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Volunteering is the activity of people who freely give their time in order to bring new contents and values into the lives of others, without expecting any financial gain in return, i.e. without being paid. The question arises what motivates individuals to being, but also persevere in volunteer work, and particularly what determines the motivation of young persons to decide on voluntary unpaid work. Namely, as volunteering is one of the key determinants of a developed civil society, young persons should be encouraged to volunteer work from the earliest age. Consequently the basic aim of the paper is to analyse the reasons to volunteer, particularly the reasons of young persons in the final years of their study programmes. Additionally, the paper researches the connection of selected personal characteristics of young persons (gender, personality and the area of study) with the primary reason to volunteer. On the sample of 255 students of the graduate study programmes at the University of Zagreb with its seven constituent parts (Faculty of Economics and Business, Faculty of Kinesiology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Social Work at the Faculty of Law, Faculty of Teacher Education) it has been established that the primary motivation to volunteer of the largest number of respondents is their own beliefs, and not any material gain, in other words they truly identify with the idea of volunteering (the motive of „worth“). The research has also shown that the incentives to participate in volunteer work depend on specific characteristics of an individual Specifically, the reasons to volunteer depend on the area of study/work of the individual (the third hypothesis on statistically significant different motivation for volunteering with regard to the area of study of the respondent is accepted), and to a lesser extent on the gender and personality traits of the individual (a large number of descriptive and some findings of the inferential statistics point to the differences in motives to volunteer with regard to gender and personality traits, but the first and the second hypotheses relevant to these relations have been rejected). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]