Portrayals of Volunteering on U.S. Television: A Textual Analysis

Abstract

Volunteer managers identify challenging tasks, such as volunteer buy-in, retention, and role matching. Successful management of these tasks is influenced by how volunteers anticipate and perceive their volunteer experience. Volunteers receive and interpret messages about the drivers, rules, and expectations of giving one’s time and expertise from what they observe in the media. Television portrays how society perceives volunteering and compulsory community service. We used textual analysis to interpret portrayals of volunteering in 104 storylines on U.S. television. Television characters portrayed as volunteers were primarily motivated by civic duty, committed on a short-term basis, and had a positive experience. The volunteer manager was often absent. The intended beneficiary need not be present because the volunteer was the ultimate beneficiary. The storylines on TV excluded important components of the volunteer experience, meaning volunteer managers may need to take steps to mitigate problems associated with unrealized expectations of the TV binge-watching volunteers.

Keywords

volunteering volunteer management motivation textual analysis television

Some of the most challenging tasks identified by volunteer managers are volunteer buy-in, retention, and volunteer role matching (Kappelides & Johnson, 2020). These management tasks are influenced by how volunteers and potential volunteers perceive their volunteer experience. Volunteers and potential volunteers learn about volunteering from the world around them. One source of cultural messages is repeated storylines and tropes presented on television. Popular culture representations of public administration have been demonstrated as excellent teaching tools. Television shows like Parks and Recreation were found to be well suited for practicing critical thinking about public service (Borry, 2018). Such lessons embedded in the storylines closely align with accreditation standards in public administration graduate programs. Uhr (2015) offers an interpretation of literature through Shakespeare’s Macbeth, producing lessons on integrity and corruption. Bharath (2019) applied lessons from the film, The Avengers, to ethical decision-making discussion in the classroom as did Meyer (2021) with The Good Place. Pautz (2017) interpreted a large set of academy award-winning films for their depiction of government. These examples from literature, television, and film demonstrate the value of popular culture in interpreting societal understandings of tough public affairs concepts. Using scholarly understandings of volunteer motivations and volunteer management, we analyze TV portrayals of volunteering to answer our research questions:

Research Question 1 (RQ1): How is volunteering portrayed on television in the United States?

Research Question 2 (RQ2): What are the drivers, rules, and expectations for volunteering portrayed on television?

Research Question 3 (RQ3): Are these portrayals reflective of the recognized institutional drivers of voluntary action evident in scholarship?

Answers to these questions will help us better understand the assumptions volunteers may bring to their tasks as voluntary actors and to anticipate some of the challenges volunteer managers may face.

Behavior is influenced by cultural messages transmitted through television, film, news media, and literature. These repeated and ongoing messages provide us popular cultural understandings of the world around us. Television offers entertainment, news, and compelling content whose consumption has largely become a habit and ritualistic pattern in most American homes. Television consumption is a daily part of American lives, accounting for nearly 13% of the day’s activities (Krantz-Kent, 2018). Television shows provide the viewer the opportunity to connect with characters over a long period of time. The episodic approach to storytelling allows for a character to develop and evolve differently than in books or film. Television series send repeated messages about a character’s decision-making and preferences.

One’s visual and media literacy is their ability to make sense of the messages, symbols, and cultural components presented on television. Viewers are both consumers and contributors to “a body shared knowledge and culture” (ARCL, 2011, para. 2). Cultivation theory argues that the way in which television consumers perceive the world around them mirrors to the pop culture they consume due to the constant exposure (Gerbner et al., 1986). Appel (2008) finds that fictional narratives on German and Austrian television lead to belief in a just world while infotainment news and nonfiction leads to belief in a mean world. Cultivation theory lends perspective to America’s historical malleable belief system (Appel, 2008). When interpreting a character’s actions in one episode, one can take into account their actions over a long period of time and in various contexts to interpret the beliefs and values. Observing characters’ impressions of and experiences with volunteering can teach the viewer the rules and expectations for voluntary action, whether they are positive or negative, allowing for a social construction of reality (Gamson et al., 1992). The fictional portrayals of these activities will affect volunteering expectations on-site at nonprofit organizations (Appel, 2008).

Unconscious mimicry may explain why human beings copy the behaviors of television characters with which they identify (Chartrand et al., 2006). In connection with television’s influence in American society, this mimicked behavior legitimizes social norms and functions as a potential driver for volunteering (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 2004). Television consumers may be influenced by various themes about volunteering: That volunteering is physically tasking, volunteering can be used for selfish gain, or volunteering can be spiritually fulfilling. Television personas are developed using stereotypical actions, words, and characteristics. These personas allow viewers to identify with fictional characters through wishful identification, identified as “a psychological process through which an individual desires or attempts to become like another person” (Hoffner & Buchanan, 2005). These desires extend beyond the imitation of behavior to include their values, aspirations, individual attitudes, and life goals (Hoffner & Buchanan, 2005). Observing a favorite TV character volunteering that a viewer seeks to immolate provides this viewer guidance on what to expect and how to behave.

Motivations for volunteering evolve with individuals as they search for self-actualization and life purpose (Clary & Snyder, 1999). Mimicked behavior and wishful identification can drive motivation because volunteer motivation is often rooted in the need for self-identity and social connectedness (Nichols & Ralston, 2016). Volunteer managers may wish to better understand these personas to enhance the volunteering experience and take advantage of the influence wishful identification can have on potential volunteers for their organization.

The purpose of this inquiry was to interpret and categorize the portrayals of voluntary action presented through television. We used textual analysis to identify themes on voluntary action in 104 storylines presented on U.S. television 1990–2019. We found that television characters portrayed as volunteers were mostly motivated by civic duty, committed on a short-term basis, and portrayed a positive experience. The volunteer manager was often absent or played an insignificant role in the storyline, but when included in the storyline volunteer manager’s experience was portrayed as positive. The intended beneficiary of the volunteer work need not be present and in the end, it was the volunteer who benefited primarily in the storyline. These findings provide an opportunity to advise volunteer managers of what volunteers might expect when they show up at the organization’s door.

Literature Review: Scholarly Understandings of Volunteering

In practice, volunteering is composed of three components: (a) the act must not be undertaken primarily for financial reward; (b) the act should be taken voluntarily, according to an individual’s freewill; and (c) the act should be of benefit to someone, other than the volunteer and their family, or to society at large (Elbayar et al., 2009). Shachar et al. (2019) define these three components as the pure sense of volunteering and adds a fourth element: Organized activity associated with a formal entity. Shachar et al. (2019) contrast this definition with a hybrid phenomenon of volunteering to include instrumental and self-serving characteristics, settings beyond nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and an increasing involvement of market actors. Pure and hybrid volunteering are essential perspectives because volunteer managers and other intermediaries must be responsive to the varying needs and motivations of the volunteer.

Service learning and community service require individuals to give their time to earn school credit or serve a sentence for crime. Forced “volunteer” labor blurs the line between voluntary action and compulsory action. The concept of volunteering implies intrinsic motivation whereas service learning and community service are driven by extrinsic motivation (Cloyd, 2017). Coerced volunteers are treated as volunteers but do not act on their own free will (Yang, 2017). Volunteer managers oversee these compulsory actors; thus, inclusion of compulsory volunteering in this analysis can help us learn more about the drivers, rules, and expectations for volunteering as they are portrayed on television.

Volunteers make up a vital part of the nonprofit labor force and are often called upon to fill labor force gaps by offering their skill sets and services in-kind (Hager & Brudney, 2004). The Volunteer Functions Inventory categorizes different drivers for volunteerism: values, understanding, social, career, protective, and enhancement (Clary & Snyder, 1999). These drivers are created and continue to evolve depending upon several influential factors in volunteers’ lives such as the need for social interaction, the need based on a personal call to help, a desire to grow professionally, or the desire to fix personal problems (Nichols & Ralston, 2016; Yeung, 2004). Despite differences in age groups among volunteers, volunteers have similarities rooted in the hope to build self-identity and social-connectedness in their communities (Nichols & Ralston, 2016).

Four core motivations are present in the scholarship of volunteering. These motivations are defined and analyzed to help support volunteer recruitment, management, and evaluation. First, civic duty is the personal obligation to the community or to public service (e.g., “It’s the right thing to do.”; Shachar et al., 2019). Second, instrumental motivation is when a person volunteers for personal benefit, but not for monetary gain. Instrumental motivation includes benefits such as resume building, gaining new skills, or meeting new people (Dean et al., 2019). Third, volunteers may pursue leisure through organized giving of one’s skills and time, like volunteer tourism (Wearing, 2004), a parent coaching their child’s sports team (Nichols et al., 2019), and organizing cultural events. Fourth, volunteer managers must also oversee individuals’ community service hours ordered by an educational institution or court. This action is compulsory and may benefit the individual financially through avoidance of court fees, access to social welfare benefits, or skill-building leading to higher compensation through future employment. These four categories of motivations range from internally- to externally-driven and complicate supervision.

Beyond the formal job description, the psychological contract (an implicit agreement built upon perceptions of volunteer and their expectations of the worksite) can determine volunteer satisfaction (Tschirhart & Bielefeld, 2012). While volunteer expectations are related to their motivations, their satisfaction is dependent upon the combination of three factors: the volunteer manager, the volunteer’s tasks, and the appropriate role-match of the volunteer to their motivation. According to the Volunteer Satisfaction Index, volunteer satisfaction can be measured in correlation with the higher scoring of these factors; low satisfaction with any of these factors often leads to a letdown of expectations and a low likelihood of volunteer retention (Stukas et al., 2009). Theoretical foundations link volunteer satisfaction to their overall experience and emphasize the importance of organizations to strategize and match volunteers to tasks based on their personal drive to volunteer. Done tactfully, volunteers are more likely to feel invested in the organization and perform tasks at a higher level (Bang & Ross, 2009).

Understanding the messages volunteers receive about their role can help the volunteer manager plan volunteer tasks and supervise the variety of volunteers that arrive at their door. Volunteer managers are challenged with creating volunteer opportunities based on their volunteers’ availability and their organization’s needs. Volunteers sometimes make an ongoing commitment to a cause (e.g., weekly shifts at food bank, regular dog walker at animal shelter, social media moderator, or coaching youth sports team). Alternatively, volunteering opportunities can be time-bound as episodic volunteering, or a single instance of volunteering where the task is completed within one shift and has low commitment (LeRoux & Feeney, 2015). Volunteers may commit one day to picking up litter, participating in a protest, registering runners at a 5K, or serving food at a homeless shelter on Thanksgiving. A more recently acknowledged form of volunteering is in the form of “bite-size volunteering” which can be completed in minutes or an hour. This microvolunteering is low-commitment and often virtual (Mackay et al., 2016). This may look like sharing, retweeting, or commenting on social media; signing a petition; or giving blood. Knowing how and when volunteers can contribute to the organization is essential to a successful volunteer program. If volunteer managers understand volunteer motivations, expectations, and interests; they may build a stronger volunteer program.

Volunteer managers are crucial in maintaining volunteer programs for NGOs and government organizations as they are often responsible for the recruitment and retention of volunteers, both of which are necessary to sustain the program and often, the NGO itself. Volunteer managers must remain aware of the changing demographics of volunteers who can offer vastly different skill sets to the organizations (Eisner et al., 2009). Proper volunteer recruitment, screening, and placement are areas volunteer managers must continually evaluate. They must ensure volunteers are productive and do not become costly to their organizations (Grossman & Furano, 1999; Hager & Brudney, 2004) because volunteer managers are responsible for mitigating potential risks volunteers bring to their organizations (Herman, 2009).

The leadership position responsible for volunteer management has various titles; such as Volunteer Director, Volunteer Manager, or Volunteer Coordinator. Most of the individuals who started work in this role did so out of obligation to the organization rather than a genuine desire to fill the role (Kappelides & Johnson, 2020). Much of this reluctance is attributed to past experiences working with volunteers and the awareness of the challenges of the role (Nesbit et al., 2015). The legitimacy and centrality of the role are evidenced by the establishment of international practitioner and scholarly conferences, academic and trade journals on the subject matter, and specialized software for their specific tasks. Volunteer managers may be professionally certified through the Council for Certification of Volunteer Administrators through the use of textbook and exam (Certification Process, 2020; Seel, 2016). Although some individuals choose to begin working in volunteer management to gain professional recognition, nearly all agree that the professionalization of the field allows for growth in best practice principles as well as better perceptions of the role within their organizations (Brewis et al., 2010). Volunteer managers may leave their positions feeling their role is not equal to other managerial positions within their organization, but they are ultimately satisfied in their positions (Kappelides & Johnson, 2020; Nesbit & Gazley, 2012).

Volunteer managers can benefit from knowing the cultural understandings of volunteering. Volunteers arrive on the job with preconceived notions of their roles, tasks, and contribution, or a social construction of reality built from media observations (Gamson et al, 1992). These preconceived notions drive behavior and set the tone for interactions on site. Volunteers may use cultural understandings to make choices about volunteering and their engagements with the volunteer manager and other volunteers. An examination of popular culture messages about volunteering can offer insight into volunteer’s a priori assumptions.

Research Design

We employed textual analysis to make sense of the drivers, rules, and expectations of voluntary action (Cushing, 2018; McKee, 2003; Smith, 2006). We took protocol development guidance from Eisenberg et al. (2015), who studied the weight stigmatization on television using a team of coders. Definitions presented in volunteering scholarship were used to build our codebook. The codebook was used to efficiently (a) identify information for locating episode again (six questions); (b) document production and descriptive information for categorizing types of shows and audiences (four questions); (c) identify characters and roles (three questions); and (d) interpret drivers, rules, and expectations of voluntary action presented in the storyline (seven questions). A form of dramaturgical coding was used to code verbal and nonverbal interactions between the volunteer, intermediary, and beneficiary (Saldaña, 2015). Dramaturgical coding helped identify attitudes, emotions, and subtexts for use when coding the experience of the characters in the storyline as positive or negative. See Appendix A for the initial codebook and Table 1 for a demonstration of coding.

Table 1.

Demonstration of Coding.

Episode	Episode description with coding themes in bold
What motivation is expressed or demonstrated?
Everybody Loves Raymond, Season 7, Episode 16, “Sweet Charity”	Coding: Motivated by Civic Duty Raymond’s wife signs him up to volunteer. She tells him it’s the right thing to do and he should give back to his community.
What motivation is expressed or demonstrated?
Dexter Season, 4, Episode 4, “Dexter Takes A Holiday”	Coding: Nefarious Motives Arthur Mitchell, aka the Trinity Killer, is a family man who is a leader of a volunteer organization that builds homes for less fortunate families. Arthur Mitchell uses church, family, and volunteering to maintain a facade of a normal person. All while he buries the bodies of his victims at the construction sites while his team builds new homes.
How long is the volunteering commitment?
30 Rock, Season 4, Episode 23, “Respawn”	Coding: Ongoing commitment Liz Lemon does community service one summer to avoid living next to Tracy Jordan at the beach. She uses community service to get out of an obligation. Liz celebrates getting to wear comfortable clothes and spend 12-weeks outside in a park.
How long is the volunteering commitment?
Glee, Season 3, Episode, 9, “Extraordinary Merry Christmas”	Coding: Episodic Sue tries to get the Glee club to volunteer at the shelter and perform a song for Christmas. At first, they decline because the date conflicts with a special event, but they ultimately decide to show up to help and perform.

The unit of analysis in this study was the television storyline on voluntary action. The storyline may span one scene, an entire episode, or series of episodes. We acknowledge the varying effect on a viewer of one scene versus a series on volunteering, but we did not control for that difference in our analysis. Our analysis addresses the content of the storylines rather than the length of the storyline. To qualify as “volunteering” for this dataset, two criteria were met. First, the voluntary action must be organized by volunteering for a formal organization like a charity, school, or hospital. Second, voluntary action must be recognized as such through language usage including terms like “volunteer,” “volunteering,” or “community service.” The intent was to identify scenarios a volunteer manager may face in the day-to-day duties of the position. Thus, court-ordered and school-required community service were included. Fantasy characters, such as superheroes who volunteer outside of a charity or community service setting, were excluded because these storylines did not fall within the qualifications for the study: The action typically did not take place in a formal setting. We sought television shows that potential volunteers might regularly view, which is why we excluded young children’s programming.

To identify storylines, undergraduate students were recruited to locate and document instances of voluntary action. Ten students were included to increase the variety of storylines captured. Students were trained in the protocol for coding and analyzing and then worked in small teams of four to collaboratively identify episodes based on their viewing interests: (Team 1) comedy and animation, (Team 2) crime and drama, (Team 3) action/adventure and reality. Students first recalled volunteering storylines from memory. By grouping students with similar viewing interests, conversations among team members sparked memories of storylines. Next, students used internet search engines, television show Wikipedia pages, and their personal contacts to locate storylines. Once a student identified an episode, he or she documented the required information in the electronic codebook. Documenting required both observation and interpretation.

The initial dataset contained 125 storylines. Nineteen episodes were removed from the dataset because they did not fit the requirements for inclusion. Storylines were cut because (a) the character was not volunteering in a formal setting, (b) the character was giving money rather than time, or (c) the scene did not provide enough information to complete a full entry using the codebook. Two outlier storylines were removed because they were produced in the 1960s and 1980s and fell outside the boundaries of the study.

We assessed the descriptive information collected by the students such as genre, maturity rating, age of show, and production company to group the data into meaningful sets and identify themes. Then the codebook was expanded to assess deeper themes in the data. For example, in initial coding the volunteer, intermediary, and beneficiary were labeled with the character’s name. We then categorized this information into larger patterns for interpretation. Volunteer managers were categorized based on their job title and beneficiaries were categorized into subpopulations.

The presence of drivers, rules, and expectations was assessed for their alignment with scholarship applying a structural approach (Mckee, 2003). The experience of the volunteer, volunteer manager, and beneficiary were coded as positive or negative by interpreting language and behavior. When the volunteer manager or beneficiary was absent, we interpreted components of the set or the language and behavior of the volunteer to draw conclusions about the implied experience of these absent roles.

Episodes were watched again when coding was unclear or incomplete, sometimes numerous times. Though a viewer may not watch a scene more than once, the research team did so to capture a complete storyline with all relevant characters and actions for analysis. When themes emerged within a genre, the authors watched several scenes to identify examples representative of these themes. Structured absences were noted for further analysis (Mckee, 2003).

Multiple steps were taken to ensure the internal credibility of the dataset and external credibility of the analysis. First, the lead researcher and a graduate assistant reviewed the data for completeness and accuracy in real time as they were collected by the undergraduate students. To enhance intercoder reliability, the data collectors were provided a glossary of terms to reference throughout the collection process ( Saldaña, 2015). To calibrate the codebook, the teams of students practiced coding three episodes together before coding independently. To address potential illusory correlation (Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2007), crosstab queries confirmed and illuminated larger patterns in the data. The final long answer questions in the codebook serve a field notes to corroborate interpretations of the storylines (Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2007).

Findings: Television Portrayals of Volunteering

The dataset includes 104 storylines of voluntary action in U.S. television episodes categorized and interpreted based on the codebook. The full dataset was sorted by genre and including show name, episode and season numbers, and maturity rating. A list of shows included in the analysis is presented in Appendix B. Television shows were limited to shows available for streaming on services such as Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Prime Video, and HBO Go with maturity ratings of TV-PG and above. Animated shows that older teens and adults might view were included, like South Park, Futurama, and Family Guy. Shows must have aired for at least one season with multiple episodes. Miniseries, movies, documentaries, or docu-series were excluded. Six genres of U.S. television were included based on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) television categorization, see Figure 1. The largest number of storylines came from comedy (25%) and drama (24%), representing nearly half of the dataset. Crime (16%), reality (14%), animation (12%), and action/adventure (9%) composed the remainder of the dataset. The IMDb categorization of the shows often included multiple designations. We used the primary or first designation. Nearly all animation shows listed comedy as the second genre and crime and drama were often co-labeled on IMDb.

Figure 1.

Percentage of television genres in the dataset.

What Drives Television Characters to Volunteer?

In the first stage of the analysis, we identified in which genres volunteering was most common and what drove people to volunteer. Five drivers of voluntary action were included in the codebook and present in the data: civic duty (45% of the storylines), instrumental (28%), nefarious (13%), to impress others (9%), and entertainment value (4%). The genres offered insight into messages received by specific audiences about what motivates someone to volunteer. Figure 2 presents the intersection between genres and drivers. Civic duty (48 storylines) and instrumental motives (30 storylines) were proportionally higher in all genres. A common civic duty storyline was volunteering at the soup kitchen on a holiday (Keeping up with the Kardashians, Season 14, “Holiday Episode”) or giving blood (911, Season 1, Episode 8, “Help is Not Coming”). Civic duty was presented more often as a serious motivation than the other motivations.

Figure 2.

Drivers of voluntary action by genre.

Instrumental motives were mostly articulated by students and criminals ordered to complete community service to earn school credit or pay penance for their crimes. To be labeled as instrumental motivation, the character expressed the benefit to them for volunteering. In the Gilmore Girls Season 3, Episode 9, “Deep Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” Paris angrily searches for a last-minute community service at local soup kitchens. She begs the volunteer manager find something for her to do and questions the motives of the other volunteers who have filled all the volunteer shifts across town,

Who are all these jackasses who volunteered anyway? They can’t all be students like me. They’re not all putting it on a college application. I get something out of it. And these other people don’t get a thing. Talk about selfish.

Volunteering was presented as a stepping stone to something else. Characters with instrumental motives often included lines related to civic duty to cover for their primary motives. Paris goes on to say, “You know I do this for the good of mankind, don’t you?” To document the primary motive required interpreting the script and the body language of characters involved in the exchange. Paris’s focus on strengthening her Harvard application was evidenced by the character’s actions throughout the series and the look of desperation on her face.

The remaining three drivers were much less common in the dataset. Entertainment value was only present a total of 4 times in animation, comedy, and crime. To impress a clique or romantic interest served as a motive in only 10 storylines. For instance, Willie from Duck Dynasty volunteered as an assistant football coach to show off his football prowess. Nefarious motives were present in animation, comedy, and crime for a total of 14 storylines. Nefarious motives include not only self-interest, but also malintent. Examples include, using the guise of volunteering to steal from a vulnerable population (Family Guy, Season 14, Episode 16, “The Heartbreak Dog”) or to murder a perceived neighborhood nuisance (Law and Order, Season 4, Episode 2, “Volunteers”). Though less present in the data, these storylines emphasized the act of volunteering and the interactions between the volunteers and the beneficiaries. The messages around these motivations were not as heavily present as civic duty and instrumental. The nefarious storylines focused on the character’s engagement with the voluntary act, not the charity’s intended beneficiary.

Who Manages the Volunteers?

Second, we identified the person or entity that dictated how the individual volunteered and managed their behavior. The typical nonprofit volunteer manager was present in 42% of the storylines. Four other types of intermediaries emerged in the data: church leaders, school personnel, criminal justice system personnel, and medical personnel, see Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Was the intermediary’s experience positive or negative?

The role of the intermediary was completely absent in 34% of the storylines. In this case, the character decided to volunteer and then a scene appeared with the character engaging in their volunteer experience. In Good Girls, Season 1, Episode 2 “Mo Money, Mo Problems,” the main characters volunteer to clean an elderly woman’s home as a guise for theft but there is no volunteer manager directing their actions. In One Tree Hill Season 3, Episode 8 “Holding Out for a Hero,” Chase decides to become a volunteer to “help people” by becoming a big brother. Next, he arrives at a boy’s home with two pilot’s caps and takes his new “little brother” on a plane ride around the town. There is no visible intermediary between the decision to volunteer and act of volunteering. In addition, the idea of a new big brother taking a child on a plane ride on their first visit borders on absurd. In scenes like this, the voluntary action was portrayed as directed by the volunteers themselves.

When intermediaries were present, their experiences were mostly positive, meaning the intermediary appeared to be enjoying his or her work, see Figure 3. There was one exception to this rule: The criminal justice system personnel, often represented by judges or probation officers. These intermediaries did not appear to be enjoying their duties, commonly assigning or supervising litter collection. For example, in Better Call Saul Season 3, Episode 8 “Slip,” a lawyer named Jimmy is court ordered to litter clean up. To get out of this responsibility and to make a little cash from another community service worker, Jimmy threatens legal action against his supervisor. He compels the supervisor to give him and his co-worker time off from picking up litter under a bridge in Albuquerque, New Mexico,

Out here you might be King Douche-Nozzle. But in the courtroom, you’re little people . . . So I’m offering you a simple choice. You can go to your wife, explain that you’re about to lose your job, your pension, whatever pinhole of a reputation you’ve got at the bowling alley on Glow-ball Sundays. Or let my friend here visit his sick daughter in the hospital and you can let me rest my back on this sacred now litter-free New Mexico soil. Oh, and we keep our [community service] hours.

The supervisor is forced to decide between his supervision duties or risking a financial and legal loss in court and simply replies, “Fine . . . Asshole.” Jimmy is physically and verbally overbearing in the scene. In this case, supervising community service workers was an extremely unpleasant task even though this type of intermediary had the authority to act on behalf of the criminal justice system. This is not always the case for volunteer managers supervising those court ordered to provide service to the community or those supervising students “volunteering” to earn school credit. In these circumstances, a volunteer manager at a charity would take up the burden of the state or the school with little authority.

Who Are Volunteer Managers Managing?

Third, we considered how these individuals volunteer in relation to a central duty of the volunteer manager: volunteer retention. We explored the volunteer’s time commitment and whether their commitment was compulsory. The length of commitment to volunteer positions leaned toward episodic, or one-time volunteering. Ongoing volunteer positions represented less than 40% of the storylines and microvolunteering was only present in 7%. The small number of microvolunteering (donating, protest participation, and sharing of social media messages) may be due to the framing of our internet searches. Microvolunteering is not often labeled as volunteering in the television show summaries.

In contradiction of scholarly definitions of volunteering, compulsory work in a nonprofit setting to meet school or court requirements often was labeled “volunteering” in episode summaries. We labeled formal obligations to volunteer as “compulsory” allowing for expressed motivation (e.g., civic duty, instrumental, nefarious, to impress someone, and entertainment value) and to be coded independently of formal obligation. Compulsory community service or volunteering was identified in 29% storylines, see Figure 4.

Figure 4.

Primary expressed motivations for compulsory and optional volunteering.

TV volunteers were more likely to volunteer on their own accord, as in evidenced in the literature on real-world volunteers (Yang, 2017). In 71% of the storylines, the action was coded as “optional.” The main character or main characters played the role of the volunteer two-thirds of the time and the volunteer’s experience was positive in two-thirds of the storylines. If we were to describe a character volunteering on television, this person would be committing to a single day to volunteering, volunteering on their own accord, and enjoying their work. Volunteer recruitment may be simple in such circumstances, but retention and the assignment of tasks would be a challenge.

Who Benefits From Volunteering?

Finally, we identified who or what benefited from the voluntary action. The most common beneficiaries were youth, people living in poverty, and the general community. Other beneficiaries were medical patients, disaster victims, victims of abuse, the elderly, and church communities. The beneficiaries most likely to have a negative experience were the elderly and medical patients because they were often taken advantage of. Sometimes no beneficiary was identified; the volunteer was giving their time for “charity.” The role of the beneficiary was typically not central to the storyline. They were not always present in the scene or often did not directly engage with the characters volunteering. Ultimately on television, the volunteer is the primary beneficiary of the voluntary action. When Andy Dwyer volunteered to help build a playground in Parks and Recreation, Season 2, Episode 6 “Kaboom,” he dresses strategically to steal the food provided by the charity organizations,

The key to volunteering? A lot of pockets. For putting all the food in. The Red Cross has amazing cookies. I go there all the time. Meals on Wheels was a bonanza. Suicide hotline, surprisingly lame spread.

The entire episode is about volunteering and, in this storyline, the volunteer clearly benefited personally from the experience.

As an outlier, The Wire portrayed an ongoing commitment and the full circle experience of the beneficiary giving back. In Season 5, a supporting character, Bubbles, volunteers at a soup kitchen he frequents as a beneficiary. In this storyline, the volunteer gives back to the soup kitchen that once benefited him. In seeking a volunteering opportunity, Bubbles says,

Look, I don’t know what I can do to help. I’m just trying to find my way. Seeing how crowded it is, maybe I can help hand out tickets [to people waiting for lunch].

He wants to give back to the organization and finds a way he is comfortable contributing. As the storyline progresses through Season 5, Bubbles goes on to clean the kitchen, serve lunch, and connect with a reporter who aims to tell the story of the homeless on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland. Though not reflected in larger themes, the storyline of Bubbles volunteering is a positive programmatic outcome exemplifying what a volunteer manager might hope to see in their organization.

Discussion and Conclusion

Overall, volunteering on TV reflects what is observed in scholarship. Our study is not the first study to examine popular cultural portrayals of public administration concepts, but it is the first empirical study on television portrayals of volunteering with the intent of understanding volunteers’ a priori assumptions. Our analysis presents societal understandings of day-to-day activities inside nonprofit organizations based on the assumption of cultivation theory that viewers’ beliefs correspond with television portrayals and messages (Appel, 2008; Gerbner et al., 1986). Findings can be used by volunteer managers to make sense of the volunteering experience from the volunteer’s point of view.

If television viewers mimic the repeated messages on television (Gerbner et al., 1986), a volunteer manager could expect them to (a) volunteer episodically, (b) on their own accord, and (c) independent of an intermediary (like a volunteer manager). In this socially constructed reality, these viewers would be satisfied with their assigned task because they will have self-selected a task well-suited to their skillset, availability, and interest (Gamson et al., 1992; Stukas et al., 2009). The viewers would walk away feeling that they contributed to their community and benefited personally (Nichols et al., 2019). Volunteers will be disappointed if they do hold these perceptions. Also, volunteer managers would be in trouble because in real life volunteering is not always so picture perfect.

According to television messages, volunteer managers would be safe to assume most volunteers arrive at their door out of the goodness of their heart or on marching orders from the schools or the courts, as described by Shachar et al. (2019). Characters on television volunteer overwhelmingly out of civic duty. Screenwriters must see volunteering as a responsibility to society first and foremost. They also recognize the burden of instrumental motives (Dean et al., 2019) or compulsory community service. Volunteering responsibilities that appeal to both groups and that benefit the organization might be difficult for smaller organizations leading to volunteer placement difficulties.

The volunteer manager role is a key ingredient to a positive volunteer experience, but task-motivation alignment is a priority (Stukas et al., 2009). On television, volunteers selected their own volunteer tasks often without involvement of a volunteer manager. The storylines reflected a positive experience for the volunteers. The structured absence of the volunteer manager gives agency to volunteer and centralizes the volunteer’s character in the storyline (McKee, 2003). This absence could be a byproduct of screenwriters not being knowledgeable about the volunteer manager role and its importance in a successful volunteer experience. Alternatively, screenwriters may feel that focusing on the role of the volunteer manager takes away from the role of the volunteer, who typically is the star of the show. As a result, volunteers may assume that they oversee their own volunteer experiences and not understand the role of the volunteer manager. Volunteers may expect to walk into a volunteering experience and get right to work on the task of their choice without impediment. An explanation of the role and duties of the volunteer manager may ensure a positive onboarding of the volunteers.

Nefarious motives as a driver for volunteering was a fascinating portrayal of volunteering. This is not a completely new concept to volunteer managers. Volunteer managers spend a great deal of their time on risk reduction activities like background checks, in-person interviews, and performance evaluations (Herman et al., 2014; Herman, 2009). Such tools may help keep volunteers with malintent at bay or at least under a watchful eye. But as often is the case, television screenwriters have pushed this concept of volunteers with nefarious motives to an extreme through satire and metaphor. High-intensity risk reduction techniques are costly and typically not possible for programs with mass numbers of volunteers or volunteer duties requiring swift responses, like disaster response. Also, everyday risk reduction techniques would likely not have stymied these criminal characters. Volunteer managers in organizations serving vulnerable populations, like the elderly, could be on guard for unconscious mimicry or wishful mimicry (Chartrand et al., 2006; Hoffner & Buchanan, 2005; Lazarsfeld & Merton, 2004) of binge-watching volunteers who identify with mischievous or malevolent characters and respond swiftly. While the “magnitude of harm” for this type of risk is extremely high, the “likelihood of occurrence” is extremely low placing this risk midway on the scale of urgency (Graff, 2012, p. 347). We suspect the nefarious storytelling on television is recognized by viewers for what it is: satire and metaphors for undesirable behaviors. We also suspect malintent is not a driver of volunteer behavior and that wishful identification (Hoffner & Buchanan, 2005) is more likely to occur in positive volunteering experiences. Volunteer managers can assume that volunteers have the visual and media literacy to decipher these messages while also keeping risk-reduction tools in place.

Two concepts less prevalent in the data, but growing in scholarly spaces, are volunteering as leisure and microvolunteering. Scholars have explored the entertainment value of volunteering (Nichols et al., 2019; Wearing, 2004), but this type of volunteering represents a very small percentage of what is on television in the United States. This could mean that experiences like volunteer tourism and sports volunteering are not as appealing to viewers or that screenwriters are less familiar with the concept of volunteering as a form of entertainment. Microvolunteering, as defined in scholarship by Mackay et al. (2016), is not described as “volunteering” on television or maybe such a small part of the plot that it was not labeled in the plot summary for an episode. Viewers may perceive these activities as duties of citizenship rather than giving of one’s time. If more citizens engage in these forms of volunteering and label them as such, television screenwriters may follow their lead.

In the act of volunteering; the volunteer, the intermediary, and the beneficiary are essential for volunteer satisfaction (Bang & Ross, n.d.). This is not the case for viewer satisfaction and TV ratings. Television viewers are interested in the story of the protagonist, not the intermediary or the beneficiary. This is an important distinction because television ratings drive a screenwriter’s decision-making. Repeated messages about the volunteer gaining something grand from their volunteer experience are misleading. Volunteering can be inconvenient, boring, and misaligned with one’s skillset. A more realistic storyline might include a middle-aged mother entering the back door of an animal shelter, cleaning litter boxes, and then quietly exiting to her minivan. No evidence of her presence exists other than her signature on the volunteer sign-in sheet. Only hisses and scratches from the cats acknowledge this weekly volunteer task. This doldrum storyline would tank the television show’s ratings. Despite being negative for the volunteer and television ratings, such tasks may be extremely beneficial to the organization. Filing papers or sorting cans will not win someone the medal of honor or an Emmy, but it may keep the doors open at a nonprofit organization or food on the table of a local family. To counter incorrect expectations and ensure a realistic psychological contract, educating volunteers on their long-term impact on service beneficiaries and the organizations may help reduce attrition and refocus self-interested volunteers (Tschirhart & Bielefeld, 2012).

The data tell us how society perceives the activities involved with volunteering and compulsory community service. Other documented sources of popular culture; such as film, news media, and literature; can tell us more about societal perceptions of this concept in future studies in this line of inquiry. Next, we will engage with human subjects to determine how television portrayals of volunteering affect their decision-making and behavior, employing cultivation theory (Appel, 2008; Gerbner et al., 1986). Various methodological techniques could facilitate this exploration. For instance, Swink (2017) assessed interpretations of a series of fictional television characters who exude feminist qualities Through focus group interviews. Giglietto and Selva (2014) use what they call the “second-screen” to analyze socially networked responses to television shows. The authors interpret the viewers’ immediate online interactions to the television shows rather than solicit responses independently directly from viewers. Swink’s (2015) study captured deep reflection on storylines and characters while Giglietto & Selva captured fast thinking and action. Innovative approaches like these will help us make sense of individual interpretations of these repeated messages of volunteering in popular culture.

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix B

Television Shows Include in the Study.

Genre	Television show title	Maturity rating
Action/Adventure	Smallville (3 storylines) (2001, 2002, 2004)	TV-PG
	NCIS (2018)	TV-PG
	Baywatch (1994)	TV-PG
	NCIS (2006)	TV-PG
	Baywatch (1996)	TV-PG
	9-1-1 (2 storylines) (2018)	TV-14
Animation	The Simpsons (3 storylines) (1997,2007, 2016)	TV-PG
	Futurama (1999)	TV-PG
	Family Guy (3 storylines) (2015, 2016, 2017)	TV-14
	Adam Ruins Everything (2015)	TV-14
	Death Note (2007)	TV-14
	BoJack Horseman (2014)	TV-MA
	South Park (3 storylines) (2011, 2015, 2017)	TV-MA
Comedy	Everybody Loves Raymond (2003)	TV-PG
	Frasier (2 storylines) (2003)	TV-PG
	Last Man Standing (2016)	TV-PG
	Malcolm in the Middle (2001)	TV-PG
	Parks and Recreation (4 storylines) (2009, 2010)	TV-PG
	Seinfeld (2 storylines) (1993)	TV-PG
	The Office (3 storylines) (2006, 2009, 2011)	TV-PG
	Brooklyn 99 (2013)	TV-14
	On My Block (2019)	TV-14
	Saturday Night Live (2011)	TV-14
	30 Rock (2011)	TV-14
	Entourage (2 storylines) (2006, 2009)	TV-MA
	It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2 storylines) (2006, 2007)	TV-MA
	Letterkenny (2016)	TV-MA
	Six Feet Under (2001)	TV-MA
	Shameless (2013)	TV-MA
	Schitt’s Creek (2017)	TV-MA
Crime	Numbers (2005)	TV-PG
	Better Call Saul (2 storylines) (2015, 2017)	TV-14
	Bones (2013)	TV-14
	Criminal Minds (3 storylines) (2006, 2007, 2011)	TV-14
	Good Girls (2018)	TV-14
	Hannibal (2014)	TV-14
	Law and Order (1993)	TV-14
	Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (2003)	TV-14
	Twin Peaks (1990)	TV-14
	Dexter (2009)	TV-MA
	Narcos (2015)	TV-MA
	The Wire (2 storylines) (2004, 2008)	TV-MA
Drama	7th Heaven (2003)	TV-PG
	Dawson’s Creek (2001)	TV-PG
	Gilmore Girls (3 storylines) (2001, 2002, 2005)	TV-PG
	Parenthood (2014)	TV-PG
	The Guardian (2001)	TV-PG
	The Wonder Years (1992)	TV-PG
	A Million Little Things (2019)	TV-14
	Glee (5 storylines) (2010, 2011, 2015)	TV-14
	Gossip Girl (2007)	TV-14
	Mad Men (2007)	TV-14
	One Tree Hill (2011)	TV-14
	Pretty Little Liars (4 storylines) (2012, 2014, 2016)	TV-14
	Riverdale (2018)	TV-14
	Supernatural (2011)	TV-14
	The Fosters (2010)	TV-14
	American Horror Story (2016)	MA
Reality	The Bachelorette (2018)	Not Listed
	The Amazing Race (2010)	TV-PG
	Keeping Up with the Kardashians (2 storylines) (2011, 2017)	TV-PG
	Duck Dynasty (storylines) (2015)	TV-PG
	The Real Housewives of Orange County (2018)	TV-14
	The Real World (1992, 2010)	TV-14
	Queer Eye (2018)	TV-14
	60 days in (2019)	TV-14
	Sister Wives (2012)	TV-14
	Coach Snoop (2018)	TV-MA
	Girls Incarcerated (2 storylines) (2018)	TV-MA

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Kimberly Wiley

Author Biographies

Kimberly Wiley is an assistant professor of Nonprofit Leadership and Community Development in the Department of Family, Youth, and Community Sciences at the University of Florida. She is a public policy, nonprofit management, and qualitative methodology scholar.

Marissa Evans earned her master’s of Public Administration with a focus on policy and nonprofit management from the University of Illinois Springfield. She serves as a Program Specialist for the Idaho Department of Juvenile Corrections working to support the Idaho Juvenile Justice Commission in her role has the state’s Racial and Ethnic Disparities Coordinator.

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