Voluntarism has undergone many changes in time, receiving external impulses and expressing internal needs tied to the services and work required. Voluntary service has gone from being a-specific and professionally general, to requiring a more specialized work division. The logic of «pure gratuity», that guided volunteers in the past, is ever more frequently substituted by a principle of reciprocity. This essay offers a vast critical historical reconstruction of the events of this phenomenon in Italy, and proposes an analytical examination of the main orientations that have characterized voluntarism in Italy throughout the years. Voluntarism has undergone many changes in time, receiving external impulses and expressing internal needs tied to the services and work required. Voluntary service has gone from being a-specific and professionally general, to requiring a more specialized work division. The logic of «pure gratuity», that guided volunteers in the past, is ever more frequently substituted by a principle of reciprocity. This essay offers a vast critical historical reconstruction of the events of this phenomenon in Italy, and proposes an analytical examination of the main orientations that have characterized voluntarism in Italy throughout the years.