ISTR Fifth International Conference Cape Town, South Africa / July 7-10, 2002 Transforming Civil Society, Citizenship and Governance: The Third Sector in an Era of Global (Dis)Order

Jenny Onyx email
Rosemary Leonard email

There is a growing recognition of the importance of social capital in maintaining a healthy and vibrant civil society. Volunteering is a core component of social capital. As social capital comes to be recognised as important, so there is a revaluing of vo lunteering, not only in terms of the outcomes it produces in goods and services, but also in terms of the process. This paper examines the conceptual relationship in which formal volunteering is embedded in broader forms of informal volunteering, particip ation and active citizenship, all of which contribute to the production of social capital. An important distinction can be made between 'bonding' and 'bridging' social capital. It appears that both kinds of connections provide important, but very differen t forms of social capital. The paper explores the theoretical relationship between bonding and bridging on the one hand, and formal and informal volunteering on the other.

The paper then explores the empirical relationship between social capital and formal and informal volunteering. It does so by drawing on three empirical studies conducted by the authors.

• The first empirical study refers to the factor analysis of social capital items as reported previously by Onyx and Bullen (2001).
• The second empirical study, a qualitative study based on informant interviews, explored the networks bridging different third sector organisations within a given local area (Onyx and Leonard, 2000).
• The third empirical work concerns a recently completed qualitative study of women volunteers in metropolitan Sydney and country NSW (Onyx, Leonard and Hayward-Brown, 2001), using a focus group methodology.

• First is the observation that close ties are crucial to the formation of bonding social capital. As expected, this is the source of emotional support and personal identity.
• Many, though not all of these close ties are formed within community organisations, particularly among volunteers.
• Close ties are also important in bridging to other groups in the community, and accessing external resources. People in local communities are unlikely to use weak ties in an instrumental way
• Professionals or semi-professionals operating on a semi-voluntary basis have a special status, being loose ties that are nonetheless trusted and used for bridging
• People who are formal volunteers are also more likely to be informal volunteers in a variety of contexts and to be active citizens. This generalized engagement is partly facilitated because formal organisations maximize the opportunity of developing c lose, multiplex relationships, and for extending their networks beyond their immediate family. It enables people to meet people they would not otherwise meet.
• Nonetheless, formal and informal volunteering are not the same thing, and are not seen to be the same thing by the volunteers themselves.
• It seems likely that formal organisational volunteering carries some of the authority of 'the professional'. In this sense, formal volunteers are not 'professionals', but neither are they simply friends or neighbours. They are somewhere in between. Th ey are assumed to carry some of the knowledge and the authority of the organisation, and therefore may be trusted in a way that loose ties normally are not. In this sense, volunteers may play a mediating role between the organisation and the broader commu nity in which the organisation is embedded.
• Moreover formal volunteers also form bridging networks, mediating between different organisations.

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