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Dutch civil society is seen as well-equipped and known for its high level of civic involvement in various fields. For sustainability of civil society, however, it is crucial to understand to what extent civic involvement changes over time. Therefore, this article describes how civic involvement in the Netherlands has developed in the period 2008–2020. Using longitudinal high-quality survey data, we consider (contradictory or complementary) causes for trends on civic involvement during the period of investigation: (1) ongoing individualization; (2) traditionalization; (3) the role of major societal events that may periodically undermine or boost civil society. We find an overall trend of predominantly stable, yet slowly and statistically significant declining engagement levels that seem robust and relatively unaffected by societal events. Our results also reveal clearly fixed sequences of forms of civic involvement between distinguished (clusters of) organizations. The results in this article are most in line with individualization processes. However, given that the declines are slow and relatively unaffected by societal events, the findings could also be due to the slow process of cohort replacement.

This article examines who volunteers for humanitarian organizations as compared to volunteering for other organizations versus people not volunteering, in the Netherlands. Using high-quality survey data (N = 5,050), we depart from a classic theoretical resource-based approach to study what forms of resources play a role in the likelihood to volunteer for different types of civic associations. We find that education and subjective health as indicators of human capital matter in volunteering for most types of associations, however, more so for humanitarian organizations than some other types of organizations. Social capital is of larger importance in volunteering for leisure organizations than for humanitarian ones, while cultural capital is relevant for volunteering but not more for humanitarian associations. Some forms of capital are thus stronger related to particular organizations, showing the different demographic compositions of the distinguished associations. We recommend to be more sensitive in distinguishing explanations of volunteering for different associations.