Prof. Dr. Chantal Munsch
When volunteers drop out of volunteering, this usually remains under the public radar: figures on volunteer dropouts are not regularly collected in Germany. The topic has also hardly been studied scientifically to date. Social pedagogue and educational scientist Prof. Dr. Chantal Munsch, together with Dr. Andreas Kewes and Moritz Müller, has been working intensively on the question of why people stop volunteering
They put out fires, teach children to swim, sit on city and local councils, distribute food to the needy or settle disputes between neighbors. Without volunteers, our society would not function. Fortunately, there are plenty of people in Germany who spend their free time working for a good cause: According to the latest German Survey on Volunteering from 2019, almost 40% of citizens over the age of 14 are involved in voluntary work.
Idealized representations of volunteering
Advertisements, brochures and magazines typically use two promises to attract volunteers: volunteering is an opportunity to get to know others and actively shape something together with them. The accompanying pictures show extremely happy, effective people: From the friendly and sprightly senior citizen reading to a child, to the cheerful action group handing out flyers at their stand in the pedestrian zone in bright sunshine. The message is clear - when people get involved, they meet in an open and friendly way. It's an opportunity to experience a community that benefits everyone.
Prof. Dr. Chantal Munsch, a social pedagogue and educational scientist from Siegen, takes a critical view of such portrayals of volunteering. She has been researching the topic of civic engagement for over 20 years - and has also come across many other stories during this time: Alongside great enthusiasm for their own commitment, they also deal with hurt and deep disappointment. "The public ideal image does not do justice to the ambivalent experiences that volunteers have as part of their commitment," Munsch is convinced. "Research has the opportunity to take a closer look here."
Together with her team, Munsch has taken a close look at the difficulties that volunteers encounter in their volunteering activities. In two consecutive studies, they therefore looked specifically at drop-outs and conducted narrative interviews with more than 60 people who had dropped out of volunteering. They looked at four different areas of volunteering: Welfare organizations, church communities, environmental initiatives and sports clubs.
One result of the evaluation: there are dropouts across the entire group of volunteers. "From the young altar girl to the father who is involved in his sons' sports club to the pensioner who is involved in committees of the Catholic Church: The dropout stories are often similarly structured," says Moritz Müller. The researchers found that the reasons why volunteers end their commitment lie primarily in the collective experiences they have during their work. They identified two different dimensions of experience: Firstly, specific challenges that exist in the various fields of volunteering - charities, church communities, environmental initiatives and sports clubs. On the other hand, there are challenges that come with being involved per se, regardless of where someone is involved.
Volunteers face an emotionally very stressful, field-specific challenge in the welfare sector, for example: on the one hand, looking after people in need of care is fulfilling. On the other hand, welfare in Germany is characterized by economization - the lack of time and money as well as the routine way in which organizations operate are at odds with how many volunteers actually imagine caring for those in need. "This can be very frustrating and can also lead to volunteers throwing in the towel," says Müller.
According to the study, the specific challenge in the area of the church lies in the different understandings of what the church should stand for. When these different perspectives - church as a community, as a movement or as an organization - clash, this creates massive tensions: "This is difficult for some committed people to endure. "According to the researchers, the main challenges in the area of environmental policy initiatives are the high demands on the time and expertise of those involved. "If you want to push through something against professional structures in politics and administration, you have to acquire a lot of knowledge. That takes time and energy that many people can't afford," explains Kewes. According to the study, the sports sector, on the other hand, has comparatively little tension - although typical conflicts also occur time and again in the clubs. One reason for this is the day-to-day work of the clubs, which demands a lot from the members, says Kewes: "In the end, promoting sport always means a lot of organizational and bureaucratic tasks."
In addition to field-specific tensions, Munsch, Kewes and Müller also identified cross-field challenges in the dropout narratives. "Whether church, environmental initiative or sport - dropouts repeatedly told us about difficulties in working with other volunteers. This aspect actually runs through all the stories," says Munsch. In her view, this is hardly surprising, but rather lies in the nature of civil society: "Cooperation is nowhere near as regulated as in gainful employment, where there are clearer hierarchies and areas of responsibility. In volunteering, the volunteers have to negotiate everything themselves." The cooperation requirements are therefore particularly high. It becomes particularly difficult when different styles of cooperation clash.
The researchers found two typical ways of presenting cooperation in the stories of former volunteers: On the one hand, the idea of "puzzling" together on the big picture - according to this, the volunteers see themselves as "puzzle pieces" that work together as equals. On the other hand, there are the "pieces", i.e. committed individuals with special skills who take on responsibility and want to lead the way in cooperation by determining joint action. For Munsch, it is obvious that people who see themselves as pieces of a puzzle cannot cooperate well with "game pieces" and vice versa: "Conflicts quickly arise. And precisely because most people put their heart and soul into their voluntary work, the resulting injuries are all the deeper."
Munsch is convinced that a more realistic picture of civic engagement, including its ambivalences, will open up a new perspective for the promotion of volunteering and those involved: "Those who are aware of the existing challenges will also be better able to overcome them cooperatively and deal with disappointments."
This was first published in the Future research magazine of the University of Siegen:
Future 2023: Engagement between enthusiasm and disappointment (Author: Tanja Hoffmann)