This PhD proposal sample focuses on the issue of volunteer labour management. It investigates key antecedents of burnout, motivation loss, and retention issues in this sphere that have not been sufficiently studied by researchers previously. The author substantiates the choice of this topic and the optimal methods for addressing the posed questions and objectives.
Abstract
Reliance on volunteer labour is one of the defining characteristics of religious institutions in many countries. Their sustainability largely depends on their capability to effectively manage this workforce and ensure that it remains highly efficient, motivated, and committed to their shared goals in the long-term perspective. With that being said, the findings of recent literature indicate problems in this sphere, with many US-based religious institutions being unable to attract and retain these crucial stakeholders. The proposed study seeks to address this gap in knowledge by investigating key problems in this sphere to develop a sustainable human resource management (HRM) framework for engaging volunteers, preventing burnout, and ensuring their long-term retention.
1. Introduction and Problem Statement
Religious organisations have historically relied on volunteer labour to support their operations, help them with event organisation, and assist them with charitable events and initiatives (Hardy & Taylor, 2024; Lorente et al., 2024). Considering the non-profit nature of the majority of such institutions, such support forms a crucial backbone, allowing them to achieve their management goals. With that being said, there exists a gradually developing crisis associated with religious volunteering in the US. As shown by Choi et al. (2023), Nesbit et al. (2025) and Paarlberg et al. (2022), recent figures demonstrate a systemic failure of such organisations to effectively manage their ‘free workforce’. Sub-optimal practices in this sphere lead to staff burnout, decreased motivation, and overall lack of long-term retention. These factors are highly problematic for any organisation, with problems becoming especially evident after the COVID-19 pandemic (Cnaan et al., 2025). As thousands of people were locked in their homes and maintaining ties with their congregations in an online format, this also reduced overall willingness to volunteer and engage in physical events.
The resulting problem is a highly serious one since religious institutions cannot afford to lose this resource if they intend to maintain the same levels of charity work and other organisational activities (Cnaan et al., 2022; Cnaan et al., 2025). On the one hand, active volunteering can be linked with burnout and motivation issues. These challenges stem from disengagement and frustration with church-related work felt as a chore or supervised by ineffective or problematic heads of volunteering committees. The lack of quality management practices leads to wasted time and other resources, insufficient training, poor role definition, ad-hoc scheduling, and other issues, creating management chaos and leading to general dissatisfaction of free staff members (Dunn et al., 2021). On the other hand, such authors as Lai & Nguyen (2025) and Ortega-Rodriguez et al. (2023) also report that the retention of volunteers poses a separate challenge existing simultaneously with motivation and burnout issues. While many people decide to take part in such activities to become a part of local communities, few adhere to these activities for prolonged periods of time.
2. Literature Review
2.1. The Landscape of Religious Volunteering
According to Statista (2025a), up to 75.7 million US residents volunteered in 2023, with this number showing a 24.7% increase in comparison with 2021 figures. These activities are deeply embedded in local culture and economy and are frequently seen as a way of supporting local communities and committing to public good (Statista, 2025b). With that being said, recent studies, including Nesbit et al. (2025), recognise an opposite trend associated with declining numbers of religious volunteering. The authors associated it with the loss of leadership, changing population composition, an ageing population, and reducing religiosity. While a part of the problem may be related to COVID-19, political tensions, societal polarisation, and other social factors, Lim and Wiertz (2024) note that these problems were gradually increasing even in the pre-pandemic period. As also stated by Hardy and Taylor (2024), religious deconversion may not fully explain this phenomenon, since religious volunteering is not always linked with religious activities. In this aspect, churches support food pantries, homeless shelters, educational programmes, mission trips, and other activities that can be participated in by both congregation members and non-believers.
2.2. Theoretical Frameworks Exploring Volunteer Engagement
One of the main theories used for exploring volunteer engagement is the theory of self-determination (Lorente et al., 2024). It assumes that most people are driven by three key psychological needs, namely autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In the context of volunteering, they can be realised by free choice of roles (autonomy), the provision of proper training leading to personal effectiveness in helping others (competence), and a sense of community and shared purpose (relatedness). Persons unable to satisfy these needs feel frustration that can lead to burnout in the long-term perspective or the willingness to leave to avoid adverse feelings (Li et al., 2022). The second theory applicable to the analysed context is the employment lifecycle, which is widely utilised in traditional HRM. It includes such phases as attraction, recruitment, onboarding, training/development, retention, and separation. All of them apply to and are crucial for volunteering (Chen et al., 2022). Religious organisations need to attract new people, help them acquire the necessary skills and knowledge, and ensure that the participants of past charitable initiatives share positive appraisals of them with their peers and advocate for the ‘employer’. Moreover, the recruitment and other phases can be even more challenging due to the unpaid nature of such work.
2.3. Burnout in Religious Volunteering
According to Ata et al. (2024) and Fernandes and Matos (2023), key factors contributing to volunteer burnout in religious organisations can be subdivided into several groups. First, many pastors and other managers of such institutions lack boundaries and do not possess strong managerial competencies. This leads to poor role definitions, excessive workloads for volunteers, the lack of attention to their needs, and conflicting orders. Second, religious organisations frequently underestimate the significance of training and development and/or are unable to provide them to their members (De Clerck et al., 2021). As a result, volunteers experience problems in performing charitable work, which leads to an increasing feeling of incompetence, excessive stress, and discouragement. Third, long-term commitment and retention frequently depend on effective motivational strategies (Cho et al., 2023). With religious organisations primarily using non-monetary incentives, this increases the significance of their effective selection. If volunteers do not feel appreciated for their work, this increases the risks of burnout and creates cynicism and the loss of enthusiasm, leading to turnover intentions.
2.4. Possible Retention Strategies and Solutions
This study seeks to propose a comprehensive framework for volunteer engagement and sustainable management due to the existing gap in knowledge in this sphere (Aboramadan et al., 2019). Past studies from other non-profit fields suggest that commitment can be achieved by the provision of proper onboarding and training, efforts recognition and appreciation, the use of modern technologies facilitating coordination, and flexible scheduling and role customisation (Ata et al., 2024; Chen et al., 2022; Schie et al., 2019). While these strategies may not always create deep intrinsic motivation, they are generally associated with burnout reduction and increased retention in modern HRM literature. However, evidence on their application is primarily found in other spheres than church management. While past studies exploring volunteering work provide some insights on the topic, Aksoy and Wiertz (2024) noted that the sphere of religious organisations’ HRM remains understudied and may possess unique characteristics, making its challenges difficult to address via traditional means. These considerations and gaps in knowledge have informed the questions and objectives of this study presented further.
3. Research Questions and Objectives
The main research question the proposed study seeks to address is,
How can US religious organisations effectively manage volunteer labour to increase motivation, prevent burnout, and enhance retention?
This question will be answered via the following research objectives:
- To identify and analyse the primary motivational factors (intrinsic and extrinsic) that drive individuals to volunteer in religious settings and sustain their engagement over time.
- To diagnose the root causes and precipitating factors of burnout among religious volunteers, including organisational, interpersonal, and personal dimensions.
- To evaluate the perceived effectiveness of current volunteer management practices (e.g., recognition, training, scheduling) from the perspective of both volunteers and organisational leaders.
- To develop and propose a comprehensive, practical framework for a sustainable volunteer management system that religious organisations of varying sizes and resources can adapt.
4. Proposed Research Methodology
4.1. Research Design
The proposed study will adhere to a mixed-methods research design, with the sequential explanatory strategy being used to generate the findings (Creswell & Clark, 2017). The first phase will involve quantitative data collection to understand general patterns and relationships in religious volunteering, volunteer motivation, burnout factors, and retention issues. The second part will use the findings of the previous stage to explore the identified phenomena by interviewing experienced church leaders (Bryman & Bell, 2019). This design allows the qualitative phase to directly build upon the insights from the quantitative one, which ensures that any identified discrepancies, unique data patterns, and relationships can be thoroughly investigated and explained.
4.2. Data Collection Methods
Structured online surveys will be pilot-tested using the author’s personal contacts in the target population (Lury et al., 2018). They will be distributed via social media and their own community networks to reach volunteers with experience of engagement in charitable activities exceeding 6 months. The sampling strategy will represent a combination of convenience non-probability sampling and snowball sampling to ensure that the sample size of 380+ respondents can be achieved. Considering the aforementioned figures of religious volunteers in the US exceeding 60 million, it is deemed representative of the target population with a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error amounting to 5% (McKinley & Rose, 2019). Standardised instruments, such as a modified Maslach Burnout Inventory scale, will be used to measure respondents’ reactions to burnout, different motivation instruments, and retention practices via Likert-scale questions.
The second phase will be based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with 25-30 practitioners who are directly involved in volunteering work (Patten & Newhart, 2018). 10-15 of them will be coordinators and pastors directly responsible for the management of such activities. 10-15 interviewees will be experienced volunteers with 12+ months of prior work in this role. The latter sample will also include the persons who took part in such activities but decided to quit due to frustration, burnout or the loss of motivation (Schuster & Dunn, 2020). The sampling strategy for the qualitative sample will be purposive sampling, where the author will select the respondents possessing sufficient experience. Snowball sampling will also be used to attract additional interviewees with similar knowledge.
4.3. Data Analysis
The quantitative sample will be processed using statistical analysis in SPSS (Onwuegbuzie & Johnson, 2021). This will include descriptive statistics (frequencies, means, standard deviations) and regression analysis to explore the relationship between individual variables. More specifically, independent and dependent items will investigate the primary motivational factors (intrinsic and extrinsic) that drive individuals to volunteer in the first place, as well as similar elements leading to the loss of motivation, burnout, and turnover intentions (Saunders et al., 2019). Qualitative data will be recorded in audio, transcribed, and analysed using thematic analysis. The process will involve NVivo coding based on the familiarisation with the text, the generation of initial codes and categories, the revision of themes, and the triangulation of the results with quantitative data (Zhao et al., 2021). The use of the mixed-methods strategy will contribute to rich insights, ensuring that all objectives can be addressed in a manner leading to the development of a comprehensive framework for volunteer work management.
4.4. Ethical Considerations
The proposed study will adhere to the highest ethical standards in order to guarantee full anonymity and confidentiality of the respondents (Wright et al., 2021). For the survey part, they will be provided with information about the aim and objectives of the project as well as all data handling procedures. To proceed with the forms, they will have to explicitly confirm their consent and awareness of their rights. Similar provisions will be made for the qualitative part (Walliman, 2018). All audio recordings will be stored on a personal password-protected device and will not be transferred to any third parties for any reason whatsoever.
5. Project Timeline and Expected Contributions
The following timetable summarises the three-year plan leading to the defence of this thesis.
Figure 1
Gantt Chart
On a theoretical level, the proposed study will expand the existing understanding of non-profit workforce management, organisational psychology, and religious studies (Lorente et al., 2024). The constructed framework will be instrumental for mapping volunteer dynamics in the unique and understudied context while also contributing to the field of academic discussions on motivation, burnout, and workforce retention (Lim & Wiertz, 2024). For practitioners, this model will provide a blueprint for developing sustainable personnel management strategies, minimising the loss of followers and directly addressing the problems in this field encountered by many congregations (Nesbit et al., 2025). This will contribute to enhanced volunteer engagement and motivation, reduced burnout, and increased long-term commitment, improving overall organisational health.
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