Volunteer Brand Equity? Exploring the Adoption of Employee Brand Equity (EBE) Dimensions to Understand Volunteers’ Contributions to Build Nonprofit Organizations’ Brands

ABSTRACT

Given the importance of volunteers as key assets of formal volunteering organizations, this paper explores the adoption and adequacy of Employee Brand Equity (EBE) models to understand volunteers’ contributions to Nonprofit Organization (NPO) brand equity. Methodologically this research embraces a mixed-methods approach by combining data from exploratory interviews with experts from the NPO context and from a survey to 227 Portuguese volunteers from 28 formal volunteering organizations. This paper adds to the literature by applying for the first time EBE dimensions to the context of formal volunteering institutions. Hence, it provides a first step to the development of a Volunteer Brand Equity Model, by characterizing each dimension and validating its importance in the context of NPOs. From a practitioners’ viewpoint, this paper calls attention to the importance of embracing internal marketing strategies to attract and retain volunteers in a sustainable way and provides a practical tool for Volunteer Brand Equity analysis in NPOs.