Reframing Busyness As Good Can Boost Volunteering

Non-profit organizations depend heavily on volunteers, but recruiting them has become harder than ever. According to recent industry surveys, 47% of non-profit leaders now consider volunteer recruitment a major challenge, up from 29% about two decades earlier. Meanwhile, the average number of volunteering hours per person in the U.S. has fallen by more than half since the early 2000s.

Busyness is often blamed for this decline, since people report feeling too overwhelmed by daily demands to give up their limited free time. Past efforts to address the problem focused on reducing how busy people actually are or feel, but these strategies haven’t worked well. This study takes a new approach. Rather than trying to eliminate busyness, researchers asked whether non-profits could boost volunteering simply by changing how people think about being busy.

The researchers wanted to know whether framing busyness (presenting it as either a good thing or a bad thing) could change people’s willingness to volunteer. They also tested whether this happens because a positive framing makes people feel more empowered — that is, more in control of their lives and able to make a difference.

The team ran six main studies, plus five more described in supplementary materials, together involving 3,746 people. Most participants were undergraduate students at U.S. universities or U.S.-based online survey panelists. One study also included participants from both the U.S. and Mexico to test whether the effect holds across cultures with different general busyness levels.

Across these studies, most participants were exposed to messages that framed busyness as either good or bad. The messages took many real-world forms, including magazine articles, wall posters, video commercials, print advertisements, and recruitment flyers. For instance, the positive version of the print ad read, “Busyness Can Feel So Good!” The negative version read, “Busyness Can Feel So Bad!” Several studies also included additional comparison messages, such as a neutral message or a positive message about something other than busyness (e.g., “Planning Can Feel So Good!”), to help rule out other possible explanations for the results.

After viewing one of these messages, participants reported their sense of empowerment (e.g., how in control, driven, and confident they felt). They also reported or demonstrated their willingness to volunteer. Some studies tracked real behaviors, such as:

• Signing up for a volunteer shift at a local animal shelter
• Assembling first-aid kits for families in need
• Writing an adoption bio for a shelter animal
• Clicking a link to register for a campus volunteer event

Other studies simply asked participants how likely they’d be to volunteer in hypothetical scenarios such as giving blood.

The research revealed that people who saw the “busyness feels good” framing were generally more willing to volunteer than those who saw a “busyness feels bad” message or no framing at all.

In the first study, for example, people who read an article describing how busyness is beneficial were twice as likely to sign up to volunteer for a real opportunity at a local animal shelter, elementary school, or homeless shelter than those who read that busyness is harmful (26% versus 13%). They were also considerably more likely to help assemble first-aid kits for families in need (39% versus 23%).

Similarly, in the sixth study, a flyer that said busyness can feel good led to far more clicks on a sign-up link to volunteer for a campus clean-up or tree-planting event (27%) than a version that merely acknowledged busyness (12%) or didn’t mention it at all (16%). The researchers found this same basic pattern repeatedly across the paper’s studies, using many different messages, measures, and participant groups.

A heightened sense of empowerment appears to explain why this happens. People who saw the “busyness feels good” message consistently reported feeling more empowered than those in the other conditions. Statistical tests confirmed that this boost in empowerment — not something else about the message — was what drove the increase in volunteering. One study found that giving people who’d seen negative busyness framing an unrelated empowerment boost erased the usual gap entirely. They became just as willing to volunteer as the positive-framing group, further confirming empowerment as the actual driver.

The researchers also tested and ruled out many other possible explanations, including empathy, guilt, perceived spare time, mood, self-esteem, and feelings of social status. None of these could account for the results.

Another study tested whether positive framing just makes people want to do anything, not help others specifically — offering a choice between writing a shelter animal bio or a personal resume bio. Those who saw positive framing chose to write the shelter animal bio more often than those who saw negative framing (71% versus 58%), confirming the effect is specific to helping others.

Notably, this strategy only worked for people who already felt busy in their day-to-day lives. When researchers measured how busy people generally felt, the positive framing significantly increased empowerment and volunteering intentions only among those who already saw themselves as quite busy. For people who didn’t generally feel rushed or overwhelmed, framing made no significant difference to either outcome.

The study that included participants from both the U.S. and Mexico used cultural background as a stand-in for general busyness levels. Prior research suggests U.S. Americans tend to feel busier day-to-day than Mexicans do. As predicted, the positive framing boosted volunteering among the U.S. participants, but it made no significant difference among the Mexican participants.

A few caveats are worth noting. Most participants were university students or online survey panelists, so it’s unclear how well these findings apply to the broader population or to specific groups like working professionals or retirees. All the studies also measured only short-term outcomes. It’s unknown how long this boost in empowerment and volunteering lasts, or how often a non-profit would need to repeat this kind of messaging for a lasting effect.

For animal welfare and advocacy organizations that recruit volunteers, this research points to a simple, low-cost strategy. Rather than avoiding the topic of busyness, or adding to potential volunteers’ guilt about their limited time, you can openly acknowledge that your supporters are busy. Frame that busyness as a positive sign of an active, capable life. This kind of message could be built into an email appeal, social media post, flyer, or conversation with a potential volunteer or foster caregiver. It doesn’t require changing how busy anyone’s schedule actually is, and may actually work best for supporters already feeling busy with work, school, and other responsibilities.

This summary was drafted by a large language model (LLM) and closely edited by our Research Library Manager for clarity and accuracy. As per our AI policy, Faunalytics only uses LLMs to summarize very long reports (~50+ pages) that are not appropriate to assign to volunteers, studies that contain graphic descriptions of animal cruelty or animal industries, and research on niche topics. We remain committed to bringing you reliable data, which is why any AI-generated work will always be reviewed by a human.