Statistics on Volunteering

This article was compiled with the help of several YouthNet staff members. Special thanks to Tom Green, Fiona Battle, and Lucja Wisniewska.

YouthNet, the first “exclusively online charity,” was started in the UK to be a trusted source of information for all young people, supporting and enabling them to make educated life choices, participate in society and achieve their ambitions. Every month over 350,000 young adults regularly visit and use YouthNet’s TheSite.org, packed with useful, unbiased information and advice that 16-24 year-olds can trust. YouthNet also created and runs do-it.org.uk, the National Volunteering Database, which enables more than 100,000 people a month to find volunteering opportunities UK-wide.

So who could be in a better position to survey young people’s attitudes about volunteering and find out what volunteer recruitment approaches work and don’t with this age group? This article presents the process and findings of YouthNet’s creative, upbeat methodology, as well as the new recruitment campaign that resulted. It also shares more general data from the wider survey of volunteering in the UK.

With the advent of more and larger data sets, research on volunteering is transitioning from pontificating to proving hypothesis about volunteering characteristics. The RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the University of Texas publishes the Investigator, a series of information briefs designed to bridge the gap between practitioners and researchers in volunteerism, and to encourage researchers to do more in the field of volunteerism.

The first issue,“Data Sets on Volunteerism: A Research Primer,” previewed in e-Volunteerism before being made available to the public, summarized existing data sets and provided examples of the analyses that can be generated from them. One of the data sets described was the Current Population Survey Supplements. The second issue of the Investigator, “Volunteering by States,” uses this data set to report volunteering rates and characteristics of volunteers by each State in the United States.

e-Volunteerism unveils the second issue of the Investigator (giving readers the chance to provide feedback prior to the public presentation) with comments explaining the process. Learn more about the characteristics of volunteers on a state-by-state basis in the US, and how to use such studies to assist your volunteer program. Non-American readers will find the concepts useful as well and have the opportunity to identify similar studies in their countries.

Have you ever wondered where researchers find the statistical data that allows them to determine the long-term effects of volunteering on one's health or on one's career?  Or questioned how frequently the Independent Sector or the Bureau of Labor Statistics conduct surveys on volunteering among Americans? Or, more to the point, have you ever wondered why the research that is published about volunteering never seems to really answer the questions that most concern you as as a manager of volunteers?

The RGK Center on Philanthropy and Community Service, a Center at the University of Texas at Austin, unveils the first of its Investigator series of Fact Sheets to e-Volunteerism readers in advance of release to the general public.  Designed to encourage graduate students and others to consider research in volunteerism, the first issue in this quarterly series identifies some of the more commonly used survey instruments that collect data on the volunteering behaviors of Americans.  The Fact Sheet provides information about the type of questions asked, the frequency with which these questions are asked, and how to secure the findings from these instruments.  Developed by economist and Ph.D. student Mark Pocock, in collaboration with Dr. Sarah Jane Rehnborg, the director of the Center's volunteerism initiative, the Investigator series will address topics important to volunteerism at the University level.

An analysis of the volunteer service and community engagement efforts in eighteen selected Texas state agencies and commissions, with particular examination of their volunteer management practices.

The Saguaro Seminar is a program of Harvard University that builds on the work of Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone: Collapse and Revival of the American Community). One of its initial activities was to conduct this national survey of almost 30,000 people, released in February 2001. This survey is the largest investigation of civic involvement ever conducted in America. The study examines a number of areas of social capital formation, including religious engagement, political and civic participation, levels of trust, giving and volunteering, and informal socializing.

Key findings of the survey follow in this article.

One of the more amazing things about the Internet is the sheer amount of information that is available. While much of it is foolish, a good bit of it is the result of hard work and research. Those seriously interested in volunteerism can find an immense amount of survey research and data to examine, some of which you will find listed below. As is our usual practice, what you will find is not intended to be exhaustive - it actually reflects only a small percentage of my personal collection of volunteer-relevant websites. It also reflects the wide variety of forms in which research comes - articles, survey reports, theses, etc.