The purpose of this study is to represent the moral-ethical range of volunteerism as an attractive activity for today's youth. The work is based on the methodology of sociocultural determination of volunteering. Applying the method of cultural-historical reconstruction, the authors reproduced the moral and ethical coordinates of volunteering on the continua of its two ontological categories – Free Will and Good. As a result, four ethic modalities of volunteerism (heroic-civic, victim-moralistic, creative, life affirming) are revealed. They correspond to certain types of public consciousness (sociocentric, religious, anthropocentric, lifecentric). The presented historical-philosophical picture of the volunteerism meanings expands the existing optional ideas about it and young people’s motivational expectations, which increases the possibility of its cultivation in the youth community