People help each other, save animals and the environment, go to protests and demonstrations, and do not receive any material compensation for this. What drives them? Let's see what scientists have to say about this.
In a 1976 study, Howarth discovered that volunteering serves as a primary form of anxiety reduction among women.
According to two studies, done in 1992 and 2002, these are the main reasons behind why people decide to dedicate their time to volunteering:
Values Allignment. It is a deeply rooted belief of theirs that helping others is an important part of the human experience.
Understanding. Volunteering allows them to learn something new about others and the world around them.
Boosting Career. Volunteering can help them learn or train skills they require for their job.
Networking. It allows them to meet new people and integrate into new communities.
Self-esteem. Volunteering makes people feel better about themselves and their place in the world.
Escapism. Volunteering helps them forget about their problems or distract them from the harsh reality.
Using Types of Motivation to Retain More Volunteers: Qela's Approach
Having information about your volunteers' motivation is essential to a movement or nonprofit manager because it can help you predict their involvement in the future. But even then, people’s motivation isn’t static—life circumstances make our futures unpredictable. For example, in one of our clients’ organizations, an active volunteer's average “longevity” was about 1.5 years. That is good but not great.
What could be a way to prolong a regular volunteer’s involvement in an organization’s life? One of the answers is gamification. According to DIS 2016 research, gamification improves people’s engagement even when using the most straightforward gamification tools like points, badges, or leaderboards:
Table 1. scores on a seven-point Likert scale That is why, at Qela, we have created a simple yet effective gamification-based solution. To conceptualize it, we have used the Octalysis gamification framework that distinguishes eight different types of human motivation:
Epic Meaning & Calling
A person believes that they are doing something greater than themselves.
Qela’s mission is to provide organizations that are trying to create sustainable changes in society with easy-to-use tools to do so. This type of motivation is explored in Qela in the gamified onboarding, where a new supporter is offered to sign up for a bunch of quests — aka missions — from their organization.
Development & Accomplishment
The main incentive here is the desire to develop oneself through overcoming difficulties.
This idea lies in Qela’s quest system and the tree of various talents — aka badges — that a volunteer can develop by taking part in a particular quest.
Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback
The player is motivated to play because the game allows them to unleash their creative potential and self-improve. The game seems interesting when it allows you to use non-standard practices to solve a mission and get something in return.
Lego constructors are a great example of this—a player can assemble a house, a car, or a robot from one set. In Qela, we use the same concept. Players go through quests to acquire talents for completed tasks and get feedback through our voting system. This strengthens a sense of unity and understanding between supporters and the organization's leaders.
Ownership & Possession
Every person strives to accumulate and protect the things that they have worked hard for. The more effort, time, or money a person has spent on something, the more they appreciate it and the more difficult it is to let go of it. The accumulated influence points, awards, knowledge, and experience in a gamified social activity prevent the supporter from leaving the organization.
Social Influence & Relatedness
Peer pressure or approval and friendship dynamics within the game greatly influence players’ motivation.
Scarcity & Impatience
The more unique and rare the resources, the more people will want to acquire them. This incentive has little in common with the motivation of volunteers, but it works great in e-commerce.
Unpredictability & Curiosity
Because of how our brains work, the expectation of a new and pleasant thing is much more enjoyable than the thing itself. Therefore, such an incentive has a good effect on volunteers. The entire system of Qela’s app allows, through a variety of tasks, to entertain and educate the supporter while maintaining an element of novelty.
Loss & Avoidance
This type of motivation is based on the fear of people missing out on something important and interesting.
Qela’s system maintains this motivation at a stable level because both quests and voting have a time limit and are constantly updated. Qela also offers in-app notifications to ensure your supporters stay up to date with new things happening within the organization.
Not all gamification principles are equally effective for working with volunteers' motivations. However, their skillful use increases the duration of a volunteer's activity in an organization, minimizes the number of them leaving the organization over time, and increases engagement and the number of donations it collects. The organization does not lose mutual touch with its supporters, increasing the chances for a sustainable change it strives for.