Motivation and Retention Strategies for Reaching Volunteers across Generations

While volunteer recruiters seek to better understand motivation and retention strategies throughout nonprofit settings, business literature provides an understanding of generationally significant motivation strategies. Along with traditional motivational theorists, this study focused on what methods best motivate and retain volunteers across an intergenerational perspective in nonprofit settings. By conducting interviews and using sensitizing concepts from business and traditional motivational theories, this research examined how best to motivate and retain volunteers from the Y, X, Boomer, and Senior generations. Study findings suggest the importance of attunement to generational motivation factors for initial recruitment and the importance of traditional motivational theories for retention of volunteers.