems

Bay volunteers.

Volunteero has helped Bay Volunteers save time with day-to-day management and reporting. It has improved the relationships with key partners and funders and it has improved the volunteer experience and engagement.

Automate tasks

Age uk northamptonshire.

Thanks to Volunteero’s new automated reference collection feature, time spent gathering references for volunteers is now SECONDS! 

Ease of use

Racing welfare.

Volunteero is so simple to use after coming from such a clunky system. It's easy to navigate and find the information I need fast!

Expand capacity

Catalyst stockton.

We were introduced to Catalyst Stockton by another client of Volunteero. At the time most of the organisation and communication with volunteers was being managed by spreadsheets, emails and phone calls.

Increased Impact

Age uk gateshead.

Age UK Gateshead was one of the very first charities to use Volunteero. The main problem they were facing was that they had many volunteers that were not active and an increasing demand for their services such as telephone befriending

Improved Efficiency

Voda north tyneside.

When we first spoke to VODA, the team responsible for their Good Neighbours Project were working from a spreadsheet for which they aptly named “The Spreadsheet of Doom”

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Participants needed for volunteer experiences study

26 Feb 2024

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From: Psychology

Virginia Tech researchers are recruiting participants for a research study about volunteering experiences (IRB-23-935). 

Participation will consist of completion of an online screening survey (approximately 2 minutes) and the completion of four surveys (approximately 25 minutes for the first of these surveys, 15 minutes for each of the subsequent surveys) across a time period of roughly 6 weeks.

Participants may receive up to $20 depending on the extent of their participation. Follow this link for full study details and eligibility criteria.

  • Research Participation

IMAGES

  1. Volunteer Roles Case Study

    case study volunteer

  2. Case Study

    case study volunteer

  3. Volunteer Management Live Case Study

    case study volunteer

  4. Case Study: Volunteer at Torrington Library

    case study volunteer

  5. Volunteer Case-Study

    case study volunteer

  6. SEEK Volunteer

    case study volunteer

COMMENTS

  1. Volunteering

    In addition, Mayo Clinic has a research subject advocate who is independent of all clinical studies and is a resource for research participants. Contact the research subject advocate by email or at 507-266-9372 with questions, concerns and ideas for improving research practices. [email protected].

  2. ResearchMatch

    ResearchMatch helps you find a clinical trial or research study near you, or across the country, by matching you with researchers from leading medical research institutions. Whether you are a healthy volunteer or have a health condition, ResearchMatch connects you to research opportunities so you can make a difference and advance scientific discoveries by participating in research studies ...

  3. Find Studies

    Research studies are looking for volunteers just like you. Both healthy volunteers and participants with specific health conditions are needed to help answer important questions impacting the health of our friends and family. Join us to improve the health of others. Study Categories.

  4. A Volunteer Communications Strategy (Case Study)

    New York Cares' volunteer communication strategy. 1) Understand that all volunteers aren't the same. Every group of volunteers incorporates various segments, each with distinct wants, needs and interests. 2) Get to know each segment well—very, very well. And keep in touch on an ongoing basis.

  5. Successful Models and Case Studies

    CASA. Volunteer engagement is a means to an end. It leverages a source of renewable energy (volunteers) to efficiently and effectively reach mission fulfillment. In working with CASA of Colorado Springs for 25 years, The Leighty Foundation has witnessed first hand the organization's dramatic evolution. This case study describes the growth of ...

  6. Leading Volunteer Motivation: How Leader Behaviour can ...

    In the case of volunteering, the empowering effect of participative leader behaviours can be illustrated by the study of Gilbert et al. , in which a community garden leader gave young volunteers the responsibility to take the produce to other elderlies, thereby allowing the young volunteers to perceive themselves as helpers and providers. As a ...

  7. Looking Beyond Traditional Volunteer Management: A Case Study of an

    account of a specific case, the value of case studies is found in their ability to illustrate issues, generate broad understandings, and encourage insight (Stake 1995). Based on its high success at attracting and retaining volunteers, the case of Dufferin Grove Park is best understood as an exemplary or a unique case?or as we term it, a "best ...

  8. PDF Chapter 6 Volunteer-state partnerships and social innovation

    relations. In this chapter, the case studies illustrate how volunteerism can contribute to or influence social innovation processes. 6.3. Introducing the case studies The case studies discussed in this chapter focus on volunteer-state partnerships in social innovation in seven countries across diverse geographical regions in the Global South.

  9. Committing to change? A case study on volunteer engagement ...

    Urban agriculture is a promising avenue for food system change; however, projects often struggle with a lack of volunteers—limiting both their immediate goals and the broader movement-building to which many alternative food initiatives (AFIs) aspire. In this paper, I adopt a case study approach focusing on Farm X, an urban farm with a strong volunteer culture located in Tāmaki-Makaurau ...

  10. Volunteer Case Studies

    Volunteer Case Studies. Volunteer. Our volunteers get a sense of real impact and personal fulfilment after joining us on our mission. Don't just take our word for it - read our volunteer case studies below. In this section. News. Florence's volunteering journey. Published: 2 December 2021.

  11. Case Studies

    The HIVE Initiative (High Impact Volunteer Engagement) was seeded by a statewide community foundation (The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation) with the goal of building nonprofit capacity in the state through skills-based volunteers. This case study details why the foundation chose this path, the partnerships that were key to the initiative ...

  12. Volunteer CASE Author Opportunities

    Currents, CASE's award-winning magazine, runs feature articles on a variety of issues important to advancement professionals, including trends in the field, case studies from different institutions, and information from research and surveys conducted by CASE's research division. Short features range from 1,500 to 1,800 words, and long features ...

  13. PDF Is It Worth It? a Case Study Exploring Volunteers' Perceptions of

    volunteers. This case study determined participants' perceptions of a volunteer leadership training experience compared to observations of the actual leadership training. A focus group revealed three themes that were both supported and refuted by observations of the training: (a) the need for refreshers and follow-up trainings, ...

  14. Exploring the Dynamics of Volunteer and Staff Interactions: From

    In their study of volunteer and staff attitudes and behaviors, Lac. argue, "one way in which the interaction between volunteer workers and paid employees can be. understood is to determine the ...

  15. Case study

    It is amazing what can be achieved with the support and efforts of a group of dedicated volunteers, and now more than ever they are essential to the on-going success of local museums and cultural organisations. This case study explores the value of a structured volunteer group's contribution to a large public art installation called The Lace ...

  16. Volunteering Case Studies

    The following stories and videos describe the many potential benefits of volunteering. The benefits can include: improving the health or experience of recipients of care. improving services for other people. engaging with patients to free up staff time, and. beneficial impacts on volunteers themselves.

  17. Case Study: Volunteer Research and Management at

    Who manages the volunteers: Dedicated volunteer/team coordinators (either ALLFED employees or senior volunteers). Time spent on volunteers: David estimates that a volunteer spending 5 hours a week would attend only the smaller research meeting, and present for about 20 minutes, and have some interactions outside the meeting of about ~10 minutes ...

  18. Finding Volunteer Organization

    The problems users facing when looking for a volunteering organization. Main results of the user research are: The primary target market is college student, around 15-22 years old. Users involved in many categories of volunteering event, mostly are engaged in educational and social.

  19. 50 Years of the Volunteer Force

    Repeatedly, these studies have upheld the predictive value of a high-school diploma, which appears to indicate whether a young person finishes what he or she starts. One 1988 study found that diploma holders were twice as likely to be promoted and a quarter as likely to desert. Of course, averages can hide exceptions, as the author of that ...

  20. Volunteer Management Case Studies

    Volunteer Management Case Studies: Better Volunteer Outcomes Through Expert Support. While each of our consulting projects is different and tailored to our clients' needs, we thought it might be helpful for you to see examples of our process and results. Here are a few Tobi Johnson & Associates volunteer management case studies for you to view. To view more information on each case study ...

  21. Volunteer

    Volunteers typically spend 90 minutes in the research facility, but most of this required time is spent in preparation for the procedure and observation afterwards. Subjects receive $150 for undergoing research bronchoscopy. We also have an additional, and relatively new, project in which we are trying to assess how protective immune cells move ...

  22. Case Studies

    VODA North Tyneside. When we first spoke to VODA, the team responsible for their Good Neighbours Project were working from a spreadsheet for which they aptly named "The Spreadsheet of Doom". Learn about the success organisations have had using Volunteero through some of our case studies.

  23. How bubonic plague rewired the human immune system

    The study showed that medieval Londoners and Danes who carried the latter ERAP2 variant were twice as likely to have survived the Black Death. By the end of the 14th Century, the researchers found ...

  24. UX/UI case study

    UX/UI case study — an App for Volunteering. A new take on volunteer work and social engagement. "Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.". — Albert Einstein. Since I moved to ...

  25. A Prepared and Resilient Fire and Emergency Medical Services

    Summary: To investigate the extent to which physical stressors could change PFAS concentrations in firefighter gear, this NIST TN quantified the concentrations of 51 PFAS across 20 firefighter gear textiles following exposure to abrasion, elevated temperature, laundering, or weathering.

  26. Participants needed for volunteer experiences study

    From: Psychology. Virginia Tech researchers are recruiting participants for a research study about volunteering experiences (IRB-23-935). Participation will consist of completion of an online screening survey (approximately 2 minutes) and the completion of four surveys (approximately 25 minutes for the first of these surveys, 15 minutes for each of the subsequent surveys) across a time period ...