The strengths and weaknesses of micro-volunteering : the case study of help from home

• Autor(a) principal: Clara, Maria Madalena Barosa
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/19980
• topic: Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The purpose of the present master thesis is to study the strengths and weaknesses of microvolunteering, through the analysis of the nonprofit organization Help From Home. This organization offers a platform where nonprofits can promote micro-actions and where volunteers can perform them. With the development of the Internet and information and communication technologies, new ways of volunteering arose. Currently, it is possible to engage in voluntary activity on-site and online, with bite-sized actions that take at most one day to be completed, require no training or screening and can be performed anywhere, at anytime. Help From Home intends to take micro-volunteering to the masses, thus it focuses on unskilled micro-actions, which can be completed by anyone. Nevertheless, this type of actions is not what many organizations seek. Therefore, the present dissertation suggests a combination of both unskilled and skilled micro-actions, which are more directed to the daily activities of these organizations, to attract more micro-actions and volunteers, in order to scale its impact. The master thesis is structured in seven main chapters: (1) Introduction, presenting the issue; (2) Literature Review, addressing academic studies on the topic of volunteering; (3) Methodology; (4) Case Study, where Help From Home is presented in a descriptive approach; (5) Teaching Notes, providing guidance to professors to analyze the case study; (6) Conclusion, main findings to answer to the research question; (7) Limitations and Future Research.