College Students’ Intention to Volunteer for Non-profit Organizations: Does Brand Image Make a Difference?

ABSTRACT Non-profit organizations (NPOs) are still struggling to recruit volunteers. While the impact of the organizational brand image on recruitment has been investigated in for-profit organizations, there is a dearth of similar studies in non-profit settings. Addressing this problem, this quantitative study examines the effect of NPOs’ brand image, including brand personality as the symbolic function and recognition reward as the instrumental function, on the intention to volunteer for college students. The results from 133 participants showed a significant difference in the intention to volunteer between participants exposed to NPOs with certain brand personalities and NPOs with no brand personalities at all. A significant difference was also found between participants offered recognition reward and those who were not. These results indicate the importance of brand image in increasing volunteering intention, which informs NPO practitioners to create better strategies to increase their success in recruiting volunteers.