Volunteer Management in Faith-Based Organizations

Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) rely heavily on volunteers to carry out their mission, making volunteer labor fundamental to an organization’s business operations and outcomes. A review of the literature revealed a significant gap in managing volunteers effectively in a nonprofit, faith- based setting. The standard business management practices typically employed when managing volunteers lack effectiveness in nonprofit FBO environments. Employing for-profit management practices to managing volunteer labor in nonprofit settings is especially challenging given the uniqueness of nonprofit organizations that rely on volunteer over paid labor. Challenges include the organization’s values, mission, identity, social goals, outcomes, and ideological characteristics. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the volunteer management practices of FBOs in multicultural as well as homogenous FBOs from the perspectives of FBO volunteer managers. Managers could be characterized as informal and nontraditional