Volunteer numbers are growing...

The Cooperation for National and Community Service, a government agency which runs programs like AmeriCorps, has produced its report on volunteering statistics for the 2009 calendar year. This was clearly a priority of the Obama administration and the statistics indicate some success on this front. Some notable stats:

• Total time volunteering: ~8.1 billion hours
• Estimated value of time: $169B
• Americans spent 100 million more collective hours volunteering in 2009 than 2008
• 1.6 million more people volunteered in 2009 than 2008
• The increase in volunteers is the largest single-year increase since 2003.
• There is a negative correlation between unemployment & foreclosure rates and volunteer rates. Meaning, higher unemployment and foreclosure rates will result in lower volunteer totals.

Some rankings...

Large cities with highest volunteer rate:

• Minneapolis, MN 37.4% (pictured)
• Portland, OR 37.1
• Salt Lake City, UT 35.8
• Seattle, WA 34.9
• Oklahoma City, OK 33.9
  

Mid-size cities (note the representation of college towns):

• Provo, UT 63.6% ( Brigham Young Univ.) (pictured)
• Iowa City, IA 50.0 (Univ. of Iowa)
• Ogden, UT 47.7 (Weber State Univ.)
• Fort Collins, CO 40.7 (Colorado State Univ.)
• Madison, WI 40.0 (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison)
  

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