The Problem of Sustainable Participation in Volunteer Activities of NGOs: the Motives for Entering and Leaving (the Case of the Fund "Perpetuation of the Memory of Victims of Repression")

This thesis is implemented in the format of an applied project. The customer of the applied project is the Memory Foundation at the Gulag Museum, which faced the problem of episodic volunteering. Volunteers leave projects after short cooperation with the volunteer center, so the Fund spends limited resources on volunteers without giving back. Our goal is to analyze the factors of sustainable participation in the volunteer activities of the Fund and to develop recommendations for solving this problem. To achieve this goal, we conducted 21 in-depth interviews among three target audiences and analyze them with the help of end-to-end coding. The first sample includes volunteers who had just started working with the Memory Foundation. The second group includes people who have been cooperating with the organization for more than a year. The third group consisted of people who ceased volunteering on projects of the Foundation. During the interview, we raised such topics as the initial motivation of the volunteer, the organization of voluntary activities within the Foundation, and the subjective perception of the volunteer experience.