Mobilizing individuals in crisis: The role of civil society organizations in volunteer engagement during COVID-19

Borbáth, Endre; Hutter, Swen Article — Published Version Mobilizing individuals in crisis: The role of civil society organizations in volunteer engagement during COVID-19 Journal of Civil Society Provided in Cooperation with: WZB Berlin Social Science Center Suggested Citation: Borbáth, Endre; Hutter, Swen (2025) : Mobilizing individuals in crisis: The role of civil society organizations in volunteer engagement during COVID-19, Journal of Civil Society, ISSN 1744-8697, Taylor & Francis, London, Vol. Latest Articles, pp. 1-21, https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2025.2530108 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/320722 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Mobilizing individuals in crisis: The role of civil society organizations in volunteer engagement during COVID-19 Endre Borbáth a,b and Swen Hutter c,d a Institute of Political Science, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, Heidelberg, Germany; b Center for Civil Society Research, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, Germany; c Institute of Sociology, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany; d Center for Civil Society Research, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, Germany ABSTRACT The Covid-19 pandemic created a dual crisis for civil society organizations (CSOs): heightened demand for social support alongside restrictions that limited their capacity to mobilize people. This study investigates how volunteer-based CSOs fostered civic engagement amid these constraints, providing new empirical insights into their capabilities and limitations during times of crisis. Bridging research on both the demand and supply sides of civic engagement, we draw on three original studies – a comprehensive survey of CSOs, a large-scale population survey, and a survey experiment – to map responses to the crisis at both the individual and organizational levels. Our findings reveal persistent social inequalities in volunteering and mutual support, with CSOs primarily engaging men, highly educated individuals, affluent citizens, and those already active in organizations. Despite these pre-existing inequalities, CSO outreach significantly boosted engagement, particularly in more formal settings. This study contributes to ongoing debates about the role and transformation of civil society during periods of crisis, highlighting the challenges and opportunities that CSOs encountered as they navigated the pandemic. KEYWORDS Civil society; volunteering; social support; COVID-19; mobilization Introduction Previous research has highlighted that for many volunteers, being contacted by an organization is the initial step in their civic engagement (Brady et al., 1995; Klandermans & Oegema, 1987; Varese & Yaish, 2000). However, the literature has largely concentrated on inequalities among those already participating in civil society (e.g., Andersen et al., 2022; Bertogg & Koos, 2021; Dalton, 2017; Lahusen & Grasso, 2018; Teorell et al., 2007). Comparatively little attention has been paid to how organizations themselves might strategically mitigate these inequalities by influencing who gets contacted in the © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. CONTACT Endre Borbáth [email protected] Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Institut für Politische Wissenschaft, Bergheimer Str. 58, Heidelberg 69115, Germany Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2025.2530108. JOURNAL OF CIVIL SOCIETY https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2025.2530108 first place (van Overbeeke et al., 2022, p. 36; also see: Meyer & Rameder, 2022). Recent studies exploring inequalities in recruitment emphasize that social class (Dean, 2016), previous volunteering experiences (Høgenhaven, 2025; van Overbeeke et al., 2022), available resources (Meyer & Rameder, 2022), and integration into social networks (Carlsen et al., 2021; Höltmann et al., 2023) are key determinants of being contacted by civil society organizations (CSOs). Consequently, disparities in recruitment practices may reinforce socio-economic inequalities and partially explain variations in individuals’ likelihood to participate (Qvist et al., 2018). To advance this emerging literature, we focus on two dependent variables: (1) the ability of CSOs to reach potential volunteers, and (2) individual volunteering behaviours during the Covid-19 crisis. By doing so, we bridge insights on the mobilizing capacity of organized civil society (the ‘supply side’ of civic engagement – see Andrews et al., 2010; Han, 2014; Heylen et al., 2020; Meyer & Rameder, 2022; Nesbit et al., 2018) and research on inequalities in participation typically emphasized by civic engagement scholars (the ‘demand side’ of civic engagement). The Covid-19 pandemic represents a critical juncture for understanding CSOs’ capacity to mobilize volunteers (e.g., Carlsen et al., 2021; Høgenhaven, 2025; Höltmann et al., 2023). During this period, CSOs confronted a dual crisis characterized by heightened demand for social support alongside severe restrictions on their operational capabilities. Public lockdowns and social distancing measures created unprecedented barriers to maintaining volunteer engagement. Simultaneously, at the individual level, fears associated with contracting Covid-19 and restrictions on interpersonal contact likely discouraged participation. Although some organizations connected to governmental institutions or led by strategically positioned actors managed to mobilize successfully, the pandemic presented unique and substantial challenges for volunteer mobilization more broadly (Kim & Mason, 2023; Santos & Laureano, 2022). The pandemic context also imposed methodological challenges for research, limiting primary data collection. To address this, we rely on three complementary empirical studies, each focusing on interrelated research questions: (1) Which potential volunteers were CSOs able to reach? (2) How significant was organizational outreach (‘being asked’) in driving formal and informal engagement? (3) To what extent was there untapped mobilization potential? Although using three studies inevitably fragments our analysis somewhat, each provides essential insights for understanding the mobilization dynamics of CSOs. The first employs an organizational survey of CSOs in Germany, revealing the paradox of organizational strain paired with robust individual willingness to volunteer. The second study utilizes comparative, observational survey data from Germany, Italy, and Poland, to profile individuals contacted by CSOs and to estimate the impact of contact on engagement. Finally, a third study from Germany, Italy, and Poland explicitly assesses the causal impact of organizational contact throught a survey experiment. While we acknowledge the limits of each study, together they offer a layered perspective on the mobilizing capacity of CSOs: the organizational survey highlights the constraints, the observational data show how these constraints shape patterns of outreach and engagement, and the experimental design illustrates what levels of engagement might have been possible under less restrictive conditions. Together, these studies allow us to make three distinct contributions. First, we bridge organizational and individual-level perspectives by analyzing how organizations shape 2 E. BORBÁTH AND S. HUTTER recruitment outcomes. Second, we identify inequalities in recruitment during an unprecedented crisis, providing valuable insights into the socio-economic dimensions of volunteering. Third, we demonstrate empirically the causal importance of organizational contact for individual volunteering decisions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our results show that even though many CSOs were strained by the pandemic – facing volunteer deactivation and operational obstacles – they still managed to mobilize pockets of engagement, particularly among individuals already inclined to volunteer. Yet only about one-third of the population was ever contacted, indicating untapped potential. In our observational study, people who were explicitly asked by a CSO were much more likely to engage in both formal and informal volunteering, underscoring the importance of direct outreach. A counterfactual test based on the survey experiment further suggests that CSOs could have activated levels of engagement comparable to family or friendship networks had they been able to reach a broader cross-section of society. In the following sections, we outline our conceptual framework on the mobilizing capacity of CSOs during crises, from which we derive expectations tailored to the Covid-19 context. We then present and discuss results from our three empirical studies, beginning with an organizational-level survey and continuing with analyses conducted at the individual level. Our empirical analysis primarily focuses on Germany, but we also incorporate individual-level data from Italy and Poland to strengthen the generalizability of our findings within a broader European context. Expectations on the Mobilizing Capacity of Volunteer-Based CSOs during the Covid-19 Pandemic The literature on civic engagement during the pandemic tends to show exceptionally high levels of mutual aid and solidarity at the individual level (Andersen et al., 2022; Bertogg & Koos, 2021; Carlsen et al., 2021). Under heightened pressure to address the increasing need for support (Andersen et al., 2022), many citizens – also many from those who were not previously socially engaged – became active in what Høgenhaven (2025) call ‘crisis volunteering,’ i.e., voluntary activities aimed at tackling immediate needs arising from a crisis. However, this does not imply that inequalities in engagement or in who receives support have disappeared (Ferwerda et al., 2023). Differences according to gender (e.g., Andersen et al., 2022), education (Dederichs & Kruse, 2023), and social network size (Carlsen et al., 2021; Höltmann et al., 2023) stand out, pointing to the persistent role of pre-existing inequalities in participation (e.g., Borbáth et al., 2021; Lahusen & Grasso, 2018). Missing from this line of inquiry is a comparative analysis of the role of organized civil society in channelling and mobilizing support in times of this global crisis. By organized civil society, we refer to formally registered public or nonprofit organizations, as well as informal grassroots groups, that rely on volunteer networks to sustain their activities (e.g., Nesbit et al., 2018). This includes membership-based organizations with formalized, long-term volunteer arrangements, as well as groups characterized by informal, short-term, and often more spontaneous engagement. Existing empirical evidence suggests that volunteer-based organizations faced a deep crisis in channelling social support during the pandemic (e.g., Andersen et al., 2022), with CSOs often being replaced by online coordination forms (Carlsen et al., 2021). Even JOURNAL OF CIVIL SOCIETY 3 mobilizing their previously existing volunteer networks proved challenging for many CSOs (Dederichs & Kruse, 2023). Despite the theoretical importance of recruitment in explaining participation, ‘who gets contacted’ as a dependent variable remains under-researched, with very few studies bridging organizational and individual-level perspectives. Studies focusing on the supply side highlight the importance of members and activists (Andrews et al., 2010; van Overbeeke et al., 2022) even as organizations professionalize (Heylen et al., 2020). Han (2014), for instance, argues that successful organizations need to focus on both recruiting new participants and training their activists. Organizations often face a trade-off between targeting volunteers from a relatively homogeneous background who can easily integrate versus a more heterogeneous set of volunteers who may be harder to train (e.g., Dean, 2016). This contributes to inequalities in recruitment, documented by studies pointing to differences based on social class (Dean, 2016), previous volunteering experiences (Høgenhaven, 2025), resources (Meyer & Rameder, 2022), and social networks (Carlsen et al., 2021; Höltmann et al., 2023). As a result, civic engagement in general – and volunteering in particular – is marked by structural inequalities: volunteers tend to be disproportionately male, better educated, and possess higher income and social capital (Andersen et al., 2022; Brady et al., 1995; Chambré, 2020; Wilson, 2012). However, organizations and fields vary in their capacity to mitigate these inequalities. For instance, Meyer and Rameder (2022) show that in Austria, women are over-represented among volunteers in religious organizations or social services compared to fields like politics and sports, and that volunteering in these areas is less strongly shaped by occupational inequalities but more strongly shaped by educational inequalities. In the sphere of political participation aimed at influencing governance (Verba et al., 1995), Brady et al. (1999, p. 154) find that outreach patterns often reproduce membership inequalities, noting that: ‘The process of citizen recruitment brings into politics activists who closely resemble those who would have taken part spontaneously. Political recruitment does not mobilize the marginal and dispossessed’. For forms of engagement closer to civic participation (for a more in-depth discussion of the distinction between political and civic engagement, see e.g., Barrett & Brunton-Smith, 2014), Frey and Meier (2004) indicate that organizational identification strongly influences willingness to donate. Pre-existing networks are thus central to organizational mobilization (e.g., Carlsen et al., 2021; Höltmann et al., 2023; Klandermans & Oegema, 1987), making membership a key predictor of whether individuals respond to organizational requests (Qvist et al., 2018). However, this literature does no focus on differences between crisis and regular times, though there are reasons to believe inequalities are less significant during crises. Research demonstrates that disasters lead to extraordinary spikes in spontaneous and classical forms of engagement (Clarke, 2015; Marjanovic et al., 2009; Penner et al., 2005; Simsa et al., 2019; Steffen & Fothergill, 2009). Individuals frequently adopt new, spontaneous forms of action during crises (Andersen et al., 2022), often creating a situation with too many volunteers for organizations or official channels to manage (Simsa et al., 2019). Although calls to engagement come from various spheres, CSOs are key mobilizing actors (Han, 2014). Volunteer-based CSOs vary significantly in mobilizing capacity – their ability to provide engagement opportunities for willing participants. This variation partially results from CSO’s relationships with state or public administration, which 4 E. BORBÁTH AND S. HUTTER during crises may be cooperative (inclusionary) or competitive (exclusionary). Studies on natural disasters (Marjanovic et al., 2009) or terrorist attack (Penner et al., 2005; Steffen & Fothergill, 2009) show that CSOs can adapt significantly to contribute to crisis relief (Rodríguez et al., 2006; Wang & Ganapati, 2018), even when state relations are competitive. Compared to other crises, the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented (not only) for civil society (Ferwerda et al., 2023). Social distancing posed significant challenges for interpersonal contact, assembly, and public space utilization, all essential for organizing civil society. Unlike previous crises – natural disasters or socio-political emergencies – organizations could not fully deploy their mobilization repertoires during Covid-19, facing stark operational limitations (e.g., Andersen et al., 2022). Instead, CSOs were partly replaced by online coordination forms (Carlsen et al., 2021), and the state stepped in to organize and enforce pandemic-related measures. From individuals’ perspectives, the pandemic posed similarly unprecedented challenges. Social distancing, fear of the virus, and pandemic-related burdens such as household Covid-19 cases, childcare responsibilities, other caregiving tasks, or direct financial losses complicated engagement in helping behaviours. These burdens had multifaceted implications for individual availability for civic engagement and volunteering (Andersen et al., 2022; Bertogg & Koos, 2021; Borbáth et al., 2021; Ferwerda et al., 2023; Höltmann et al., 2023). More specifically, the pandemic might have affected CSOs’ mobilization capacity in two ways. First, as Høgenhaven (2025) has shown CSOs experienced partial deactivation of existing volunteer networks alongside activation of new volunteers motivated especially by crisis-related tasks. Second, individuals were confronted with an increased need to engage, potentially driving individual-level forms of civic engagement independent of CSO constraints. The pandemic thus potentially reinforced longer-term trends in civil society, favouring informal and spontaneous engagement over formal, organized participation (Qvist et al., 2018). Building on the above discussion, we formulate specific expectations regarding our three research questions. Given the empirical nature of our paper, we treat these as guiding expectations for our multi-step analysis. First, regarding who volunteer-based CSOs could reach, we assume organized civil society was severely restricted during the pandemic. This restriction implies that CSOs primarily relied on their established networks of volunteers rather than reaching out to new target groups. To examine this expectation, we differentiate between pre-existing socio-economic inequalities (gender, education, income) and pandemic-specific burdens (for evidence on differential effects also see: Ferwerda et al., 2023). The latter includes having a case of Covid-19 in the household, childcare at home, other care commitments, or a negative income change. Introducing these burdens allows us to identify whether the crisis created additional inequalities. Thus, we expect CSOs to reach out to their previous members and the ‘usual suspects’ in terms of socio-demographics (male, highly educated, affluent) to get engaged (H1). Second, we explore the importance of CSO contact for formal versus informal engagement. During the pandemic, informal, often digitally mediated forms of civic engagement emerged alongside traditional networks (Bertogg & Koos, 2021; Carlsen et al., 2021; Höltmann et al., 2023). Platforms such as Telegram channels, JOURNAL OF CIVIL SOCIETY 5 Facebook groups, and neighbourhood services connected willing volunteers directly, bypassing traditional CSOs (also see Kavada, 2022). Thus, we expect that for these forms of informal civic engagement, pandemic-related rules of social distancing were less critical than for organized civil society. As we previously argued, the pandemic strongly impaired CSO’s internal structure personnel, and made conducting organizational outreach more challenging. Accordingly, we hypothesize that CSOs have the most important linking function for formal volunteering. They play a less important role in more informal forms of social support between strangers during the pandemic (H2). Third, we assess to what extent CSOs fulfilled their mobilizing capacity during the pandemic. Given the dual crisis of increased demand for support coupled with operational constraints, we hypothesize that CSOs could not reach their full mobilizing capacity (i.e., ability to reach out to individuals to become engaged) (H3). Data & Methods Collecting data in the volatile context of the pandemic proved challenging. Hence, the empirical evidence we rely on is drawn from three empirical studies. First, we conducted an organizational survey by sampling both formal and informal CSOs. Because of the effort involved, we were only able to collect these data in one country, Germany (see Hutter et al., 2021). We then complemented the organizational perspective with individual-level data on volunteering from three countries: Germany, Italy, and Poland. In Germany, we also fielded a second wave in a panel design for the individual-level survey used in Study 2. We selected the three largest EU member states in Northwestern, Southern, and Central-Eastern Europe because they differ, among other factors, in patterns of civil society organizations (Foa & Ekiert, 2017), long-term civic engagement patterns (Mascherini et al., 2011), and pandemic-related grievances (Greer et al., 2021). In Poland, volunteering traditions are strongly influenced by the Catholic Church: a significant share of volunteers serve through church-affiliated charities or parish initiatives, where service is often framed as a religious duty or calling. This leads to a positive correlation between religious observance and civic engagement (Fałkowski & Kurek, 2020; Sadlon & Rymsza, 2024). In Italy, there is a marked North – South divide in volunteering culture. Northern regions tend to have more robust, formalized civic participation – volunteer rates in northern areas are multiple times higher than in parts of the South (e.g., Guidi et al., 2021) – whereas southern communities often rely on informal support networks and family-based assistance (Putnam et al., 1994). In Germany, volunteering commonly bifurcates into formal, long-term commitments within membership-based associations (the classic Ehrenamt, such as serving in volunteer fire brigades, e.g., Simonson et al., 2017), and more spontaneous or project-based engagements outside those structures. Despite these differences in volunteering traditions, we focus on cross-country similarities to gain insights that may extend to other European contexts. Therefore, all analyses in the main text include countryfixed effects. Where relevant, we discuss country-level differences based on the analysis presented in Appendix B. Table 1 provides an overview of the empirical evidence and data sources used. 6 E. BORBÁTH AND S. HUTTER Study 1: Descriptive Evidence on the Crisis of CSOs We fielded the organizational survey between November and December 2020, collecting information from 1066 CSOs (27% response rate) active in Germany. The survey was innovative in inviting both formal volunteer-based CSOs (i.e., classical associations and welfare organizations) and more informal CSOs (e.g., initiatives and social movement actors). Methodologically, we sampled 55 locations from all 16 federal states, including every state capital. For the 13 non-city states, we additionally sampled another major city (>500,000 inhabitants), a medium-sized town (>100,000), and a rural location (<100,000). We used separate methods for sampling formal and informal CSOs. For the informal actors, 641 initiatives and networks with email addresses were identified through a systematic online search within the 55 locations, and all were contacted. 1 More formal organizations were sampled via the official commercial register (Handelsregister), which initially yielded 79,400 registered associations for the selected locations. We narrowed this list by sampling according to fields of activity. 2 From a randomly drawn sample of 4162 organizations, 3850 associations, and initiatives were invited and reminded – up to four times by email and telephone – to complete the online questionnaire. Representatives of 1066 organizations completed the questionnaire, for a response rate of 27.7%, which is somewhat lower than the mean response rate of 34% identified by Fulton (2018) for published studies surveying organizations; yet, still higher than the major general survey of civil society organizations in Germany ZiviZ with response rates of below 20% (Schubert et al., 2023). In terms of sectoral distributions, the data does reflect the general patterns uncovered by previous studies (e.g., Simonson et al., 2017). All questions in the questionnaire were mandatory (for further details, see Hutter et al., 2021). To report the aggregate pattern of individual-level behaviour, we distinguish between formal and informal forms of civic engagement based on items from a broader battery on civic engagement (see item wording and further information in Appendix C). The items encompass more formal modes, where CSOs tend to play a stronger mediating role (e.g., volunteering, donating), and more informal modes (e.g., emotional support, shopping for others, financial help, childcare for others, and symbolic forms of support). We distinguish three time points by relying on the retrospective item included in Wave 1 (reference period: 2019, the year before the Covid-19 crisis), the values in Wave 1 (reference period: since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis), and the values from Wave 2 (reference period: November 2020 up to the interview in March 2021). Table 1. Overview of the data sources. Data Unit of analysis Coverage Period of data collection Context Study 1 Org. survey CSOs Germany Nov. – Dec. 2020 Descriptive evidence to illustrate the dual crisis faced by CSOs Mass survey (panel) Individual citizens Germany Wave 1: Oct. – Nov. 2020; Wave 2: Mar., 2021 Study 2 Mass survey Individual citizens Germany, Italy, Poland Oct.–Nov. 2020 Test for H1 & H2 Study 3 Vignette experiment Individual citizens Germany, Italy, Poland Mar. 2021 Test for H3 & robustness test for H2 JOURNAL OF CIVIL SOCIETY 7 Study 2: Individual-Level Survey We fielded a representative individual-level survey in October 2020 in all three countries (Germany: October 14 – November 04; Italy: October 08 – October 26; Poland: October 06–October 25). The survey was conducted with members of an online access panel, recruited by the survey firm Respondi. Data were collected with quotas for age, gender, education, and region (east – west), based on Eurostat statistics for 2020, ensuring representation of 18to 69-year-old residents. Since some quotas did not match perfectly, we applied sociodemographic weights to balance all of these variables. In Germany, we collected additional information in a second wave within a panel design in March 2021 (n = 1004). 3 The individual-level survey aimed to measure civic and political engagement during the pandemic. For this analysis, we draw on three dependent variables, which we introduce sequentially. The first variable is whether respondents were contacted by a CSO to become engaged. To improve the item’s validity, we primed respondents by first referencing CSOs and then asking: ‘Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, initiatives, clubs, and aid organizations have approached individuals to support other people. How often have these organizations contacted you to support other people?’ Responses ranged from ‘never’ to ‘very often’ on a five-point scale. We use this item to test our first expectation. Building on a distinction between members and non-members, we examine whether CSOs reach non-members with different socio-demographic profiles than their regular members, and whether those who are contacted and volunteer differ systematically from those who volunteer without being contacted. Next, we focus on two variables representing volunteering behaviours during the pandemic. We asked respondents how often they had engaged in ‘voluntary work for an initiative, aid organization or association’ (also on a scale from ‘never’ to ‘very often’) since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. This item was part of the broader civic engagement battery also used in Study 1 (see Appendix C). Among those who indicated any form of civic engagement, we then asked: ‘You have indicated that you have supported people who do not live in your household since the beginning of the Corona crisis. Have you supported the following groups of people?’ Answer options included ‘family and friends,’ ‘neighbours,’ ‘previously unknown people,’ and ‘people living outside your [country].’ We use this item to test our second expectation by comparing the effect of ‘being asked by an organization’ across different spheres of helping. Finally, we rely on socio-demographic variables and Covid-19-specific burdens to map inequalities in contact and engagement. The socio-demographic variables include gender, education, age, age squared, income, and region, which prior literature identifies as critical indicators of socio-economic status (e.g., Brady et al., 1995; Teorell et al., 2007; Wilson, 2012). Covid-19-specific burdens include whether respondents experienced a Covid-19 infection themselves or in their household, had children at home, had other caregiving responsibilities, or experienced a negative income change during the pandemic (e.g., Höltmann et al., 2023). Study 3: Survey Experiment To test our third expectation, we conducted a separate vignette survey experiment in March 2021 in all three countries (Germany: March 04 – March 16; Italy: March 10 – 8 E. BORBÁTH AND S. HUTTER We analyze the experiment by estimating a linear regression model, clustering standard errors by respondent because each participant evaluated two vignettes. We include fixed effects for country, vignette round (first or second), and the other treatments. Figure 5 shows the average treatment effect of the mobilizing actor. Under this counterfactual scenario, the effect size we identify closely mirrors the effect size from our observational data: in both cases, the average probability of engagement when asked by a CSO is around 50%. However, in the observational data, this 50% participation rate is only reached among respondents who reported being contacted often by a CSO (see Figure 4). In relative terms and consistent with our expectations, local CSOs’ mobilizing power lies between the private sphere (family and friends) and the state, 7 and local CSOs have a greater capacity to mobilize than their national counterparts. Beyond their basic mobilizing effect, the main limiting factor is the share of the population CSOs were actually able to reach during the pandemic. As noted, our survey Figure 4. Effect of being contacted across different forms of engagement. Note: The figure shows predicted probabilities based on the model in Table 3 in Appendix A. The results are weighted by sociodemographic weights. Source: Individual-level survey, Oct.–Nov. 2020. JOURNAL OF CIVIL SOCIETY 15 indicates that about one-third of society was contacted at least once by a CSO. Coupled with our evidence of the multiple constraints on organized civil society – shown by our organizational survey and the ongoing biases in who could be contacted and who ultimately volunteered – this finding suggests that while CSOs did mobilize during the pandemic, they could have reached a broader audience had they not been hindered in their daily operations. We interpret this as support for our third hypothesis, namely that civil society was unable to fulfil its full mobilizing potential during the Covid-19 crisis. Conclusion What have we learned about the mobilizing capacity of organized civil society during the Covid-19 crisis? To answer this question, we adopted an original multi-step design focusing on CSO recruitment efforts for volunteering. Despite the pandemic-related challenges in data collection, our comparative analysis of three European countries offers three key insights. First, we found that CSOs largely reached the ‘usual suspects’ of civic engagement, reproducing existing inequalities rather than broadening outreach. Even among volunteers, those contacted by CSOs resembled those who volunteered without being contacted, indicating a limited capacity to bridge the inequality divide. In this regard, we advocate including survey items on whether individuals were contacted by a CSO, enabling more precise measurement of organizational agency and how it reinforces or mitigates structural inequalities. Figure 5. Experimental effects of different mobilizing actors on becoming engaged. Note: The figure shows the main effects of different mobilizing actors on the likelihood of engagement, based on Table 5 in Appendix A. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. Source: Vignette experiment, Mar. 2021. 16 E. BORBÁTH AND S. HUTTER Second, we examined how organizations mobilized or connected individuals through both formal and informal engagement. Being asked by a CSO proved crucial for activating volunteers, and organizations also helped facilitate ‘strangers helping strangers’ beyond their core membership. Despite substantial challenges – highlighted by our descriptive evidence – CSOs still served as mediators, promoting volunteering and more informal forms of help during the pandemic. Lastly, a counterfactual test showed that while civil society has a strong mobilizing potential, comparable at times to family and friendship networks, CSOs were constrained in reaching everyone who might have participated. Our data suggest that only about a third of the population was contacted, reflecting both pandemic-related and organizational limitations on outreach. Two main limitations stand out: We could only conduct the organizational survey in Germany, and our focus was on relatively short-term effects. Thus, future research should investigate whether deactivated volunteers return to organized civil society settings and how the pandemic might intensify informalization processes in the long run. In addition, while our multi-study design allows us to combine insights across different levels and methods, it also introduces challenges of integration – for example, differences in timing, country coverage, and measurement across studies limits direct comparability. However, carefully designed combinations of individualand organizational-level data over time could further reveal which outreach strategies sustain engagement and how CSOs adapt or fail to adapt to new challenges across crisis and non-crisis contexts. These findings also carry practical implications for civil society organizations, local authorities, and other stakeholders facing crises such as pandemics or natural catastrophes: they underscore the need to invest in more targeted and inclusive outreach strategies – especially those bridging digital and face-to-face communication –, because they may help volunteer-based CSOs engage people beyond their usual networks in crisis situations. By working closely with community groups and local governance structures, organizations can coordinate resources more effectively and amplify their impact. Investing in collaborative approaches may thus help address inequalities in civic participation and add to the overall crisis response capacity. Furthermore, systematically tracking who participates and who is left out in such situations may allow organizations to identify and address persistent inequalities in volunteering in the long-run, thereby maximizing the positive impact of organizational outreach. Notwithstanding these limitations, this study contributes both to academic understanding and to practical insights for civil society organizations facing mobilization challenges in times of crisis. For the scientific literature, we highlight and empirically demonstrate the role of organizational outreach in reinforcing or mitigating social inequalities in engagement, especially during moments of heightened need. For the civil society sector, our study underscores the crucial role of outreach strategies in sustaining engagement, even as CSOs face substantial operational constraints. Notes 1. The latter was based on keyword searches for the German terms for citizens’ initiative (Bürgerinitiative), neighbourhood assistance (Nachbarschaftshilfe), corona assistance (Coronahilfe), protest, and alliance (Bündnis) in combination with the locality name. JOURNAL OF CIVIL SOCIETY 17 2. To reflect the breadth of civil society while also focusing on fields where active volunteer involvement is central, we selected the following categories (based on the survey by Priemer et al., 2017): Culture/Media, Sport, Social Services, Civil Protection/Disaster Management, Environmental Protection/Nature Conservation, International Solidarity/Human Rights, and Citizen/Consumer Interests. 3. To account for differences in sample size, we rely on nonresponse weights to ensure that the reinterviewed subsample does not significantly differ from the original sample. 4. Both the design and the hypothesis were preregistered with the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QK7H4 The sample sizes are roughly equal across the three countries (1,000 in Germany, 898 in Italy, 900 in Poland). 5. As a collaborative project, the design included other treatment options that were analyzed elsewhere. In this paper, we address Q1 and Q2 from our preregistered plan and test our associated hypotheses. 6. The results are robust to an ordered logit specification. We opted for presenting an OLS model since it represents a more parsimonious specification which allows us to directly interpret the estimated coefficients as marginal effects. 7. Relative to the state, the difference is the largest in Italy and Poland and the smallest in Germany. Acknowledgement We would like to thank all members of the SolZiv project, the Center for Civil Society Research at Freie Universität Berlin and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, as well as Gesine Höltmann, Christian von Scheve, Philipp Wunderlich, Raphaël Létourneau, Manuel Dierse, Stefano Calzá, and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and support. We also gratefully acknowledge funding from the Berlin University Alliance and the Volkswagen Foundation. Disclosure Statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Funding This work was supported by Berlin University Alliance; Volkswagen Foundation. Data Availability Statement All data and replication materials will be made publicly available on the Harvard Dataverse upon publication. ORCID Endre Borbáth http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2980-8586 Swen Hutter http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1107-1213 References Andersen, D., Toubøl, J., Kirkegaard, S., & Carlsen, H. B. (2022). 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