A January, 2026 Gallup poll found that 63% of people volunteer their time to a religious or nonprofit organization each year. That’s up from 56% in 2021.
But Dyana Mason, the Director of the University of Oregon’s Master's in Nonprofit Management program, said the shape of volunteering is different now.
“I think there's been a trending change over the past decade of more online volunteering, more episodic volunteering,” Mason said.
“Episodic volunteering” refers to “folks who are volunteering just for one event or a couple of days rather than sort of these long term, multi-year volunteers who are putting in hundreds of hours a year,” she said.
Mason said the pool of volunteers is generally more diverse, younger, and looking for a different kind of experience. This parallels the direction of employment generally, with increases in remote and hybrid work.
The new landscape hits some organizations harder than others.
Leah Chisholm is Program Manager with Lane County Senior and Disability Services. She oversees Lane County’s Meals on Wheels program, as well as nine senior meals centers in communities including Florence, Junction City and Oakridge. She said their daily, in-person services require dedicated and consistent volunteers.
“We average about 200 active (volunteers) at any given time,” she told KLCC. She said that may seem like a big number but, “before the pandemic, we had more than 500 within the program.”
In the last fiscal year, nearly 23,000 meals were served at the Senior Meals centers in Lane County, and more than 240,000 meals were delivered by Meals on Wheels. Chisholm said the volunteer deficit has been especially tough for Meals on Wheels, which in the Eugene city limits is contracted with FOOD for Lane County.
“We’ve had to really look at maybe having a longer route,” she said. “Sometimes it's asking volunteers to give more time or drive more miles. And that's a big ask.”
Some nonprofits, such as OSU Extension’s statewide Master Gardener program, have been able to flex to fit the changes in the volunteer pool. Its Outreach Coordinator, LeAnn Locher, said the program offers online training, Zoom workshops, and weekend in-person meetings.
“Thanks to the pandemic, online education jumped to being acceptable and doable,” Locher said. “We offer trainings for our volunteers in a variety of different ways, which means we're able to attract more people, you know, not just folks who are retired and have more time.”
Locher said interest in the program can be spotty, as well. While some Oregon counties may struggle to maintain capacity, other locations have had to turn people away from the Master Gardener program. She said two years ago in the Portland metro area, there was a 400-person waitlist.
However, Locher said, the program doesn’t offer many one-time, or short-term volunteer opportunities.
“One thing is making sure that people know that when they sign up to be a Master Gardener volunteer, that it is not just getting the education and playing in the garden, but it's serving the community, and answering gardening questions and volunteering in the garden or volunteering in your community,” she said. “So the first year … it’s a commitment.”
To start, Locher said, the program requires 40 hours of class time and 40 hours of volunteering. The next year, it’s 30 hours of volunteering and education. She said it’s a challenge to control the drop-off rates, and that they’re trying to make sure that people know what they're signing up for.
Mason, with UO, said if an organization is large enough, having a dedicated volunteer coordinator is key.
“The search for volunteers is never ending, right? And volunteers come and they go and so a lot of the effort is actually spent on trying to retain them too,” she said. “So if you have a good volunteer, don’t let them leave.”
She said if possible, a nonprofit should meet volunteers where they are, and offer tasks that match their motivations: something like office work to build a young person’s resume, or social tasks to help someone make connections.
“I always tell my students that volunteers are not free,” said Mason. “They take a lot of work and resources and capacity of the organization to recruit, train, manage, and retain.”
While Mason said recruiting remains largely through personal connections and word of mouth, Locher said having Master Gardener workshops available on YouTube and other platforms has helped bring in new volunteers.
“Being visible introduces us to more people and maybe it shows them a side of the program that they may not have known about,” she told KLCC.
Chisholm said they’re always thinking of creative ways to find people who want to give back, especially in rural Lane County.
“So social media, our website, public service announcements,” she said. “We recently sent a letter of introduction to all of the churches within Lane County.”
And some legalities continue to change to fit the times. Chisholm said a new regulation is in the works that would allow more flexible scheduling for some volunteers. She said the hope is that offering food to-go, which was a temporary exception during the pandemic, might be an option for some senior meals by the end of the year.
