TITLE What motivates people to do volunteer work?ABSTRACT The purpose of this

TITLE: What motivates people to do volunteer work?ABSTRACT: The purpose of this research is to understand the motivation of the individuals who choose to volunteer in South Africa. As understanding these behavioural traits would assist organisations in building a stronger element of understanding towards attracting volunteers, as well as ensuring that their staff of volunteers are satisfied. Research had also been conducted as to why individuals have chosen to award their time to their chosen organisations. A qualitative study has been conducted; whereby semi-structured interviews had been organised. Each interview had lasted at least 20 minutes. All participants involved were chosen from nearby organisations. With thematic content analysis being conducted on these interviews, it was found that the four themes that were evident from the findings, the basis born from altruistic and egoistic behaviour. However, due to the small sample size, the researcher could not make any generalisations. The research conducted had yielded an increased insight into the issue and created a possibility of additional research.KEYWORDS: Motivation, satisfied, South Africa, qualitative study, thematic content analysis, altruistic, egoistic.2. Literature ReviewVolunteerism is defined as “contributing one’s time or talents for charitable, educational, social, political, or other worthwhile purposes, usually in one’s community, freely and without regard for compensation”. Volunteering is generally considered as an altruistic behaviour whereby an individual performs a service without any financial gain . Therefore, volunteering is regarded as a prosocial act (an intent to benefit others) . There are six elements of prosocial behaviour . The first element being empathy. The empathy-altruism hypothesis proclaims that the prosocial acts of an individual are motivated mainly by the desire to assist one in need. Empathy is the “capacity to be able to experience other’s emotional states