Volunteering is becoming more widespread in our country, involving schoolchildren and students as the main driver. The article treats volunteering as a social institution. Based on expert interviews (N = 12) with the heads of volunteer organizations and their divisions, trends in the development of volunteering from the position of the functions associated with them are highlighted. MAXQDA software is used to process and visualize high-quality data. As the leading trends in volunteering, they indicate the professionalization, commercialization, popularization and digitalization, as well as the rapid increase in state influence. In the current trends, conflicting trends are manifested, the social meanings of volunteering are changing with the transition from altruistic motivation to volunteering as a job that gives young people career opportunities and social mobility. The perception of volunteering was significantly influenced by the pandemic, which revealed the contradictions between volunteering as a consciously chosen lifestyle and the consumer attitude of the population towards volunteers. The article discusses possibilities of the volunteer participation in solving the socially significant issues. On the one hand, pseudo-participation is developing through the use of the administrative resource of schools and universities, on the other hand, the practices of expressing and taking into account the opinions of volunteers on socially significant issues have not been developed and are not fixed. Volunteering as a social institution is currently undergoing a period of transformation, manifested in a variety of dysfunctions and a change in the generation of volunteers with altruistic motivation by pragmatic volunteers. All this requires state to rethink the ideological foundations with the formation of new meanings of volunteering and the development of new practices for involving and participating young people.
