Utah leads the nation in volunteering — again

SALT LAKE CITY — Karen and Dan Adams laugh when they recall how seeing their children's high school band load a tuba on top of a bus launched Dan on a quarter-century of cleaning and hauling equipment and instruments, building props and organizing other dads.

The American Fork couple, both Silver Beavers in Scouting and lifelong volunteers, are two of 855,600 reasons Utah is No. 1 nationally when it comes to donating time and talent. That's how many Utahns volunteer.

The ranks of Utah volunteers also includes Mike Gunel and Sarah Harris, who on Tuesday spent the early evening serving soup and sandwiches to homeless people at the Salvation Army dining room downtown. Utahns build houses for the poor, man hospital waiting rooms, teach literacy and step up in countless other ways, as well.

This is Utah's fifth straight year at the pinnacle of the Volunteering in America report. Three Wasatch Front cities — Salt Lake, Provo and Ogden — were singled out as volunteer hubs in the nation.

The recession hasn't slowed volunteering, either. The report, released Tuesday by the Corporation for National and Community Service, said more Americans volunteered last year than at any other time in the past five years, donating nearly 100 million more hours. The number of volunteers jumped 1.6 million to 63.4 million, the biggest single-year increase since 2003. The number of women volunteers rose 1.2 million in 2008 to 36.7 million in 2009. The number of blacks volunteering jumped, as well. Altogether, they provided 8 billion hours of service.

Utah earned eight other No. 1 state rankings, including for volunteer hours per resident (No. 2 Iowa's 40.1-hour-average is less than half Utah's 86.9 hours) and for its 80.1 percent volunteer retention rate. The other six top scores were a sweep across age groups: 40.6 percent of older adults, 48.9 percent of baby boomers, 42.3 percent of college students and 40.2 percent of young adults volunteer. So do Utah youngsters: 44.5 percent of teenagers 16-19 and 39.4 percent of "millennials" (those born in '82 or later).

Utah politicians and state officials were beaming Tuesday at the Capitol as they announced the result.

Lt. Gov. Greg Bell said the report uses U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, making it the "most comprehensive data on volunteer efforts" in the country. Utahns provided 168.4 million hours of service, valued at roughly $3.5 billion.

"Volunteers clearly become the connective tissue holding together much of the safety net," he said.

"When you have people doing good around you, it's infectious," said Spencer Eccles, executive director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development.