A large number of individuals may also organize voluntarily in order to pursue several simultaneous goals. An individual member may not value some of the goals to be accomplished by the organization, but may nevertheless choose to participate in order to achieve other goals that are of paramount importance to him or her. A member's primary goal may even be simple camaraderie. The individual's participation thus remains an expression of his or her individual purposes. By linguistic convention, we speak of the "purposes" of the organization, but these are ultimately reducible to the purposes of the individual members. Because not all members of a voluntary organization may value all the ends to be pursued, mechanisms must be created for resolving disagreements. The goals to be pursued may be determined by prior contract (i. e., an organizational charter), voting, or forms of lottery such as drawing straws. If an individual does not consider the organization's goals worthwhile, he or she may choose not to join or may withdraw.

Such organizations should be contrasted with true organisms, such as human beings. The components of an organism do not require special mechanisms for reconciling conflicting goals; nor can a cell or organ choose to secede from the whole. A voluntary social organization does not possess unity in this fundamental sense. Its actions and its very existence depend on the values of its individual members.