Profiling traditional, episodic, and online volunteering: pathways from civic engagement to local collaborative networks

In modern societies, the forms of local togetherness have become increasingly complex, producing different forms of civic engagement, social participation, and individual and shared responsibilities within local communities (i.e., neighborhoods and cities). Specifically, new forms of civic engagement and volunteering – i.e., episodic and online volunteering – characterizing as shorter-term, more informal experiences spread along with more traditional one as modern forms of civic engagement.
Despite these changes, social participation and civic engagement opportunities still play a key role in modern societies, since they offer huge opportunities for the development of local communities in terms of individual and common wellbeing, community building, social capital, awareness, and responsibility-taking processes.
However, few studies are currently available on the extent to which these two new forms of volunteering (episodic and online) can contribute to meet the challenges of contemporary society, how they differ from traditional volunteering, and how they might be integrated to offer better answers to local challenges.
Building on this, this project aims to offer an updated picture of how civic engagement and volunteering activities shape in modern communities. It addresses two main goals: (a) to analyze the characteristics of episodic, online, and regular volunteering and their individual- and community-level antecedents in the perspective of volunteers; (b) to unravel the psychosocial impacts of the different forms of volunteering, both in terms of Social Added Value (SAV) and community development, on volunteers and communities in the perspective of volunteers and Voluntary Organizations’ Managers (VOMs).
A convergent parallel design will be implemented to meet both aims, using both qualitative (e.g., focus group sessions) and quantitative (e.g., questionnaires) to address the different sub-goals. Different levels of analysis will be involved: both volunteers and VOMs will be involved in the study, with reference to the experiences and impacts of episodic, online, and traditional volunteering on volunteers, volunteer organizations (VOs), and communities at large.
The findings will be shared with volunteers, VOMs, and other local stakeholders during blended events. Further, guidelines and practical indications will be produced and discussed with VOMs in order to help them better understand the peculiarities and implications of these new, untraditional, forms of civic engagement and volunteering and how to integrate them in their organizations. The impact of      the research project will be measured in terms of scientific, political, and social impact. The dissemination strategy will mainly focus on improving the scientific knowledges and know-how, involving volunteers, VOMs and citizens at large in the organized events, and producing non-scientific outputs allowing volunteers and VOMs to take advantage of the results on National level too.