While the practice of volunteer caregiving is expanding, little research has been done to study what contributes to a good volunteer caregiving experience and what organizational approaches are the most effective and efficient. To learn more about volunteer caregiving, Project Compassion partnered with the University of North Carolina to conduct a study of 260 community caregiving support volunteers of all ages and all employment situations, from students to full time employment to retirees. The study examined what the volunteers did and how the volunteer experience was organized, and asked the volunteers how they felt about their volunteer work. It included people who volunteered one-on-one, as well as people who volunteered as part of Support Teams.
Key findings describe what make volunteer caregiving successful for volunteers. In addition, this was the first formal study of the Support Team approach. It demonstrates exceptional promise for the team model when compared with the one-on-one approach.