Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose. There is concern that organizations are not ready to take advantage of older volunteers and that we need to increase the capacity of the non-profit sector to engage this population. We conceptualize multiple dimensions of institutional capacity, including expectations for program, access to program, incentives provided by program, information about program, and facilitation actions taken by program. This study aims to develop the measurement of institutional capacity to engage older volunteers into volunteer programs and to classify group membership of the target programs depending on the multi-dimensional domains measuring the institutional capacity. Methods. We developed, piloted, and refined 50 questions that assessed nine subscales of five dimensions of institutional capacity (dissemination of information and specification of the volunteer role; recognition, flexibility, accommodation, and integration of the role; compensation of expenses incurred, in-kind incentive; skill development as incentive). Data were collected via the telephone from 51 volunteer program directors. The items were analyzed using Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA). Latent Class Analysis (LCA) allows to identify and to enumerate the number of groups of volunteer program among 51 programs based on the institutional factors. Results. Six factors with 28 items were identified: role flexibility, dissemination of information, compensation of expenses, skill development, accommodation, and integration. Cronbach's alphas indicated that the subscales were moderately reliable. Specifically, six factors explained 62% of total variance in the institutional capacity of volunteer programs. Role flexibility explained the largest amount of variance (17%) in institutional capacity. For the classification of programs, we found a three class solution to be the best fitting. The pattern of clustering was driven by four of the six factors: role flexibility (F), dissemination (D), accommodation (A), and integration (I). Volunteer programs in Class1 are more likely to focus on recruiting potential volunteers through emphasizing role flexibility and through greater dissemination of information. In contrast, programs in Class3 pay more attention to retaining volunteers who have entered the program through accommodation and integration with staff. In summary, we observed the following classes: class1, high capacity for recruitment of volunteers (38%: high F, high D, moderate A, low I), class2, balanced capacity for recruitment and retention (31%: moderate F, moderate D, high A, high I), and class3, high capacity for retaining volunteers (31%: low F, low D, low A, high I). Implication. Subsequent research on increasing the capacity of institutions to engage the potential of our aging population depends on strong measurement of the concept; and this study suggests that dimensions of institutional capacity can be assessed. Future works will assess the extent to which these factors affect the recruitment, retention, and effective utilization of older volunteers. In addition, the findings from the LCA suggest the necessity of tailored assessment and development of volunteer programs to maximize their potential to attract and retain older volunteers.