Date of Award

7-2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Legacy Department

Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management

Committee Chair/Advisor

Anderson, Denise M

Committee Member

Brookover , Robert

Committee Member

Schmalz , Dorothy

Abstract

In 2006, The Corporation for National and Community Service partnered with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to add a volunteer section to the Current Population Survey (CPS) that is sent out to 60,000 households each year. That year it was reported that 61.2 million people volunteered their time, effort, and labor through or for an organization. An additional 5.3 million people did volunteer work informally through helping their communities. Organizations across the world, specifically sports organizations, rely heavily on volunteers for success. Volunteers at the 2004 Summer Olympics (45,000), based off the assumption of working a full 8 hour for 16 days and the federal minimum wage before 2007 of $5.15, saved the Olympics an estimated $29,664,000 in American currency. The challenging issue for these organizations is maintaining volunteers year after year.
At Clemson University, the athletic department has a volunteer group that assists with running Olympic sports. Known as CAVA (Clemson Athletic Volunteer Ambassadors), this group is responsible for ushering, greeting, and ticket taking. As compensation for their assistance, the athletic department gives CAVA members a free meal voucher at the event they work, official Clemson merchandise, and invites them to recognition banquets throughout the year. Ensuring that these volunteers continue to work with the program is important to the fiscal health of the overall athletic department.
The Sport Volunteer Survey (SVS), which focuses on five factors of volunteerism, was distributed to CAVA members. Two of the five factors reported overall mean scores above 3.0 of a 5 point scale of importance. Those factors were the purposive and external factors. The three factors with scores lower than 3.0 were the egoistic, leisure, and material factors. An independent t-test identified the mean score of one factor, leisure, to be significantly different by gender.

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