This chapter addresses the origins of the styles detected in the author’s ethnographic research: the reasons why some recurring models of interaction become consolidated to the point of being perceived as ‘natural’, while others instead decline and lose importance in third-sector practices. It shows how different scene styles are not equally compatible with the specific systemic needs of the environment in which they are practised, with some being more functional than others, and so tending to establish themselves and reinforce the institutional conditions that led to their development. For example, it explores how the occasional volunteering style is becoming established as a way of reconciling the double and contradictory constraint that is increasingly weighing on social work: the need to activate the beneficiaries involved in initiatives while at the same time measuring this activation using standard metrics. The author maintains that scene styles do not exist in a vacuum, nor are they equivalent options for those who practise them, but instead are accompanied by institutional conditions of possibility that either favour or limit their spread. Rather than offering a history of the various styles of association-making in Italian civil society, this chapter focuses on one third-sector organisation, to highlight how some of the institutional conditions in which it operates influence the scene styles practised. It does not aim to provide an exhaustive analysis of the factors underlying the practising of certain scene styles, but rather a study of the mechanisms by which certain forms of association-making take hold and become established.