Volunteering is regarded as an increasingly important phenomenon and the ‘employment’ of volunteers as one of the typical traits of nonprofit organizations. However, the consequences of volunteering for everyday practices of NPO-leadership, i.e. the question of how non-paid employees are treated in settings where formal power is lacking, have so far not received the attention they deserve. Our paper discusses practices for leading without formal power by presenting findings from an empirical research project. Using a Grounded Theory approach, we identify five interrelated practices that question conventional notions of transformative or charismatic leadership.