Emergency situations mobilize individuals to help the community. With the aim to explore whether, among the facilitating factors, there are the degree of civil culture, the sense of com-munity, and in particular people’s previous experiences of continuous and/or episodic volun-teering, a survey was conducted on a representative sample of Italians (n = 1011). The anal-yses have been conducted taking into account the involvement of the participants in voluntary initiatives related to the current health emergency. The results show that more than 30% of Ital-ians joined a volunteer initiative in response to COVID-19. In addition, the data reveal the presence of a "heritage of civil culture" that finds a channel of expression in episodic volun-teering, rather in the more traditional recurring volunteering.
Keywords: Continuous volunteering, episodic volunteering, membership, bonds, civic en-gagement, trust.