A sustainable place of work? Voluntary activism in NGOs

Abstract

The environment is usually the primary consideration within sustainability, but sustainability also needs to consider the social impact of changes in a system. This paper argues that by including considerations about human welfare as a part of sustainability, there is not only a need for ethnographic data to capture what social sustainability looks like at a workplace, but taking the well-being at work seriously also changes reflections on the well-being of people in voluntary work and invites questions on neoliberalism. Looking at paid and unpaid labour in social movements, such as in nongovernmental organization (NGO) fundraising, based on 18 ethnographic interviews and additional fieldnotes from 2016, 2019, and 2022, this paper shows that fundraising for NGOs often has a blurry character when it comes to the division of work and life. How the engagement for the NGOs is evaluated and how sustainable an institutionalised social movement can be, is, however, directly affected by this divide. Thus, this paper reflects on social sustainability in paid fundraising especially during the hours after work. And it shows that problems regarding social sustainability in unpaid volunteering are often countered with a toolbox of neoliberal thought.

Keywords: NGO fundraising, Social sustainability, Workplace ethnography, Voluntary work