Mapping Volunteer Activity

The interest and recognition of the importance of volunteers over the last two decades has only highlighted confusion surrounding use of the term volunteer. Quite often in accounts of volunteer activity, terms are used interchangeably, although their content may vary. This article aims at analytically clarifying many of the complexities embedded in volunteer activity. In this endeavor, we use a mapping sentence method, which groups a variety of volunteer characteristics under key interrelated facets. We use a variety of literature-based components of volunteerism and systematically group them into ten facets. Together, they provide clarity and better understanding of the major components of volunteer activity.