In my opinion, we can distinguish three main types of volunteer organizations according to the focus of their activities.

The first type is volunteer groups under charitable foundations. They are the majority. The main client is the foundation, and in the end everything is done for the foundation’s clients: children, the elderly or even animals. Volunteers stay within the boundaries of the foundation’s charters and applications, and their activities are limited to specific institutions (orphanages or hospitals) or beneficiaries. Experience shows that any additional volunteer development activities (creation of a system of help and support, interaction with other volunteer organizations, popularization of the idea of volunteer service, etc.) in this situation are secondary or not needed at all. The volunteer leader is usually an employee of the foundation. He or she sets practical tasks for volunteers to solve at a given moment, recruits new volunteers, organizes the work of volunteers, and keeps them motivated.

The second type of volunteer organizations are those created by the initiative and efforts of volunteers. Their goal, in general, is the same – to help their charges, but unlike foundations, volunteers set themselves practical tasks, and all their work is done by their own efforts. The main task of the leadership of such an organization is to make the work of volunteers as efficient and smoothly organized as possible. Everyone’s resource is time, which means that the time given to someone should be spent with maximum benefit. The main thing is to do the best job possible. The inner life of the volunteer community is secondary in this case, although, of course, it is not ignored. Secondary, because it has nothing to do with the motivation of volunteers. In such a system, everything must run like clockwork. Strict discipline is necessary. Management must be quite vertical and internal business relationships must be strictly regulated. Each volunteer clearly understands his place, his role and his contribution to the common cause. In such volunteer associations, as a rule, there is no external funding – all costs are distributed among volunteers, which again requires a lot of optimization of labor and costs. For volunteers, such organizations are a school of teamwork, a school of creativity, and a school of responsibility.

The third type of volunteer organizations are those that exist, not only for the sake of wards, but also for the sake of volunteers, for the development and support of volunteer initiatives. The main task is to create an environment of education, support, and training of volunteers. At the same time, of course, there is help for the wards and work with them. Such volunteer movements do not have predetermined areas of activity. Much depends on volunteers themselves. If there is an enterprising person and the movement is ready to support his idea, a new line of activity emerges. So volunteers can take care of children in hospitals and at the same time correspond with prisoners.

This approach implies the systematic development of those areas that are auxiliary to volunteer movements of other types. When the main task is to help a volunteer find a good cause, like-minded people, learn something, and even mature to open their own area of service, it is obvious that specialists in organizing group work, teachers, psychologists, and others are needed. At the same time all these specialists should not change from time to time and cannot act according to their own interests, their presence should guarantee that volunteers will receive qualified help and support in time, that volunteer initiatives will be realized. In practice, this approach implies a fairly large staff for NCOs and mandatory external funding aimed at developing volunteerism rather than targeted assistance to those in need.