Where Most Needed

Newspapers around the country are picking up the local angle on volunteering in a new publication by the Corporation for National and Community Service (Federal agency, no Form 990) called "Volunteering in America: State Trends and Rankings."

Yet one of the sources for data for this report is a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics called "Volunteering in the United States, 2005," which is not nearly as well-produced as the CNCS report, but offers a richer field of data to harvest. 

To me, the most eye-opening data is in Table 2, which shows the distribution of volunteers by number of hours volunteered.  It shows five ranges, from "1 to 14" to "over 500."  Taking some reasonable assumptions about the average time in each range, I calculated who is responsible for the most volunteer hours.  As is typical in this type of analysis, the third of volunteers that gave 100 hours or more accounted for something like 84% of the total volunteer hours.  Since about 30% of Americans volunteer, that means that the 10% of Americans who volunteer more than 100 hours a year do the vast majority of the volunteer work. 

The nature of the volunteer activities is outlined in Table 5.  Men are three times more likely to coach or referee sports teams than women, but women have a slight edge in fundraising and artistic performance activities.  Preferences vary among age groups, too:  food service, for instance, is relatively popular under age 19, but then it drops off, but steadily increasing with age.  Tutoring and teaching peaks in the 25 to 44 years.  Fundraising is for the 35 to 54 year olds.  Management assistance tops out among 55 to 64 year olds. 

Organizations are the subject of Table 4.  Men are more common in civic groups and sports related organizations, while women are nearly twice as likely as men to volunteer in hospitals.  Volunteering in educational institutions is especially common for 35 to 44 year olds, while church volunteering climbs steadily with age. 

Reasons for not volunteering (among people who had volunteered the past) were lack of time, health, and family responsibilities.  Lack of time is by far the most common reason for all sexes, ages, and ethnicities, except that for people over 65, health suddenly takes over as the prime reason.