The Psychosocial Account of the Social Added Value of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations: A Participatory Study

2.1. The Concept Mapping Approach

To pursue our objective, we realized a participatory action-research study with a group of managers of NPVOs as lay researchers by following the methodological approach of the concept mapping approach. Concept mapping is a systematic mixed-method approach gathering the community members’ narratives [19] while engaging with them around a certain topic of interest, e.g., the notion of SAV. It follows six main research stages: preparation, idea generation, structuring, representation, interpretation, and utilization [17, 20]. Despite its mixed-method nature, this approach gives primacy to the narratives of the participants while the quantitative part is subsumed [19].

In the first stage (i.e., preparation), the research group defines the community sample (e.g., NPVO managers) and develops one or more stimuli to engage the community about research questions. A stimulus is termed a “focus prompt” as it consists of incomplete sentences in a “fill-in-the-blank” style, which is used to elicit diverse ideas within the group of participants. These are later submitted to the participants in the second stage (i.e., idea generation). Using both traditional paper and pencil or online questionnaires, participants are asked to complete the sentence with a minimum of three to a maximum of five words or sentences. This allows the collection of different and separate ideas from the participants' perspectives. Then, once data are collected, the second stage of idea generation requires researchers to do a general scrutiny of the answers in which they discard uncertain terms and combine synonyms to arrive at a maximum of 100 [17, 21].

The third stage (i.e., structuring ideas) represents an initial participative qualitative analysis aiming to organize the ideas collected and their importance in defining the topic of interest. This analysis is made by a small group of community members (from 10 to 15, Lantz et al., 2019) who had previously taken part in the idea generation stage. These participants operate as lay researchers and are instructed to realize the sorting task. The group is given a number and a card on each of which a single idea is listed, and individually, the lay researchers have to group the ideas according to the meaning they attach to them.

In the fourth stage (i.e., representation), the resulting groups of cards/ideas are quantitatively analyzed by the research group using multivariate statistics (i.e., multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis) to depict the cluster of ideas and map the elements of the topic under investigation. Notably, individual results of lay researchers' sorting task (i.e., third stage) are analyzed using multidimensional scaling to map the ideas and create a single aggregated map of the ideas. This produces an x,y coordinate for each idea based on the conceptual similarity among each idea. Then, the cluster analysis is applied to the x,y coordinates to partition the ideas into clusters of the related concepts.

The fifth and sixth stages (i.e., interpretation and utilization) involve interpreting and using the resulting materials. In the fifth stage, the research group analyzes the results of the multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis to gather the meaning of the resulting clusters. Lastly, results are utilized during the last stage by discussing them with community members to plan community-based program development [22].

2.2. Participants

One hundred and five volunteers (36% women, 65% over 60 years old, 63% retired, and 76% having experience volunteering of more than ten years) took part in the first stage of idea generation. Ninety-one percent of participants identified as directors or managers of the NPVOs, while the rest were part of the management committee. Following the Italian National Statistics Institute classification of the volunteering sector, the majority of the sample were managers of NPVOs operating on social assistance and civil protection (44%), healthcare providers (26%), and culture and recreation (24%). The rest of the sample operates in educational organizations, environmental issues, national and international cooperations, and social cohesion.

Ten participants (50% female, 100% over 60 years old, and retired with at least ten years of volunteering experience) participated in the stage of structuring ideas. For the interpretation-utilization stage, we organized a focus group in which n = 10 NPVO managers took part (20% female, 90% over 60 years old, and retired with at least ten years of experience in volunteering).

Participants were recruited via the Service Centre for Volunteering (Centro di Servizio per il Volontariato – CSV) of Verona, and we submitted paper and pencil questionnaires during the idea generation stage. Participants received the questionnaire during the annual NPVOs’ network assembly. In the questionnaire, the participant could indicate a contact (e-mail address) if available to be involved in the subsequent stages of the research. These were later invited for the third stage of the structuring ideas and the interpretation-utilization stage, during which we operated in the spaces of the CSV network.

The study has been approved by the ethical committee of the University of Verona (code: 2023_12) according to the declaration of Helsinki.

2.3. Procedure

3.1. Idea Generation

In the first step of idea generation, 241 focus prompt responses were provided by NPVOs managers. According to the literature, lists of ideas containing a maximum of 100 is appropriate for the third stage of structuring the ideas [17, 21]. Consequently, two researchers who participated in the preparation stage reviewed all the ideas collected (N = 241) separately, and redundant or similar ideas collapsed. In some cases, they combined or revised statements for clarity. Finally, n = 79 ideas resulted.

3.2. Structuring Ideas & Representation

Starting from these ideas (n = 79) elaborated by the researchers, participants (i.e., lay researchers) provided 10 independent groups of ideas’ organization. Six clusters of responses were identified through multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis (Fig. 1). Examples of ideas for each cluster are presented in Table 1. Since the stress value of the present study is 0.2778 and less than 0.305 [24], we can expect less than a 1% probability that the data are randomly organized.

3.2.1. Cluster 1: State and Territory

The first cluster that defines SAV represents the cluster with 10.12% of the ideas collected. The ideas in this cluster lead back to broader community participation and to anything that NPVOs can lead to in terms of contributing to the community where local authorities and the state fail to contribute. In addition, SAV comprises the value of NPVOs in being linked to the local territory as well as in representing a resource to respond to the needs of the community to which NPVOs belong. For example,

this cluster comprised ideas describing the benefits of NPVOs as the capacity to understand the needs of communities, which may be often neglected by national or local policies (ideas example, “1. Understanding the needs that policy often fails to address”). This adherence to the local needs overlooked by the state results in activities aimed at providing and fostering services in the local context (“62. Strengthening the services of the territory”).

4.1. Theoretical Contributions

Although our study followed a bottom-up perspective, the results of the mixed method study can offer initial indications on how to complement the psychosocial conceptualization and model-based measure of SAV.

In the literature, the psychosocial perspective of SAV follows an operationalization based on the series of internal and external relational factors that NPVOs produce. This operationalization is based on the sociological understanding of SAV as the production of relational goods, which in turn generate public goods and can be considered indicators of the social capital of communities [11-13]. Accordingly, the psychosocial operationalization covers different relational constructs derived from community psychology literature, which define the elements composing SAV structure. Taken together, NPVOs’ SAV is represented by the symmetry between relational goods that NPVOs provide to their members and those provided to the community [11, 14]. From the theoretical point of view, it is worth noting that our bottom-up perspective on SAV does not completely overlap with the psychosocial understanding of SAV [11, 14]. That is, the cluster map indicates that NPVOs’ SAV is better understood as a circuit of benefits rather than the symmetry of two groups of benefits of NPVOs. Moreover, these benefits are not only to be understood as relational in nature but rather as different factors spanning from individual level aspects (i.e., Clusters 2 and 5) to community and society (i.e., Clusters 1, 3, 4, and 6). Accordingly, NPVOs’ members gain social awareness (Cluster 2), well-being, and self-determination (Cluster 5) [25], which appear to be individual elements that act in a systemic way with community-level elements such as social cohesion (Cluster 3), collective action, and community activation (Cluster 1, 4 and 6) [26, 27]. The emerged clusters and their circular relation from the individual to the community indicate that SAV can be better understood as positioned in contextualizing the individual in the community and in society [27, 28]. Ultimately, while we can agree that SAV is “precisely the emergent effect of the agential, interactive, and systemic reflexivity” [13 p. 20], it is also important to recognize the socially added values of each single element composing it.

Following this inception, the six clusters can be read in terms of community psychology literature in order to offer a more extensive view of the elements composing SAV that can complement the existing perspective. First, Cluster 1, “State & Territory,” refers to the very idea that NPVOs situate their actions in a context lacking resources and services. On the surface, this may appear quite obvious; that is, NPVOs situate their activities in a specific local context and, as such are confronted with structural problems and needs of such contexts. However, accounting for the social value of NPVOs also requires the recognition of their very social stance, i.e., their social responsibility and vision [29]. Second, Cluster 2, “Care & Awareness,” Cluster 5, “Community & Social promotion,” and Cluster 6, “Local activation”, seem to recall the literature on participation with a specific emphasis on the type of participatory action, i.e., civic engagement [30], but reminds to the notion of community care [31]. Clusters 2, 5 and 6 highlight how volunteers engage in activities for solutions, offering care and support due to their awareness of social and individual needs. This appears to be in line with the categorization of the concept of participation, particularly with an emphasis on civic engagement as a form of active involvement in issues that affect people’s lives and impact the larger community [30]. Third, Cluster 3, “Create & Valorise relationships”, largely overlaps with the dimensions of SAV identified in Mannarini et al. (2018) “Quality of internal relations” and “Quality of external relations”, yet it also adds that NPVOs’ create not only positive internal and external relationships but also relational systems in which they are valued and sustained. Lastly, Cluster 5, “Well-being & Self-determination”, emphasizes the “huge array of subjective benefits” [32] p. 7969] and recognizes it as part of SAV. Cluster 5 reminds us of the role of NPVOs in supporting the well-being of their members as individuals can find a space to experience and perceive meaning in their lives, particularly via senses of beneficence, autonomy, competence, and relatedness [33]. This recalls the wide-established perspective of the Self-Determination Theory [34], and suggests that SAV can also represent the extent to which NPVOs provide occasions for well-being and individual flourishing. These findings indicated that the SAV model could be complemented by more refined constructors but also include additional constructs in its current operationalization, such as volunteers’ well-being.

Furthermore, these results overlap with current categories of debate on social capital within community psychology [35]. Accordingly, the clusters show that SAV includes bouncing back the community to structural needs (Clusters 1) [36], connecting with community members (Cluster 3) [37] while reinforcing and renewing protecting factors of the community (Clusters 4 and 6) [38]. This main finding does not provide any specific answer to the unresolved scholarly tension on whether NPVOs’ are activators of social capital or whether it is the social capital brought by the presence of NPVOs that activates its members [9, 16, 39, 40]. In the literature, there are multiple perspectives on social capital, and relational sociology refers to SAV as characterizing social capital. This is because NPVOs produce public goods and services due to investment in social relations. Then, social capital is the social added value of relations and represents the capacity to generate public goods thanks to NPVOs’ production of relational goods [12, 13]. In our study, we noted that as NPVOs confront community needs, managers may discount the use of terms such as capital and benefits often coopted by economic values [41, 42]. Conversely, they describe a series of individual and community-level elements in which SAV and social capital reflect the ideal of change according to which community well-being and social impact cannot be realized individually but rather relationally with proper participatory social engagement [43, 44]. In speculative terms, we can argue that participation and sense of community represented in our clusters foster social empowerment [45] and social capital [9].

Lastly, our bottom-up understanding of SAV aligns with the systemic-ecological approach of community psychology [27, 28, 46]. This is due to the emphasis of SAV on creating, thanks to internal and external NPVOs’ relationships, and improving the resources of communities and influencing their future. This is also in line with the idea of relational sociology from which the concept of SAV has originated. On the one hand, the ecological perspective of community psychology emphasizes the need for understanding people in the community context and the community context itself. In this, people are agentic responders to their environments, and as such attention is paid to the transitions from individual to community (i.e., community life of individuals) and vice versa (i.e., social and cultural contexts of communities). The ecological approach is central for actions for preventive interventions as well as for promotion interventions [46]. On the other hand, the relational sociology approach emphasizes the idea that relations characterize social capital, which in turn generates and valorizes public goods [12, 13]. Thus, the emerging representation of SAV from the perspectives of NPVOs’ managers can be enticing for scholars in the field. It adds that NPVO managers harbour a less robust notion of the benefits of NPVOs, which includes the capacity to foster social impact by anchoring to the community [47-49]. Accordingly, NPVOs’ SAV is relational, social, and political in nature, realized as the creation of an agenda for community members to fight against social injustice, and psychology can put effort into sustaining such an agenda [6, 50]. The resulting circular operationalization of NPVOs' SAV seems to be able to aid in identifying, containing, and going one step further, generating a community-level approach that is able to nourish and sustain social capital and community resilience.

4.2. Applied Implications

Our bottom-up perspective on SAV suggests that NPVOs’ benefits act in a circuit and span from individual-level dimensions to community and society-level elements. In turn, it is important for NPVOs to understand more about which aspects are at the individual, community, and societal levels and how their social value can be recognized, sustained, and promoted. For example, NPVO managers can draw on the insights offered in this study to represent their benefits and define their actual contributions to their NPVOs’ members and communities. That is, NPVOs’ managers can use our 6-cluster solution to describe their organizations and contributions toward communities narratively. This can make stakeholders and beneficiary communities more aware of the change being driven by NPVO activities and, in turn, increase potential engagement and interest in future developments [32].

Equally, focusing on the elements of the cluster map can help to realize interventions supporting SAV’s elements. For example, clusters 3, “Create and Valorise Relationships,” and 4 “Community and Social Promotion” remind us to the ideas of Mannarini et al. (2018) that NPVOs can promote vocational training programs to work on relational dimensions among volunteers, but also training aimed at fostering positive external relations by fostering volunteers’ sense of social responsibility towards users, institutions, and stakeholders. This can be the case for activities that promote organizational identification among volunteers, as well as initiatives for socialization between volunteers and community members. Operating at these levels can be important for sustaining and promoting SAV so that NPVOs’ members can be mobilized and supported in their voluntary engagement.

In parallel, clusters 1 “State and Territory,” 2 “Care and Awareness,” and 6 “Local activation,” may be used by NPVOs’ managers as lenses to identify and interpret their initiatives in the local context. While this may seem obvious, classifying their work can support NPVO managers in identifying potential areas of improvement (e.g., recruiting new volunteers and attracting financial resources) and, in turn, promoting their SAV. Similarly, Cluster 5 “Well-being snf Self-determination,” reminds us to the possibility of conducting internal surveys on NPVOs’ volunteers’ experience and perceptions of well-being. Evidence-based knowledge in this respect can help managers to understand their SAV but also design volunteers’ activities in order to reflect their basic psychological needs.

Nevertheless, our bottom-up perspective reflects also the level of applied implications. That is, rather than attempting to create universal practices, we highlight the importance of considerations for tailoring interventions to the needs of different NPVOs and communities by using our findings as an interpretative framework. For example, practitioners might use our cluster map via narrative approaches in order to mobilize and account for the SAV [45]. NPVOs could use our findings to narratively describe and map their contributions to the community, identifying beneficiaries, institutions, volunteers, and staff involved, as well as activities or experiences. Such an intervention can lead to additional insights and useful situated knowledge on which to base more specific practices. Simultaneously, working with our cluster map can also enhance volunteers’ self-esteem and their perception of community service self-efficacy [33].

4.3. Limitations and Future Research

The present study is the first of its kind to examine NPVO's SAV via a participatory research approach and, as such, it is intended to be exploratory. Although it provides an initial basis for research-conducting and practice-orienting, our findings have to be interpreted with some caution as a few limitations must be acknowledged. First, the specific local context and the variations and differences among NPVOs’ managers imply that our findings result from multiple perspectives that may not represent the general population of volunteers, particularly managers of NPVOs, and the experiences of other cultural and organizational settings. Moreover, our sample was characterized by the presence of only NPVOs managers of a specific age (65%, over 60 years old) and occupational status (63% retired). Likewise, our findings may not reflect the perspective of individuals engaged in emerging forms of volunteerism (e.g., episodic and online volunteering) who may have a different account of SAV due to the different temporal and spatial character of such forms of volunteerism. Taken together, these limitations inform that our findings cannot be considered as reflecting the global perspective of NPVOs’ SAV but rather as a situated perspective that combines multiple variations and differences of NPVOs of specific local contexts. As such, our findings are not generalizable to the wide population involved in volunteerism, to the different contexts, to the variety of NPVOs, and to emerging forms of volunteerism. For example, younger populations may show different accounts of SAV, and narratives of non-manager volunteers and non-volunteers (i.e., community members) may not overlap with those of NPVOs’ managers. Differences can also be observed in different cultural settings as specific local contexts may reflect different accounts of NPVO value. Lastly, individuals engaged in emerging forms of volunteerism may have different narratives of their experiences, requiring additional attention in future research.

Nevertheless, this is the first exploratory study aiming at advancing a bottom-up perspective, and these limitations do not invalidate its findings but rather inform future research. For future research on SAV, our cluster map can be used as an interpretative framework that is open to extension due to different populations and cultural and organizational settings. Researchers might conduct a series of concept mapping studies with different populations (e.g., young adults), in different local contexts, focusing on specific areas of NPVOs or on different forms of volunteerism (e.g., traditional, episodic, and online volunteering). Such a large comparative investigation can be realized across different regions and involving a more diverse sample (e.g., NPVOs’ managers vs volunteers) to reach a broader understanding of SAV in NPVOs.

Second, we restricted our method to the use of concept mapping without comparing our results with standardized measures of SAV [11, 14]. Although this implies that our findings are not without risk of biased perceptions of the social value of NPVOs, concept mapping is also a mobilizing method that fosters awareness, social responsibility, and self-efficacy. Moreover, our purposes were exploratory in order to gain a bottom-up perspective on SAV via the narratives of NPVO managers. Ultimately, this limitation does not affect the implications of our results per se, yet it may suggest that future research could involve a parallel methodology to explore NPVOs' SAV. For example, our findings can be used for larger scrutiny using our clusters for scale development [51, 52], which can be implemented in addition to existing instruments.