New Report: Volunteering in America

Posted by on September 26, 2011

One quarter of Americans volunteered for charity last year

Volunteering in America, a new report from the US Corporation for National and Community Service, says that while the number of Americans who volunteer dropped slightly in 2010, nearly 63 million Americans, slightly more than a quarter of the population, volunteered for charities last year, providing services valued at nearly $173-billion.

According to the data, In the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the volunteerism rate in 2010 was 25.4 percent, representing 1,032,412 people.  This number represented a 12 percent drop from 2009 and a 25 percent drop from 2004.

The national volunteer rate has not changed significantly since 2006, hovering around 26 percent. Volunteerism reached nearly 29 percent from 2003 to 2005 and has been as low as 20.4 percent in 1989.  The report is based on annual and monthly surveys of roughly 100,000 Americans age 16 or older, conducted by the US Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The survey reported that 35 percent of volunteers gave time to religious groups from 2008 to 2010. Nearly 27 percent gave time to educational organizations, while only 14 percent worked at social-service groups.

Volunteers said they spent most of their time on fund raising, collecting and distributing food, tutoring or teaching, and a range of other jobs they described as general labor. People in their 30s and early to mid-40s, often called Generation X, had the highest volunteer rate at 29 percent. Just under 29 percent of baby boomers, people in their late 40s and older, volunteered in 2010, while 21 percent of people in their 20s volunteered.

The corporation has posted downloadable data on volunteerism for all 50 states and nearly 200 cities.

http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/export.cfm