Hawai‘i volunteerism numbers and hours are declining

A new report from the Corporation for National & Community Service shows 23.5 percent of Hawai‘i residents served as volunteers in 2007. That number is down from 27.5 percent five years ago.

There were a total of 231,900 volunteers in Hawai‘i in 2007, down 4,200 from 236,100 in 2006. Those residents volunteered 32.7 million hours of service, which was down 6.9 million hours from 39.6 million in 2006. Collectively, Hawai‘i’s 237,000 volunteers donated about 35 million hours of their time annually between 2005 and 2007, for an estimated $683 million contribution.

In Honolulu, 165,000 volunteers donate 25 million hours of service each year. Honolulu’s volunteers make an estimated annual contribution of $487 million. Nationally, nearly 61 million Americans volunteered in their communities in 2007, giving 8.1 billion hours of service, according to the Volunteering in America report. During the last five years, the nation’s number of volunteers has increased by 1 million people.

The Volunteering in America report contains six years of data on volunteering, rankings of states and cities, and volunteer trends and demographic information for every state and 162 large and mid-sized cities.