Methodological approaches to studying volunteering

The paper focuses on the methodological approaches to analyzing the phenomenon of volunteering. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that volunteerism is becoming increasingly popular in Russia and thus it is a subject matter of the social research. Volunteering has been highly developed as a social movement requiring its effective management and the scientific understanding of it as a social process. The research considers the following methodological approaches to studying volunteerism: societal, social and economic, social and cultural, institutional and general ones. The author systematizes and summarizes various approaches, reveals the methodological features of the sociology of volunteering. The novelty of the paper lies in the interpretation of volunteerism as a social community characterized by the signs of a social institution and social processes.