Volunteering in America

**I took this post from a fellow VISTA member...Indiana is doing alright for itself in this study!

Volunteering in America 2009," a study published by the Corporation for National and Community Service, gives an extremely comprehensive look at service and volunteerism in America now and in the past six years.On this interactive web page of the study, you can select different states and neighborhoods to see how they compare, read the overall conclusions and statistics of the study, and even create slideshows, utilize training tools, and customize the results to get the information you're most interested in (including volunteer activity, service hours, or volunteer demographics such as age and gender).

Overall, the study finds that despite the recession, volunteer rates have not changed significantly in the last year, but the way we serve has changed. The study found that less formal ways of serving a community has increased in popularity.

So, how does Indiana stack up? Indiana ranked 19th out of the 50 states and Wsahington, D.C. in percentage of residents volunteering (30.5%). In terms of number of hours served, our ranking rises to 6th in the nation with 45.8 hours per resident. This might be attributed to another finding of the study- residents living in mid-size communities, especially in the midwest, contribute more volunteer hours than residents living elsewhere.

Nationwide, women were found to be the most likely volunteers (working moms have the highest volunteer rates of all) and men are more likely to volunter in their community in less formal ways (not through an organization). Enjoy the feast of service knowledge!