Abstract:
College student volunteerism and interest in community-based learning are on the
rise. Are communities ready for them? This article examines the “supply side” of
student engagement: nonprofit capacity to accommodate students. Our analysis of
a large random sample of nonprofit managers in two contrasting communities finds
that many of the volunteer management (VM) functions assumed to be important in
any volunteer context also are important to student engagement. We also find role
differentiation between interns, service learners, and general volunteers in the VM
tools used to engage these students and the outcomes that can be expected. Despite
variation in reported outcomes, nonprofit managers consider some aspects of VM to
be essential to all campus–community partnerships. We find that each type of student
involvement contributes to organizational capacity in specific ways and that student
engagement depends on adequate VM capacity (VMC). Our conclusion discusses how
the findings challenge service learning as presently formulated.
