Volunteerism in the United States includes both organized unpaid service and the everyday work of helping neighbors. The latest national measures show 75.7 million Americans formally volunteered through an organization during September 2022–September 2023, while an estimated 137.5 million helped neighbors informally during the same period. Together, these measures describe both institutional service and the informal relationships that sustain communities.
The statistics below use the Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement (CEV). The CEV defines formal volunteering as unpaid service through an organization and informal helping as helping neighbors outside an organizational context. National estimates generally cover the civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and older. State and metropolitan statistics are identified separately. Because the 2023 CEV was collected in September 2023 and asks about the prior 12 months, the periods below are stated as reference periods rather than relabeled as 2026.
Contents
- National service volume and economic value
- Participation trends over time
- Age, family, gender, and veteran patterns
- Virtual and hybrid volunteering
- State and metropolitan patterns
- Informal helping, membership, and giving
National service volume and economic value
Formal volunteering measures the contribution people make through an organization, such as a nonprofit, school, religious institution, civic group, or other organized setting. In the September 2022–September 2023 reference period, more than 75.7 million Americans age 16 and older formally volunteered through an organization. Those volunteers supplied an estimated 4.99 billion hours of service.
The estimated economic value of that formal service exceeded $167.2 billion for the same period. This valuation is an estimate of the economic worth of volunteer time; it is not cash paid to volunteers and should not be read as organizational revenue. Still, it offers a way to express the scale of unpaid work in a common economic measure. New U.S. Census Bureau and AmeriCorps Research Tracks Virtual Volunteering for First Time
Service volume and participation do not always move together. Half of formal volunteers served at least 24 hours during the 2023 CEV reference year. Average annual hours per formal volunteer fell from 96.5 hours in 2017 to 70 hours in 2023. That pattern means a community can have many participants while receiving fewer hours per participant than in an earlier reference year.
The 2021 reference period provides a useful comparison point. About 60.7 million Americans formally volunteered from September 2020 through September 2021, contributing more than 4.1 billion service hours. The estimated economic value was $122.9 billion. These figures describe different reference periods and should be compared with care, especially because the CEV captures changing conditions in civic life rather than a single fixed annual program. At Height of Pandemic, More Than Half of People Age 16 and Over Helped Neighbors, 23% Formally Volunteered
Participation trends over time
The national formal volunteering rate among Americans age 16 and older was 28.3% in the 2023 CEV reference year. It was 23.2% in 2021, 30.0% in 2019, and 30.3% in 2017. The 2023 rate was 5.1 percentage points higher than the 2021 rate and represented a reported 22.1% growth rate from 2021 to 2023.
| CEV reference year | Formal volunteering rate | Organizational membership rate |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 30.3% | Not provided |
| 2019 | 30.0% | 27.1% |
| 2021 | 23.2% | 23.8% |
| 2023 | 28.3% | 24.9% |
The 2023 national formal volunteering rate remained 1.7 percentage points below its pre-pandemic level. The recovery therefore was substantial compared with 2021, but it did not restore the national rate to the earlier benchmark. The supplied national rates come from the 2017–2023 CEV Findings, while the 2021-to-2023 change and pre-pandemic comparison are reported by the Census Bureau and AmeriCorps.
Other civic indicators moved differently. National organizational membership was 24.9% in 2023, compared with 23.8% in 2021 and 27.1% in 2019. Charitable giving above $25 was 48.5% in the September 2022–September 2023 period and 48.1% in September 2020–September 2021. Membership and giving are related forms of civic participation, but neither is interchangeable with formal volunteer service.
Age, family, gender, and veteran patterns
The CEV shows that volunteerism varies across demographic groups and across the type of activity being measured. During the 2019–2021 comparison, women’s formal volunteering rate fell by 8 percentage points, while men’s rate fell by 5 percentage points. The 2021-to-2023 results also identified millennials ages 27–42 as among the groups with the largest relative gains in formal volunteering.
In 2021, people ages 16–17 had the highest formal volunteering rate among the age groups reported, at 28%. People ages 45–54 had a 27% rate. Family circumstances were also associated with participation: parents with children under 18 had a 30% formal volunteering rate, compared with 21% for people without children in their household.
Informal helping reveals another dimension of community participation. Baby boomers had the highest informal helping rate among generations in 2021, at 59%. Veterans helped their neighbors informally at a 59% rate, which was 8 percentage points higher than the rate for nonveterans. People with children under 18 helped neighbors informally at a 58% rate, compared with 49% for people without children under 18 in their household. These are informal-helping measures, not formal organizational volunteering rates. At Height of Pandemic, More Than Half of People Age 16 and Over Helped Neighbors, 23% Formally Volunteered
Virtual and hybrid volunteering
Virtual volunteering was first measured in the 2023 CEV. In that reference year, 18% of formal volunteers served completely or partially online, representing more than 13.4 million people. Virtual and hybrid service can include work performed fully online as well as volunteer activity that combines online and in-person tasks.
The service-hour pattern differed by mode. Virtual and hybrid volunteers reported an average of 95 service hours in 2023, compared with 64 hours among in-person-only volunteers. These averages describe reported hours for the groups; they do not establish that online service causes people to volunteer more.
Virtual and hybrid participation also varied by age and education. Six in ten virtual and hybrid volunteers were younger than 55, while the virtual or hybrid volunteering rate was 20% among people age 55 and older and 17% among people under age 55. About 69% of volunteers who performed activities online had a college degree, compared with about 48% of formal volunteers who served face to face. Ten percent of virtual and hybrid volunteers reported having a disability.
The age-rate comparison and the group characteristics come from Spotlighting the 2023 Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement: Virtual Volunteering. The first-time measurement of virtual volunteering and the count of online participants are summarized by the Census Bureau and AmeriCorps.
State and metropolitan patterns
Volunteerism is not evenly distributed geographically. In the 2021 CEV reference year, Utah had the highest formal volunteering rate among states, at 40.7%, followed by Wyoming at 39.2%. Montana had the highest informal helping rate among states, at 68.8%, and Nebraska had the second-highest, at 66.4%.
Among the 12 largest metropolitan areas in 2021, Philadelphia had the highest formal volunteering rate, at 28.7%. Boston had the highest informal helping rate among those metropolitan areas, at 57.9%. State and metropolitan comparisons use their own geographic groupings and should not be treated as interchangeable with the national estimates.
The 2023 results also show uneven recovery relative to 2019. Formal volunteering rates in 14 states matched or exceeded their 2019 levels in 2023. In 11 states, rates remained more than 5 percentage points below their 2019 levels. Among the 12 largest metropolitan areas, five had formal volunteering rates that matched or exceeded their 2019 levels in 2023. New U.S. Census Bureau and AmeriCorps Research Tracks Virtual Volunteering for First Time
Informal helping, membership, and giving
Informal helping is a large part of civic life that may not appear in organizational volunteer records. An estimated 137.5 million Americans helped their neighbors between September 2022 and September 2023. The national informal helping rate was 54.2% during that period, and about one in ten Americans engaged in informal helping a few times a week or more.
The national informal helping rate was 51.7% in 2019. It increased by 3.4 percentage points between the 2021 and 2023 CEV reference years. Because informal helping is defined as assistance outside an organizational context, it captures activities that formal volunteer counts may miss, including direct help exchanged within a neighborhood.
Organizational participation provides another lens. More than 62.9 million Americans belonged to an organization in the 2023 CEV reference year, and 54% of organizational members belonged to two or more groups. National charitable giving above $25 reached at least 121.8 million Americans between September 2022 and September 2023. These figures show that civic engagement can involve membership, donations, formal service, and neighbor-to-neighbor assistance, with each measure describing a different behavior.
The participation figures in this section are reported in VOLUNTEERING AND CIVIC LIFE IN AMERICA and the Census Bureau and AmeriCorps summary. Keeping the definitions and measurement periods visible is essential: a person may give money, belong to an organization, volunteer formally, and help a neighbor, but the statistics do not assume that every form of participation is performed by the same people.