STLToday.com
September 19, 2010
Tennessee might be the Volunteer State, but its big cities, Memphis and Nashville, have nothing on St. Louis when it comes to stepping up, giving back and participating in community life.
So concludes a “civic health assessment” released last week by the Corporation for National and Community Service and the National Conference on Citizenship — agencies that track and promote opportunities for service and volunteering.
Among the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas by population, St. Louis ranked 10th in rate of volunteering through an organization such as a church or religious association, school, sports or recreational league or service or civic group.
More than 30 percent of adults in the metropolitan area volunteered an average of 37.6 hours per person per year, according to rolling three-year averages tracked between 2007 and 2009. Memphis ranked 35th. Nashville as 37th. Minneapolis ranked first with a volunteering rate of 37.4 percent.
The most popular volunteering activities include: fundraising; collecting, preparing, distributing and serving food; engaging in general labor and providing transportation; and tutoring and teaching.
St. Louis’ ranking comes as no surprise to Rick Skinner who, since 1999, has helped to lead the Volunteer Center at the United Way of Greater St. Louis.
“This is a very giving region — both philanthropically minded and a strong force in volunteering,” he said. But he points to promising trends he believes are creating an even greater local base of volunteer service.
More young people are volunteering now, he said, fueled in part by the service requirements that have become a prominent part of school curricula.
Similarly, a flood of baby boomers reaching retirement age is turning to volunteer service. Some boomers see it as a chance to “test drive a new career.” Others simply want to pass on skills they have learned over long careers and remain connected to the community.
The key to building on a strong culture of service is to make volunteering easy, Mr. Skinner said. This is something the United Way approaches several ways.
Prospective volunteers also may call the United Way’s 2-1-1 telephone service to find volunteer opportunities.
Non-profit agencies (including those that receive no funding from the United Way), meanwhile, are offered training and certification to become more volunteer-friendly and efficient, ensuring a “quality volunteer experience” for all concerned.
What impresses us most about St. Louis’ status as a volunteer pacesetter, though, is in how well the metropolitan area scored in “informal volunteering.”
That category involves “having worked with neighbors to fix a community problem.” St. Louis finished fourth among metropolitan areas — with 12.1 percent of area adults participating in such activities.
Here’s what makes that an especially heartening indicator of civic health: St. Louisans work with neighbors to solve community problems at more than one and one-half the times the national rate (7.9 percent) for such activities and nearly four times the national rate at which adults participate in political demonstrations (3.1 percent).
Political demonstrations can be healthy. But in an era of overheated political rhetoric and angry public gatherings, it’s reassuring to know that our community mostly is grounded and less interested in what may divide us and more committed to volunteering to solve problems.