Motivations to volunteer and their associations with volunteers’ well-being

Volunteerism is a key form of community involvement that can provide both physical and mental health benefits for volunteers as well as positive outcomes for the community. However, volunteers become involved for different reasons and recent studies suggest that other-oriented volunteers may accrue greater health benefits than self-oriented volunteers. To investigate this possibility, we surveyed 4,085 Australian volunteers about their motivations using the Volunteer Functions Inventory, together with their well-being using measures of self-esteem, well-being, self-efficacy, social connectedness, and social trust. As predicted, these individual differences in well-being proved to be differentially associated with other-oriented and self-oriented motivations. Furthermore, other-oriented motives were positively correlated, and self-oriented motives were negatively correlated, with satisfaction and intentions to continue. We discuss implications of these patterns for organizations that work with volunteers.