From foster grandparents who volunteer at an early child care center to citizen scientists who collect water quality data in remote locations, nonprofit volunteers have come back after the pandemic.
A new survey released Tuesday from the U.S. Census Bureau and AmeriCorps shows 28.3% or 75.8 million people in the U.S. volunteered with a nonprofit between Sept. 2022 and Sept. 2023. That is a rebound since COVID-19 public health shutdowns tanked participation by almost 7 percentage points to 23.2% in 2021, the last time the survey was conducted. It is not a full return to pre-pandemic rates of volunteerism.
The drop in volunteer participation was a wake up call for nonprofits, said AmeriCorps CEO Michael D. Smith, and a real test of whether volunteers, whose habits and routines were disrupted, would return.
“The fact that we went from a point in this country where we were telling people, ‘Don’t come, our doors are closed,’ — The fact that that did not lead to a flatline or lead to a gradual increase, but to see more than 5% jump is pretty impressive,” said Smith.
The survey on volunteering and civic life, conducted by the U.S. Census every two years, asks respondents if they volunteered at a nonprofit. It also asks if they informally helped friends, family or neighbors or gave to charity.
The free labor volunteers provide to nonprofits fuels a huge range of services across every kind of community in the U.S., with the survey estimating the value of a volunteer hour at $33.49, far more than the minimum wage in any state or major U.S. city.
At the Alpine Watershed Group, like many nonprofits, they describe volunteers as “foundational” to their work. Executive director Kimra McAfee said her organization has monitored the river and waters of California’s Alpine county for more than 20 years. Four times a year, volunteers go out to their sites to collect water quality samples, sometimes cross country skiing to get there, she said.
The survey also reveals differences in volunteer participation between states, with a handful like Utah and Vermont at the top with more than 40% participation and a couple of states like Rhode Island and Nevada dropping below 20% participation at the bottom.
Smith said states that top the list often have better institutional supports for nonprofits and volunteers, including paid time off.
The nonprofit After-School All-Stars Las Vegas has volunteers visit students to talk about their career paths or businesses, said executive director Jodi Manzella. Because her nonprofit works out of schools, they weren’t able to invite volunteers to fully return until the last school year.
“I don’t see us falling at the bottom, but we are a booming state and a transitional state,” she said of Nevada with many people moving in and out especially of the Las Vegas area.
Compared to other adults, people between the ages of 45 and 54 volunteered at the highest rates overall, the survey found, and more women volunteered than men, continuing a long-term trend. People with higher incomes reported volunteering with a nonprofit at higher rates than people with lower incomes. Many more people, or 54.3% of people in the U.S., help out informally, which could include anything from babysitting for a family member to lending a tool to a neighbor.
A little more than half of the 15,000 volunteers at Crisis Text Line in 2023 were 18 to 25 years old, said CEO Dena Trujillo. Overall, the survey found 22.6% of a similar age group reported volunteering for a nonprofit.
