{"id":3032,"date":"2025-01-15T14:17:03","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T13:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forschung.uni-siegen.de\/?page_id=3032"},"modified":"2025-01-15T14:53:36","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T13:53:36","slug":"prof-dr-chantal-munsch","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/forschung.uni-siegen.de\/en\/prof-dr-chantal-munsch\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof. Dr. Chantal Munsch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Foto: Sascha H\u00fcttenhain<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When volunteers give up, nobody takes much notice. In Germany, there are no statistics on the number of people who opt out of volunteering. The topic has also been largely ignored by research in the past. That was until Chantal Munsch, a professor for social work, teamed up with Dr. Andreas Kewes and Moritz M\u00fcller to analyze why people leave volunteering<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They put out fires, teach children to swim, serve on town and municipal councils, provide meals for people in need or mediate disputes between neighbors. Without volunteers, our society couldn’t function. Luck\u00adily, in Germany there are plenty of people who devote their spare time to good causes. The latest survey from 2019 shows that almost 40 percent of the population over 14 years of age engage in volunteering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ads, leaflets, and magazines typically make two promises to potential volunteers: they emphasize that volunteering is a great oppor\u00adtunity to get to know people and to actively achieve something in a group. The photos show extremely happy, empowered people. There’s the friendly-looking senior reading to a child and the joyful group handing out leaflets in the sunshine in town. The message is clear \u2013 people who vol\u00adunteer are open and outgoing. If you join, you’ll find a community where everybody wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Siegen professor for social work Prof. Dr. Chantal Munsch takes a critical view of these representations. She has been studying volun\u00adteering for over 20 years and has analyzed many stories that show another side. On the one hand, there’s great enthusiasm for the work, but, on the other hand, also tales of pain and profound disappointment. \u00bbThe idealized public image doesn’t reflect the ambivalent experiences of many volunteers,\u00ab says Munsch. \u00bbAs researchers we can take a closer look.\u00ab<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Together with her team, Munsch has intensively studied the difficulties volunteers face. Therefore, in two successive studies, they analyzed why volunteers leave their organizations. To find out about their experiences, the researchers talked with more than 60 people who had broken off a voluntary commitment. They looked at four dif-ferent areas of volunteering: welfare organizations, church communities, environmental initiatives, and sports clubs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One finding was that people who leave volunteering come from all groups. From the young alter girl to the family father who works in his sons’ sports club to the senior citizen who sits on church committees: the stories about leaving the service are often very similar,\u00ab says Moritz M\u00fcller. The researchers found that the main reasons people give up volunteering result from collective experiences they have during their activities. The team defined two different dimensions of experience. Firstly, specific challenges that arise in the different fields \u2013 welfare organizations, church communities, environmental initiatives, and sports clubs. Secondly, challenges that come with being a volunteer whatever the field of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, people in welfare roles have to cope with a very stressful challenge inherent in the sector. Helping people who need care is, on the one hand, fulfilling. On the other hand, care provision in Germany is organized along strict economic lines \u2013 a shortage of time and money as well as the routine-heavy work of the organizations are in conflict with what many volunteers expect from care for people in need. \u00bbThat can be very frustrating, leading some volunteers to give up,\u00ab says M\u00fcller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study reveals that the specific challenge in church work lies in volunteers’ different views about what the church is for. When these different perspectives \u2013 the church as a community, a movement, or an organization \u2013 clash, huge tensions arise. \u00bbSome volunteers find it hard to cope.\u00ab The researchers report that the key challenges in environmental initiatives are the high demands on the time and expertise of the volunteers. \u00bbIf you want to achieve change against the professional structures in politics and administration, you have to acquire an enormous amount of knowledge. That takes the kind of time and energy many people can’t afford,\u00ab says Kewes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the study, volunteering in sports clubs is comparatively low in stress, although typical conflicts still occur. One problem is the daily club work that demands a lot of time and effort, says Kewes. \u00bbThe bottom line is that supporting sport always means a lot of organizational and bureaucratic work.\u00ab Apart from specific tensions in the different fields, Munsch, Kewes, and M\u00fcller also identified universal challenges that drive people away. \u00bbWhether in church, environmental, or sports work, a common theme was difficulties in working together with other volunteers. In fact, this aspect was a constant in all the conversations,\u00ab says Munsch. She finds this unsurprising and inherent in the nature of civic organizations. \u00bbThe cooperation between the various actors is much less controlled than in the world of work, where there are clearer hierarchies and job descriptions. Volunteers have to work all this out between themselves.\u00ab Therefore, the requirements of cooperation are particularly high. It gets difficult, especially when different cooperation styles clash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers found two typical cooperation viewpoints in the stories of the former volunteers: On the one hand, the idea of putting together a puzzle of the big picture. These volunteers see themselves as pieces of a puzzle that work together on an equal level to form a swarm intelligence. On the other hand, there is also the idea that some volunteers with particular skills should take on responsibility for the cooperation and make decisions for the whole group. \u00bbFor this cooperation style, we chose the metaphor of game pieces. The volunteers see themselves as people who act autonomously and develop their own strategic goals,\u00ab explains Kewes. It’s obvious that \u00bbpuzzle pieces\u00ab and \u00bbgame pieces\u00ab don’t get on. \u00bbConflicts quickly bubble up. And especially because most people put their heart and soul into their volunteering, the resulting injured feelings are all the more painful.\u00ab <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Munsch is confident that a more realistic depiction of volunteering that also addresses its challenges would boost volunteer activities and give volunteers new prospects. \u00bbIf you’re aware of the challenges in advance, you’re more likely to be able to manage them in a cooperative way or to cope with disappointments.\u00ab<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Foto: Sascha H\u00fcttenhain When volunteers give up, nobody takes much notice. In Germany, there are no statistics on the number of people who opt out of volunteering. The topic has also been largely ignored by research in the past. That was until Chantal Munsch, a professor for social work, teamed up with Dr. Andreas Kewes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3032","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forschung.uni-siegen.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forschung.uni-siegen.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forschung.uni-siegen.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forschung.uni-siegen.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/516"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forschung.uni-siegen.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3032"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/forschung.uni-siegen.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3060,"href":"https:\/\/forschung.uni-siegen.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3032\/revisions\/3060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forschung.uni-siegen.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}