The title of Nina Eliasoph's important and insightful book is misleading on two counts. In the first place, those expecting to learn about volunteering in general will find the narrow focus on the experience of volunteers in a very distinctive kind of organisational setting disappointing. And, in the second place, the book is about much more than volunteering, it explores the organisational complexities and dilemmas found in the sub-set of voluntary or non-profit sector agencies with which it is concerned and goes a long way towards justifying the back cover blurb that it ‘shows how community organisations really work’.

The organisational territory explored by Eliasoph is occupied by what she calls ‘empowerment projects’. These, she argues, have become ‘more and more common in the United States and around the world’ (p. xi). They have three distinguishing features. In the first place, their funding is short-term – hence the use of ‘projects’ rather than ‘organisations’ as the noun in the definition. Secondly, they can be seen as hybrids – ‘semi-voluntary, semi-government, semi-nonprofit’ (p. xi) – because they derive their income from a mixture of private, public and/or non-profit sources. And, thirdly, they share a rhetoric about their mission and their values which Eliasoph describes as ‘Empowerment Talk’. This calls for engagement which is civic, open and inclusive; innovative, multicultural and diverse; inspiring; community-based; transparent and unbureaucratic. Empowerment projects have ‘many morally magnetic missions’ in the sense that ‘most Americans, myself included, find them to be simply and almost irresistibly good, for reason which we assume don't need much further explanation’ (p. x). In practice, these missions may be incompatible with one another and the short-term nature of the projects’ funding means that it is difficult to address the tensions this causes. It is the resulting ‘complex tangle of crisscrossed sponsorships and crisscrossed missions’ (p. 1) that is the starting point for the book and its exploration of what can be expected ‘from this increasingly prevalent kind of semi-civic life’ (p. xi).

Eliasoph's exploration was conducted by means of an ethnographic study involving participant observation over a period of more than four years as a volunteer in after-school homework clubs and summer day camps for disadvantaged youth as well as civic engagement projects for socially diverse youth and participation in meetings of a network of youth organisers and a certificate course for youth workers. An appendix provides an insight into her ‘methods of taking field notes and making them tell a story’. These include the perception that it is when the researcher notices his or her own feelings – ‘what made one laugh or cry (or feel surprised, bewildered, outraged, joyous or disgusted)’– that the ethnographer moves ‘from description to explanation’ (p. 261). And ideas can be tested as they emerge: ‘you develop your ideas and then go back into the field the next day to challenge them, refine them, make sure they are right, and/or discover variations on the themes’ (p. 262).

The detailed knowledge and understanding gained from this approach has provided the foundations for a book which is closely – or perhaps densely – argued, prolifically illustrated with telling examples and anecdotes, and lit up by some memorable phrases. There are some important insights into volunteering. The main case study organisation involved three different kinds of volunteer: ‘disadvantaged’ young people whose participation was part of a programme aimed at diverting them from anti-social behaviour (Eliasoph [p. 17] quotes the reply of one participant to the question ‘why are you here’ – ‘I'm involved instead of being out on the streets or instead of taking drugs or doing something’; other relatively affluent young volunteers who were seen as developing into good citizens; and an older group looking for a rewarding experience and offering the organisation the appearance of active ‘buy-in’ from the local community. Eliosaph shows with devastating clarity what happened when the organisation made a well-meaning attempt to bring the two sets of younger volunteers as equals in civic engagement projects and exposed the gulf between them in terms of their perceptions of their roles – on the one hand, as problems to be addressed by the programme and, on the other, as people who were expected ‘to solve the problems of distant others’ (p. 11).

The older group is memorably described as ‘plug-in volunteers because they hoped to plug in and out as universally as plugs into sockets’ (p. 117). Because their commitment was typically one or two hours a week for a few months at a stretch their contribution was not only of little value but could actually be harmful and undermine the intimate, family atmosphere and personal relationship so carefully nurtured by the paid staff. ‘Plug-in volunteering is good for projects like picking up litter on a public highway, because the litter doesn't mind if a different, untrained volunteer comes next month, but the human recipient of personal face-to face aid usually does’ (pp. 253–4).

More generally, Eliasoph explores the contradictions and tensions experienced by empowerment projects within three broad themes. ‘Cultivating open civic equality’ includes the challenges of participating under unequal auspices and democracy minus disagreement. ‘Cultivating intimate comfort and safety’ involves the creation by paid organisers of temporally finite, intimate family-like attachments; the need to stress publicly the importance of the basic need for food, safety and comfort; and drawing on shared experience in a divided society. And ‘celebrating our diverse, multi-cultural community’ includes different perspectives of what ‘appreciating cultural diversity’ can mean and what the young people who take part in the projects count as ‘culture’. And she concludes by addressing the final challenge of her research approach – so what are you going to do about it? – by offering some recommendations for the better design of projects of this kind, notably the need for longer-term and more assured financial support; the courage to admit that ‘bureaucratic’ approaches to planning and managing projects might have a part to play; and the recognition that the best thing to do with ‘plug-in volunteers’ is to drop them.

The breadth and depth of the material presented in Making Volunteers is admirable but it does make for a difficult read. The book would benefit from a stronger and more explicit framework within which to locate its detailed insights and lessons but this might be the price one has to pay for the richness of detail and anecdote which makes the effort needed to read it energy well spent.