Analysis of Volunteers’ Retention in International NGO: from Analytics to Improving Selection Procedures

Understanding the growing need for volunteers’ workforce in both profit and non-profit sectors, the current study aims at examining the factors which influence retention of these valuable resources. Taking the prior research findings into account, in the present study we approach retention of volunteers from the motivational point of view by studying the dependence of initial motivation on the following volunteers’ decision to remain in the particular International youth organization. In order to meet the goal, we conduct a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the 271 application questionnaires and motivational letters gathered during the recruitment sessions in Autumn 2016 and Winter 2017, create logistic regression, and build a decision tree to create retention model. The results of the analysis confirmed all the hypotheses and showed that motivation factors are significant in the determination of future turnover and add information to demographic, professional and timing questions. Besides, the findings supported the assumption that controlled and autonomous types of motivation influence retention differently. In particular, volunteers with autonomous motivation showed more commitment to the particular organization and were less likely to leave the organization, unlike their peers with initial controlled motives. In general, the model demonstrated an only average level of accuracy which means that selection procedure of the regarded organization could be improved. Thus, at the end of the study, we made the conclusions and provide several recommendations to the recruiters of the organization based on the obtained results.