Barack and Michelle Obama tried. The federal Corporation for National and Community Service tried. AARP and other nonprofits tried. Many corporations tried. Even Hollywood tried.
They, and many others, have tried over the past decade to boost the percentage of Americans who volunteer. But the numbers don’t seem to budge much.
In fact, the volunteerism rate in 2013 fell to 25.4 percent, the lowest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began to collect the data in 2002. Some 62.6 million Americans volunteered last year, 2 million fewer than in 2012.
No one is sure why, especially when other studies show that the 80-million-strong millennial generation is particularly interested in social causes.
Among the questions experts are asking:
- Is the economic downturn to blame?
- Do nonprofits lack the capacity to manage and train all the people who would like to help?
- Are the statistics missing some new kinds of volunteerism?
- Is foundation giving too skimpy?
Whatever the reason, the figures spell fewer bodies to help nonprofits meet their missions, which worries experts who promote volunteerism as a way both to help organizations stretch their budgets and to provide outlets for Americans who are searching for meaningful experiences.
“If 2 million fewer people are volunteering, that’s a lot fewer services being provided by people who benefit from volunteering,” says Ilir Zherka, executive director of the National Conference on Citizenship, a nonprofit that works to increase civic engagement.
As an example of how volunteers can help a nonprofit do more, the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center estimates it would need more than 22 full-time staff members, costing $600,000 a year, to accomplish what its 150 volunteers do.
Static Numbers
In the decade before 2013, the volunteerism rate generally hovered around 26 to 27 percent, according to the federal statistics, which measure unpaid work for nonprofits and other groups. The only exception: from 2003 to 2005, when the rate was 28.8 percent a year, perhaps because Americans were feeling unusually civic-minded after the September 2011 terrorist attacks.
President George W. Bush asked Americans in his 2002 State of the Union address to dedicate at least 4,000 hours over their lifetimes to helping their neighbors and communities.
Since then, the numbers have remained relatively static, despite campaigns like “10 by 10,” the Corporation for National and Community Service’s attempt in 2006 to add 10 million volunteers to the rolls by 2010; “iParticipate,” an effort by the Entertainment Industry Foundation that included a weeklong blitz in 2009 of television programs mentioning volunteerism; AARP’s Create the Good; All for Good, an online resource built in 2009 by technology experts after President Obama proposed a “Craigslist for volunteering”; and regular community-service pitches by both the president and the first lady.
Cash Required
The flaw in such efforts, says Greg Baldwin, president of the online listings group VolunteerMatch: “You can’t get more people volunteering by telling them to volunteer any more than you can get more people working by saying, ‘You need to get a job.’”
He suspects the numbers have dipped because nonprofits are still recovering from the recession. He expects them to rise in 2014 because VolunteerMatch listings in early March were up 11 percent over the previous year.
“The reality is, volunteer engagement is a reflection of nonprofit capacity, its leadership, its resources, and ability to engage them,” he says.
Nonprofits must spend money to recruit, train, supervise, and recognize volunteers—and that takes cash.
Until nonprofits can find that money, says Aaron Hurst, founder of the Taproot Foundation, which promotes pro bono service, “we’re not going to see major traction.”
In fact, studies have shown that many nonprofits lack the resources—like paid coordinators—to manage volunteers well, and even those that do a good job may not want more bodies. More than half of 21 organizations with high-quality volunteer programs that were surveyed in 2003 said they did not have the capacity to add more volunteers.
The respondents also cited challenges like finding volunteers who can work during business hours, and handling requests from schools and religious groups to do one-time group projects—not the kind of help they needed, according to the survey, which was conducted by the Grantmaker Forum on Community and National Service (now Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement).
Some nonprofits limit the number of volunteers they take on because working with them is a significant commitment. The Boston rape center, for example, requires its volunteers to undergo 40 hours of training, attend two education sessions a month, and work at least one shift every week.
In fiscal year 2013, more than 350 people inquired about volunteering at the center, but only 80 spots were available.
Situations like that leave a big gap between supply and demand. About 11.6 million people visited VolunteerMatch in 2013, but opportunities listed on the site were fewer than 140,000 over the year.
One newcomer to the field says she’s baffled. “I don’t get it,” says Meg Garlinghouse, head of LinkedIn for Good, an arm of the online professional network. Since last August, LinkedIn members have been able to check a box in their profiles to say they are interested in serving on a nonprofit board or offering other “skills-based” services. More than 975,000 expressed interest.
“That’s amazing,” Ms. Garlinghouse says, “except for the fact there aren’t enough opportunities for them.” LinkedIn started a Volunteer Marketplace in January in which nonprofits could list volunteer opportunities. At the end of March, however, fewer than 1,000 positions had been posted.
Foundation Help
Some volunteerism advocates are trying to persuade foundations to provide more money to help nonprofits manage volunteers. Kaira Esgate, manager of Reimagining Service, a group that works to increase the impact of volunteers, says few grant makers make that a priority, even though the money would help their grantees be more effective. “It’s going to take energy and a lot of understanding to shift philanthropy in this direction,” she says.
Her group, which recently merged with the Presidio Institute, a new organization that promotes civic leadership, has been organizing meetings with foundation groups, including Philanthropy New York and Northern California Grantmakers, to make that point.
Foundations interested in volunteerism used to meet as the Grantmaker Forum on Community and National Service. But that group shifted gears in 2004 after an assessment found it was not influencing enough grant makers. Renamed Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement, the group now works on a broader range of ways to get citizens involved in political and civic life.
Some foundation efforts stand out, however. The UPS Foundation in December awarded $2.4-million to nine nonprofits for volunteer efforts, with an emphasis on those responding to disasters. Michael Bloomberg in January spun off one of his foundation’s programs as a stand-alone nonprofit to help mayors put volunteers to work on specific challenges, such as fighting obesity or beautifying neighborhoods.
Volunteerism is a major funding area for the Leighty Foundation, a family foundation that awards grants to Colorado groups. One recipient, Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado, which had 8,500 volunteers in fiscal year 2013, used the money to hold seminars and help set up a system allowing volunteers to sign in digitally on screens, instead of on paper.
Unmet Goals
Washington’s budget battles have taken their toll on the federal government’s efforts to promote volunteerism. The Corporation for National and Community Service has in recent years increasingly concentrated its resources on AmeriCorps, the national-service program that offers stipends for people who spend up to a year helping nonprofits tackle social problems.
As part of its 2006-10 strategic plan, the agency set annual goals for increasing volunteers, but stopped doing it after failing to ever meet the goals. The 2009 Serve America Act created a program to help nonprofits train and manage volunteers, but Congress provided only $3.8-million for it in 2014.
Sandy Scott, senior communications adviser at the corporation, says AmeriCorps members mobilize millions of volunteers as part of their mission. The agency, he adds, makes grants to help nonprofits recruit volunteers for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. and 9/11 days of service, and it operates the United We Serve website.
But Susan Ellis, president of Energize, a consulting company that helps nonprofits train volunteer managers, says the United States should follow other countries’ leads by creating a “national volunteer center” to stimulate research, collect information, hold conferences, represent the volunteer perspective in legislative debates, and strengthen local and state volunteering offices.
Some nonprofits, meanwhile, are trying to make it easier to tap the services of volunteers. Points of Light, for example, helped set up a system of centralized online volunteer background checks, and its “civic accelerator” project provides money to start-up nonprofits like AltrUHelp, which assists nonprofits in using social media to better connect with university and corporate volunteers.
Missed by Statistics
Some experts wonder if the federal statistics are as worrisome as they appear. They note that many people are volunteering in new ways, especially online, that may not be reflected in the statistics—for example, editing Wikipedia entries, collecting data for “citizen science” projects, or starting a petition through Change.org.
Tracy Hoover, president of Points of Light, points to “hyperlocal” projects like the Facebook site that a woman started to help people who were stuck on highways during Atlanta’s recent snowstorms. That kind of activity suggests that the volunteer spirit is still quite alive.
Ms. Ellis says more research is needed to supplement the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which are collected by the Census Bureau in its monthly surveys of 60,000 households.
The current survey questions only individuals. It does not ask nonprofits how many volunteers they are using, she points out, so people should not grow alarmed by annual fluctuations in the federal statistics.
“They act like we’ve had a huge knowledge base,” she says, “and we should wring our hands or go whoop-de-do if something goes down or something goes up.”
The Declining Share of American Volunteers
Efforts by celebrities, presidents, and others to boost volunteerism have fallen flat. The percentage of adults doing unpaid work at nonprofits has generally held steady or declined during the past decade
2003: 63.8 million or 28.8%
2004: 64.5 million or 28.8%
2005: 65.4 million or 28.8%
2006: 61.2 million or 26.7%
2007: 60.8 million or 26.2%
2008: 61.8 million or 26.4%
2009: 63.4 million or 26.8%
2010: 62.8 million or 26.3%
2011: 64.3 million or 26.8%
2012: 64.5 million or 26.5%
2013: 62.6 million or 25.4%
Source: Current Population Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Based on information provided by 60,000 households about civilians who are at least 16 and do not live in institutions. Volunteers are defined as people who did unpaid work (except for expenses) through or for an organization at least once in the previous year.
