Impact of Engagement on Satisfaction and Retention Among Volunteers at College Football Bowl Games

Sport organizations often rely heavily on volunteers as a vital human resource to accomplish goals and missions. As the popularity of football bowl games has increased, organizers are placing more focus on staging ancillary events, indicating a heightened dependency on sport volunteers. Despite the growing scholarship on sport volunteers, one unexplored avenue within this literature is engagement, which allows organizations to retain and motivate individual volunteers. This study utilizes Kahn’s (1990) definition of engagement to explore the role of engagement levels among volunteers at National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) bowl games and how engagement relates to the recruiting and retaining of those individuals. While conducted in the context of college bowl games, college sport organizations who rely on volunteer support will be able to use findings to find more meaningful roles for their volunteers ensuring higher retention and support for this vital human resource.