Volunteer Motivation

Why do people volunteer?

Recent studies suggest there are several reasons, such as building a path to a career goal or strengthening a resume.

It's a great way to develop existing skills, learn new skills, and make career contacts. Volunteering can also help build self-esteem, make people feel needed, and help people feel like they are making a contribution to the community they live in.

There are many benefits involved in volunteering.

Volunteering is a great way to establish social connections with people who have the same interests.

More than one lifetime friendship has been forged through participation in the PTA or Girl Scouts.

 Volunteering also allows people to learn values and gives them better insight into the people and organization they serve or contribute to.

Now that you understand why people volunteer, let's look at who volunteers are.

The following information is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor based on 2006 statistics.

Volunteer Profile

Volunteers are people who do unpaid work through or for an organization. Between September 2005 and September 2006, 61.2 million people volunteered through or for an organization at least once. The proportion of the population who volunteered was 26.7 percent. This is 2.1 percentage points lower than the volunteer rate in each of the prior three years and slightly lower than in 2002, the first year for which comparable data are available. In these critical times that’s not good for us non profits and so the cry for volunteers is a louder one now than ever before

It's interesting to see that about 30.1 percent of women and 23.0 percent of men did volunteer work in the year that ended in September 2006, down from 32.4 and 25.0 percent, respectively, during the prior year.

As in previous years, women volunteered at a higher rate than men across all age groups, educational levels, and other major characteristics.

People age 35 to 54 continued to be the most likely to volunteer (31.2 percent), while people in their early twenties were the least likely (17.8 percent).

While all age groups showed declines in volunteer rates from the prior year, the largest decline was among teenagers.

The volunteer rate for females age 16 to 19 fell from 33.5 to 28.8 percent, and the volunteer rate for males of that age fell from 27.4 to 24.1 percent.

Whites continued to volunteer at a higher rate (28.3 percent) than blacks (19.2 percent) and Asians (18.5 percent). Among Hispanics or Latinos, 13.9 percent volunteered.

Married people volunteered at a higher rate (32.2 percent) than those who had never married (20.3 percent) and those with other marital statuses (21.3 percent).

Parents with children under age 18 were substantially more likely to volunteer than were people without children of that age, 34.4 percent compared with 23.6 percent.

Individuals with higher levels of education volunteered at higher rates than did those with less education.

More than 4 in 10 college graduates volunteered, compared with about 2 in 10 high school graduates and less than 1 in 10 of those with less than a high school diploma.

Among employed people, 28.7 percent had volunteered during the year that ended in September 2006.

By comparison, 23.8 percent of unemployed people and 23.1 percent of those not in the labor force volunteered.

Among the employed, part-time workers were more likely than full-time workers to have participated in volunteer activities—35.5 versus 27.3 percent. One great qoute states "The harvest is great but the workers are few".

Therefore the good news is just about everyone can be a vital and much needed volunteer