Making sense of digital volunteering: relational and temporal aspects of the digital volunteer experience

Voluntary roles undertaken wholly or partly through digital technologies have become commonplace and yet there are still significant gaps in our understanding of what makes this kind of work meaningful as a sustained form of volunteer effort. Interview accounts from 15 people describing themselves as digital or social media volunteers are analysed, exploring how they make sense of their role. Relational and temporal aspects of the experience are explored. Relations with the organisation are important in providing meaningfulness through the recognition of volunteer efforts. Digital volunteering is understood temporally as meaningful in relation both to the volunteer’s long-term life goals and immediate circumstances. The flexibility of digital volunteering in the context of other time demands is particularly valued. Digital volunteers value autonomy, dignity and recognition, but autonomy and recognition can be in tension where temporal and spatial flexibility of working results in lack of visibility to others in the organisation.