Abstract: Volunteer service is a soft power in social governance, and examining its development trajectory and governance disparities provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of grassroots social governance in the new era. Based on the prolonged observations of volunteer service in R County of southern Jiangsu, it has been found that the variations in initial resource endowments have led to differentiated models in volunteer service. The two models are characterized by two distinct approaches: “leveraging the bureaucracy system” and “leveraging the professional strength”. These approaches utilize two different networks: “the vertical network of the bureaucracy” and “the horizontal network of the relationship”. With the shift of the focus of national governance and the normative development of social forces, the internal governance of the two different types of grassroots volunteer service began to converge. Rather than existing at opposing ends of the state-society spectrum, they gradually moved toward an intermediate state of mutual resource leverage and convergence in governance.

Key words: volunteer service, endowment differences, grassroots governance, professional governance, hierarchical correlation