Motivações para o trabalho voluntário sob a perspectiva do indivíduo: um estudo de caso na ONG Junior Achievement

Abstract

The third sector has emerged as an answer to different kinds of social problems caused by structural critical state and search to meet the social needs that the state doesn’t cover and not even the companies. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that are part of this sector depend on volunteering work to realize their activities. The labor market has suffered changes in its context in the past decades that somehow affected these organizations, increasing their worries with attraction and retention of volunteers. To make the recruiting process better, and to have success in maintaining these individuals in action, these organizations need to know what are the motivations and what was the main reason or reasons that made them to be volunteers. Results have shown that these individuals are more satisfied and willing to keep on their volunteering activities, when their expectations and real experiences are fulfilled. Many NGOs that have long duration projects start identifying in their peer group, individuals that have participated as students in their previous projects and now return as volunteers. With these perspectives, this study searched to investigate how volunteering work motivation can vary among beneficiaries who have participated in a volunteering project during the educational path, in comparison with individuals who have not gone through it. Based on researching and using theoretical background, a framework has been proposed, integrating categories and considering all the dimensions and their motivations to realize the volunteering work: Personal, Social, Professional and Ideology. A project of long duration was chosen as an object of study, developed in Rio Grande do Sul State by a NGO that operates in the whole country. In the study, it was used a qualitative-quantitative approach, organized in two distinct phases able to feed the subsequent phase. The first phase, qualitative, consisting of interviews and secondary data collection, the researcher tried to comprehend the project context and identify the appearance of new categories, besides the ones already proposed by the framework. The results served as subside to create an instrument of researching to the second phase of quantitative character that searched by bivariate and multivariate analysis correlation, identifying and comprehending possible relations between volunteering motivations and their prior participation as beneficiaries of the project. The results have shown that participation as beneficiary of the project doesn’t interfere significantly in the individual’s motivations as volunteer. It was identified that schooling has a significant correlation with negative direction in some subcategories of motivations. Motivation factor more considered by volunteering participants were reciprocation, subcategory proposed by the framework developed to this study.