198 - The Future of Volunteerism - Trends & Predictions Part 1

January 22, 2026

Episode #198: The Future of Volunteerism – Trends & Predictions Part 1

In this episode of The Volunteer Nation Podcast, Tobi Johnson shares Part 1 of her 2026 trends and predictions for the future of volunteerism. This is the first half of a two-part series exploring 8 major shifts shaping how communities show up, how volunteer-driven organizations build trust, and what leaders of volunteers must pay attention to in the year ahead. 

Tobi dives into the first three big trends: accountability, mutual aid, and new psychological insights into belonging and community. 

Future of Volunteerism – Episode Highlights 

  • [00:59] – Trends and Predictions for 2026 
  • [06:12] – Trend #1: Public Call for Accountability 
  • [16:22] – Trend #2: Resurgence of Mutual Aid Volunteerism 
  • [23:27] – Trend #3: Psychological Advances in Community and Belonging 

Future of Volunteerism – Quotes from the Episode 

“For today’s volunteers, the bottom line is that it’s not just about giving time, it’s about giving it where it truly counts in a place that we trust, in a place that we believe is accountable.”

“The future of volunteerism lies in our ability to create communities where people feel connected, valued, and empowered to make a difference together.” 

Helpful Links

About the Show

Nonprofit leadership author, trainer, consultant, and volunteer management expert Tobi Johnson shares weekly tips to help charities build, grow, and scale exceptional volunteer teams. Discover how your nonprofit can effectively coordinate volunteers who are reliable, equipped, and ready to help you bring about BIG change for the better.

If you’re ready to ditch the stress and harness the power of people to fuel your good work, you’re in exactly the right place!

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

Rate, Review, & Follow Us on Apple Podcasts

If you love the content Tobi shares on the Volunteer Nation podcast, consider rating and reviewing the show! This helps us reach more people – and help more good causes just like yours – successfully engage enthusiastic, dedicated volunteers with less stress and more joy.

Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars. Then, select “Write a Review” and let us know what you loved most about this episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast so you don’t miss a thing. Follow now!

Subscribe to ProNews: Our Weekly Resource Roundup

If you’d like to stay up to date on all new podcasts, blogs, freebies, and deals posted on our Tobi Johnson & Associates and VolunteerPro websites, subscribe to our weekly ProNews newsletter.

Every Wednesday, we’ll send you a digest of our freshest content, plus a bonus! Once you confirm your subscription, you’ll get our [Free eBook] The New Volunteer Manager: The First 90 Days.

Episode #198 Transcript: The Future of Volunteerism – Trends & Predictions Part 1

Tobi: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson. And I am beaming to you from New Zealand Southern Alps. I am at the shores of Lake Whakatipu in Queenstown, New Zealand, and I’m looking out over these beautiful hills. The morning has passed, or mid-morning now the clouds have burned off. And it’s just a beautiful day here. It’s going to be sunny, it’s going to be hot. 

We’re going to go outside. But before I do that, I want to talk to you about trends and I want to talk about the current state of volunteerism, but really more about the future of volunteerism, my trends and predictions for 2026. This is part one of a two part episode because it, it takes that much to talk through all these eight trends I’m going to talk about – this isn’t the first time I’ve talked about trends. 

I’ve been musing about the current state of volunteerism here and there. If you want to check out Volunteer Nation, episode 183, the New Reality Volunteers Don’t Need You. I talked a little bit about the trends. On attention, on informal volunteering, et cetera. But as we kick off 2026, I want to share a deep dive into my predictions and musings about the future of volunteerism. 

This is based on observations of where we find ourselves in today’s world, it’s about technology, it’s about human. Behavior psychology, and partly this is inspired by faith popcorn. She’s a futurist. If you’ve never followed her, she asks a question on our website that is, if you knew everything about tomorrow, what would you do differently? 

And I’ll post a link to her website. She is very much a brand sort of guru for folks and has been predicting. Society and trends for decades now, and I always like to, once in a while I check into her website and just see what she’s got predicting for the future. But I’ve also talked about trends in the past in chapter one of volunteer Engagement 2.0 ideas and insights for changing the world. 

This was about 10 years ago when I wrote this chapter called Big Shifts that Will Change Volunteerism for the Better. And I was reviewing that chapter and thinking about what were my predictions way back then. And there were a few that were kind of interesting. I was looking at the current and future landscape of volunteer engagement and community involvement, so that. 

W with an eye, and so that we might refresh and revamp volunteerism by paying attention to emerging trends and cross-disciplinary insights. And in that chapter, I mentioned four major trends around the future of volunteerism. One was NeuroLeadership back then about a decade ago. Neural leadership was really big. 

It still is, but it was reshaping how we motivate, influence and lead. Others, in our particular case, volunteers by applying brain science. Another of the trends I mentioned back then in the future of volunteerism were demographic shifts that were changing, who volunteers, why they engage and what they expect. 

And that has continued to this day, and I’ll talk a little bit about that in my current trends. The third area in that book that I talked about was digital advancements and how they are raising expectations for ease, responsiveness, and experience. Still to this day, talk about the volunteer experience and our digital interfaces with our volunteers, and so that hasn’t really changed. 

But there’s more digital advancement. I mean, nobody would’ve thought a decade ago, well, I wouldn’t have, and it didn’t predict how AI might be impacting or artificial intelligence might impact volunteerism. But I’ve got some trends for you now around that or in this two part series I will. And then the, the final and fourth trend I talked about in that chapter was hyper-personalization and how volunteers. 

Could be given a greater sense of choice, control, and relevance in their volunteering. And I think this is a long conversation we’ve been having over the past decade around how do we make volunteerism more responsive to volunteers needs. Because it’s a mutual partnership and it needs to be two way. The ultimate goal, of course, when I wrote that chapter over a decade ago, over a decade ago, was to design systems that help volunteer contributions truly shine. 

And it was really just looking at the trends I was seeing back then. I cannot believe, honestly, cannot believe it’s a decade later, but here we are, full circle. And so I wanna talk about the volunteer, the future of volunteerism in 2026. And I. Sat down with a pen and paper and just started scribbling out ideas and just really thinking deeply about where we are as a society, where we are as a world, and some things started bubbling up. 

And so in these two parts of this episode, 1 98 and 1 99 of the Volunteer Nation Podcast, I thought I might share them. So let’s start with the future of volunteerism trend number one. And that is a increased public call for accountability. So as we get in a world where a. Sometimes the truth isn’t the truth, and some people may say there’s a death in truth. 

There is a need in the public and a call for accountability by organizations. Faith. Popcorn calls one of today’s big trends in her list of trends, the vigilante. Consumer where people who hold companies or people are the vigilante consumer, are people who hold companies accountable for how they behave, using their wallets, their voices, and social media to reward or punish brands based on ethics and values. 

So in some respects. Ethics and values. There seems to be a challenge to ethics and values at an institutional level, especially at a political level. There’s definitely a conversation about whether or not the ethical practice is happening at that level, and what values are we prescribing to as a society and pe different people prescribe. 

Or, or subscribe to different sets of values. But in faith, popcorn’s conversation around the vigilante consumer, she points out that people are using pressure, protest, and politics to talk about and put pressure on institutions around ethics and values. So why does this matter for volunteerism? For me, this matters because the same people who demand accountability from businesses, politicians, et cetera, corporate America, corporate globally, they also expect, and that translates to expecting nonprofits to walk their talks, to live and lean into ethics and values. 

They want. Organizations that reflect their values, act transparently and show real impact. And so in some ways, you know, the lack of truth or changing ethics and shifting ethics in the world, that the global debate about what is actually right trans kind of transmutes or impacts how people are also looking at nonprofits and trust in and of itself has beco has sort of upped for grabs in my mind. 

And so it’s really important, I think as we think of this increased accountability, it’s not like 20 years ago where just a matter that you are a nonprofit organization, you are considered automatically good, trustworthy, worthy of supporting if that was a cause that you as an individual wanted to support. 

We’re not in that world anymore, that we’re in a world where institutions and organizations are not necessarily given trust automatically. What volunteer driven organizations need to do as they think about this trend, in my mind anyway, of course, all these trends and my predictions on the future of volunteerism are my predictions, but it feels like to me. 

That we really have to lean into transparency, ethical practices, clear alignment with our mission and our volunteer opportunities, making sure that we’re communicating these very clearly and really designing volunteer experiences that showcase. Measurable impact folks can engage with our organizations confidently. 

For today’s volunteers. The really, the bottom line is that it’s not just about giving time, it’s about giving it where it truly counts in a place that we trust, in a place that we believe is accountable. To the use of our time as community members. Some of this is about having a very clear community focus or a clear benefit that we are communicating to the public. 

And when I look at, for example, volunteer recruitment pages. On some of my clients’ websites, when I’m, when we’re doing communications audits, I see a lot of conversation about the organization and very little about the impact that is expected or the impact that is encouraged through partnering with volunteers. 

So we really do need to focus and lean in on our messaging or lean our messaging into how we are. Making a difference. That’s what people wanna, they wanna volunteer because they want to make a difference. The second, uh, I think that this impacts this idea of trust. Accountability is flattening our organizations as we move towards less hierarchical. 

In some respects, volunteerism and more into shared leadership. I think that builds and reinforces that sense of trust, particularly when we’re in an environment that’s calling for accountability. And then I think also grassroots mobilization really bought up grassroots to grass tops. Why are these particular projects or initiatives being undertaken by volunteers? 

What’s the impetus? And again, linking that back to the mission so that it comes from the community, that the mandate comes from the community that also builds. Trust, and so that’s my first trend is really how are we, in terms of the future of volunteerism, there’s going to be a move towards greater and greater public call for accountability, particularly in nonprofits. 

There’s already an attack on nonprofits here in the us. I think we can safely say that we are going to have to have our ducks in a row when it comes to the public and. The more we can engage the community in our organizations through volunteerism, the more and through effective volunteerism that’s transparent, that’s meaningful, the more we can build trust within our organization and an army of supporters that are willing to speak out and advocate for us when needed. 

So that’s a big, that’s a big trend, that future volunteerism trend number one. The public call for increased accountability and how our organizations need to respond to that. I wanna take a quick pause because that was a pretty heavy one from my predictions for the future of volunteerism. When I get back, I’m gonna share a couple more trends on where we see ourselves right now and how that might impact the decisions we make going forward in terms of how we lead and manage volunteer programs. So don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.  

VOLUNTEER PRO IMPACT LAB 

Hey, are you looking to upgrade and modernize your volunteer program? Or maybe you’re building one from scratch and you’re just not sure where to start. If so, we’ve got the perfect resource for you. The Volunteer Pro Impact Lab, having built several direct service programs from the ground up. 

I know that it doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a clear process that takes careful attention with a focus on impact. In the end, you need a system in place that’s clear, standardized, efficient, and that gets results. In addition, and maybe this is the most important, you need a volunteer program design that directly contributes to your organization’s most critical goals. 

That’s where the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab comes in. When it comes to effective volunteer engagement, our bespoke volunteer strategy Success path model, which is the heart of our resources and strategic advising, will help you transform your volunteer strategy from fundamental to a fully mature  what’s working now approach and all in less time with our online assessment, you’ll quickly gain clarity on precisely where to focus your efforts and will provide recommendations for the exact steps needed for sustainable growth, regardless of how large or small your organization is or what your cause impact area or focus. Our program development and implementation support model will help you build a strong foundation so volunteerism can thrive at your good cause. 

If you are interested in learning more, go to volpro.net/join and we’ll share how to get started and what’s involved.  

Hey there everybody. Tobi Johnson. Here I am back with my predictions for the future of volunteerism in 2026. I’m kicking off a two part series. 

I’m beaming from. The Southern Alps in New Zealand this week. It’s pretty cool. I have to say. It’s beautiful. I’m really here to, I’m doing a little bit of traveling around, but I’m really here to do a workshop with volunteering New Zealand where we’ll be journey mapping the volunteer experience. And aligning that with their standards for volunteer involvement. 

So it’s going to be a super creative process. I hope to bring more on the pod around this process and how it went later. But for today, we’re really talking about the future of volunteerism. So before the break, I talked about the future of volunteerism. Trend number one, the public call for increased accountability and how that translates to volunteer driven organizations and how volunteerism. 

In and of itself can help us build trust if it’s approached in the right way, but also that volunteerism must be trustworthy, the enterprise of volunteerism within our organizations. The next trend I wanna talk about in the future of volunteerism is the resurgence of mutual aid volunteerism. This is something that I’m predicting. 

Self-organizing is not new. It in fact was the very germination. The very seed of volunteerism around the world has been people in community getting together for mutual aid to help one another. Mutual aid volunteerism is a form of community driven volunteerism where individuals and groups directly support one another to meet shared needs. 

Often this is outside of a formal organization, and I would argue you that this was happening long before our f. No, our legally formed nonprofit organizations ever existed. It really emphasizes reciprocity, local networking, local value of skills, collective problem solving, really rather than traditional top-down. 

Charity per se. There’s lots of examples if you think about this. In the past and sometimes the past predicts our future neighborhood support networks, residents organizing food deliverables, childcare swaps, help with errands for neighbors in need, even collect. Actively pooling money to help one another has happened and still does to this day. 

Community resource sharing, collecting and distributing clothing, hygiene products, school supplies directly to those who need them. You can think about this sometimes loosely. Organized around faith-based communities, but also during the COVID Pandemic, folks started sharing masks and sharing testing supplies, et cetera. 

Disaster response. Collectives are another example of local volunteers coordinating cleanup, rebuilding, or emergency aid After storms, fires and floods, and this still happens often. It’s organized. By an OR organization. It might be, for example, a state service commission, but there are also plenty of communities around the world that respond to natural disasters, whether it be a bush fire in Australia or a hurricane in Florida. 

Skills sharing initiatives is another example of. This kind of self-organizing or mutual aid volunteerism where community members are just teaching each other practical skills like cooking, job hunting, home repair without monetary exchange. And in fact, community gardening is often a way this happens where people are helping with pea patches, et cetera. 

And sometimes there’s an organization that’s involved in assigning or offering. Parcels of, you know, plots within a community pea patch, but it’s the folks working, the folks who have pea patches that are actually helping one another informally around and sharing seeds and sharing ideas, et cetera. 

Helping folks problem solve with a plant that’s not working well. So skill sharing initiatives are also happening now. It’s not a new thing online. Mutual aid platforms like. Where people can request and offer support for groceries, rides, and other essentials. Usually those are more often. Organized by an entity that has the technology for informal sort of mobilizing informally within communities. 

However, people can create WhatsApp groups around helping one another. So this is not something that. Is digital isn’t something that’s brand new. If you think about Craigslist way back when, and even Facebook groups now or Facebook itself, people will share and give away items or seek items from one another. 

So digital is not a new thing either. The use of digital to get connected and to help with resources. Mutual aid in and of itself is not that type of volunteering or helping pro-social. Helping isn’t a brand new thing, but it is needed now more than ever. I would argue. And so I’m seeing as my second future of volunteerism trend is the resurgence of mu mutual aid volunteerism. 

In fact, maybe the growth of it, thinking about mutual aid is the need is greater than ever. If we think about newcomers support and immigrant communities, immigration is happening as much as it. Ever was around the world. Climate change and natural disaster response. There’s deep issues happening when with change in climate that are happening in communities with more intense weather events that are creating a need that can’t be fulfilled entirely by local infrastructure. 

Block clubs, professional societies engaged in advocacy work as. We band together in different types of societies. It’s people working in similar professions. There’s need sometimes for legislation or advocacy around what we do, and so I see a continued need for that. Even within volunteer services and leaders of volunteers around the world, there’s a need for advocacy and education around what we do as well as. 

Some, in some cases, the need for at least regulation or legislation around the protection of volunteers from being exploited, for example, about the health and safety of volunteers, those kinds of things that are going to take a group of people to advocate effectively around that. So where do organizations sit in this framework or in this. 

Milieu where we find ourselves more and more the resurgence of informal volunteering around the world, the need, greater need for mutual aid because we just simply don’t have a safety net that can help everyone at every time. So what, where does that leave organizations and nonprofits? Well, I see organizations as conveners and capacity builders rather than. 

Always the key driver of identifying and building roles to support specific mission initiatives. So maybe organizations as conveners can support high impact, quote unquote, semi informal volunteering at scale, where informal volunteers are. Receiving support or capacity or resources from organizations. 

If you think about Weave at the Aspen Institute, I’ll put a link to our conversation with Frederick Riley at Weave. That’s a kind of semi informal volunteering where there’s a partnership between a foundation and community volunteers at the community level. So that’s my second trend. My third trend in the future of volunteerism is psychological advances in community and belonging. 

Years ago. When I talked about psychology and volunteerism in chapter one of Volunteer Engagement 2.0, I talked about neuroscience of the individual, like understanding why people buy, why people take action, and how we can leverage that to provide messaging and catalysts for people stepping up to volunteer. 

I think we’re moving to the next level where we’re talking about what could happen if we knew more about how people best work in groups to further the greater good. Another example of individual understanding the individuals, but in a group setting check checkout episode 1 0 1, tap the Power of Psychological Contracts with my friend Pam Capellis, where we talk about sort of the psychology of. 

Psychological contracts. So why do we engage or stop engaging with a group based on what we believe they promised to us? But I think we are now in the next level of understanding. We’re gonna move from understanding it. And sparking personal motivation and commitment. So the psychology of the individual to better understanding cooperation and collaborative work. 

So psychology, the psychology of community building. So again, think about it, what do we know about human motivation now and what could we know about how people best work in groups to further their greater good? There is actually already work in this area. This isn’t a brand new area of research. There’s recent research in group collaboration and human behavior. 

There’s rethinking on group size and cooperation, so there’s neuroscience research that shows that larger groups can actually enhance cooperation, contrary to the belief that bigger groups hinder teamwork, that people tend to. Cooperate more when they can form flexible fluid connections and rely on innate pro-social tendencies, especially when the memory of past interactions becomes less clear. 

So there’s lots of really interesting research around that. There’s also research into memories, role and cooperative behavior. So studies that. Longer term memory of other people’s past behavior supports more stable cooperation over time. So our history in group dynamics can impact our past history, can impact our future. 

So that’s kind of interesting and what we remember about those things. So that has an impact on what we do in terms of self-reflection with our volunteers. There’s also research on psychological safety and collective creativity. Participatory leadership and psychological safety. Not only boost collaboration, but also enhances. 

Radical creativity amongst group members showing how supporting group climates can lead to more innovative outcomes. That seems like a no brainer, but now there’s real research around it. And then emotions as collaborative learning and interaction. So educational psychology and how to tap emotion that shape collaborative interactions. 

Yeah, especially when folks are challenged through new tasks. So emotional regulation, supportive group processes, all of that. How can that impact teamwork? So that’s really interesting to think about how we move from understanding individual psychology into understanding group dynamic and how that might impact. 

Volunteerism. So that’s my future of volunteerism. Trend number three, psychological advances in community and belonging and our understanding of it and how we might leverage it for volunteerism. So those are my top three in part two of the future of volunteerism trends and predictions. I’m going to talk about volunteerism trends, and I have five more trends to share with you. 

In this episode, we’ve talked about trend number one, the public call for increased accountability. We talked about trend number two, the resurgence of mutual aid volunteerism, and I talked about trend number three, psychological advances in community and belonging. I hope this has kind of piqued your interest in maybe had you think a little bit differently about. 

What could we do differently that can ride the wave of new trends in volunteerism? And in our next episode, which will be episode 1 99, tune in again and I will share my final five trends in the future of volunteerism. So tune in next week, and if you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and give us a rating or review. 

That always helps us reach more people. So. Take care everybody. I will see you next week on The Volunteer Nation, where we’re going to talk about our next five trends. See you there and thanks for listening.