What Brings You Here? Expressive and Instrumental Rewards of Food Pantry Volunteer Service

This paper presents results of an ethnographic study of a major food pantry in a Midwestern Rust Belt city. Pantry operation and cliental are described, with the larger focus placed on the pantry volunteers, especially on those themselves eligible to receive food. My goal was to better understand what motivates volunteers to give their time and energy to this effort, often for months and years, and what rewards they receive for doing so. Like prior research I find that volunteer service is emotionally rewarding but also recognize its instrumental rewards. Work itself is considered, as well as the role volunteer service plays in helping to enable and sustain a subsistence lifestyle.