Volunteer Statistics (2026)

Volunteer statistics for 2026: 75.7M Americans volunteered, worth $167.2B. Rates, value per hour, corporate & giving data, all cited to primary sources.

Volunteering is one of the most measured — and most misunderstood — civic behaviors in America. Every two years the U.S. Census Bureau and AmeriCorps field the Civic Engagement and Volunteering (CEV) Supplement, the gold-standard federal survey of how Americans give their time. Layer on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Independent Sector's annual value-of-volunteer-time estimate, Giving USA, and a wave of corporate-volunteering research, and you get the clearest picture yet of who volunteers, how much their time is worth, and where the trend is heading.

This page collects the most important volunteer statistics for 2026 in one place, with every figure cited to a primary source. Use it as a reference, quote it in grant applications, or skim the key takeaways below.

75.7MAmericans who formally volunteered in 2023

$167.2BEconomic value of their service

$36.14Value of one volunteer hour (2025)

28.3%U.S. formal volunteer rate (age 16+)

Key takeaways

75.7 million Americans — 28.3% of the population age 16 and older — formally volunteered through an organization between September 2022 and September 2023, according to the Census Bureau and AmeriCorps.
Those volunteers served an estimated 4.99 billion hours worth roughly $167.2 billion in economic value.
The formal volunteer rate jumped 5.1 percentage points in two years — a 22.1% relative increase, the largest expansion since federal tracking began in 2002.
Independent Sector now pegs the value of a single volunteer hour at $36.14 (2025 data, released April 2026).
Informal helping is even more common than formal volunteering: 54.2% of Americans — about 137.5 million people — helped neighbors directly.
Volunteers are disproportionately generous donors: for every $1 the average donor gives, a volunteer gives roughly $1.36.
Corporate volunteering is rebounding hard — 77% of companies reported increased employee volunteering in 2024.

How many Americans volunteer?

The headline figure comes from the Census Bureau and AmeriCorps Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement: more than 75.7 million people, or 28.3% of Americans age 16 and up, formally volunteered through an organization between September 2022 and September 2023. That is up sharply from the pandemic-era low and represents tens of millions of people choosing to give their time despite a tight economy.

Independent reporting on the release confirms the scale: "More than 75.7 Million People Volunteered in America," AmeriCorps announced, calling it evidence that formal volunteering is firmly rebounding. The underlying topline figures are published openly on the AmeriCorps Open Data portal.

It helps to be precise about what "formal" volunteering means here. The CEV Supplement counts a person as a formal volunteer if, in the prior 12 months, they performed unpaid activities through or for an organization — a nonprofit, school, religious congregation, hospital, civic group, or government program. It does not count informal help given directly to friends, family, or neighbors; that is measured separately (see below). Because the survey reaches a nationally representative sample of households, the 28.3% rate can be projected confidently onto the full population age 16 and older, which is how the 75.7 million headcount is derived. The figure is a floor, not a ceiling: episodic and one-time volunteers who served only briefly are easy to under-report, so the true number of Americans who touched a volunteer role at least once is almost certainly higher.

The economic value of volunteer time

Volunteer hours are not just feel-good — they are an enormous, largely uncounted contribution to the economy. The 4.99 billion hours Americans volunteered in 2023 were worth an estimated $167.2 billion in economic value, according to AmeriCorps.

That value rests on Independent Sector's per-hour estimate, which it updates annually using BLS earnings data. The latest figure: $36.14 per hour for 2025, a 3.9% increase over the prior year. The full methodology and historical series live on Independent Sector's Value of Volunteer Time research page.

The number is calculated from the average hourly earnings of private, non-farm, non-management workers as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with an upward adjustment for fringe benefits. That makes it deliberately conservative — it values an hour of volunteering at roughly what an ordinary wage earner makes, not at the specialized rate a pro-bono attorney, accountant, or software engineer would command on the open market. Nonprofits that recruit skills-based volunteers can often justify a higher internal rate for grant reporting, but the Independent Sector figure remains the safe, defensible default that funders recognize. To translate it into program terms: a volunteer who gives just two hours a week for a year contributes roughly $3,760 in value at the 2025 rate — the equivalent of a meaningful grant, delivered in time rather than cash.

Value of a volunteer hour over time

Year of data	Value per hour	Year-over-year change
2023	$33.49	+5.3%
2024	$34.79	+3.9%
2025	$36.14	+3.9%

Sources: Independent Sector's Value of Volunteer Time series and its 2026 release.

Volunteering is growing again

After collapsing during the pandemic, formal volunteering staged its biggest comeback on record. The Census Bureau and AmeriCorps report a 5.1 percentage-point jump in the formal volunteer rate over two years — a 22.1% relative increase, the largest expansion of formal volunteering since tracking began in 2002. Even so, the 2023 rate remains about 1.7 points below pre-pandemic levels, leaving room for continued recovery.

Formal volunteering (2023)28.3%

Informal helping (2023)54.2%

Served virtually18%

Corporate participation rate33%

Informal helping: the hidden majority

Far more Americans help out informally than through organizations. The CEV Supplement found that 54.2% of Americans — roughly 137.5 million people — helped or exchanged favors with neighbors, such as running errands, house-sitting, or lending tools, between September 2022 and 2023. That is up from 51.7% in 2019, showing that everyday mutual aid strengthened even as formal structures were disrupted.

About one in ten Americans reported helping neighbors informally a few times a week or more — a steady cadence of small acts that never shows up in any nonprofit's volunteer log but binds communities together. Researchers treat informal helping as a leading indicator of social cohesion and a likely gateway to formal volunteering: people who are already in the habit of pitching in for neighbors are easier to recruit into organized roles when an opportunity is put in front of them. For nonprofits, that gap between 54.2% informal helpers and 28.3% formal volunteers is essentially an addressable market — tens of millions of people who clearly want to help and simply have not been asked through a channel that fit their lives.

Virtual and hybrid volunteering

For the first time, the 2023 survey tracked virtual volunteering. The result: 18% of formal volunteers served completely or partially online. Remote skills-based volunteering — tutoring, translation, design, and administrative support delivered over the internet — has become a permanent part of the landscape, expanding who can participate regardless of location or mobility.

The shift matters for program design. Virtual roles lower the barriers that historically kept certain groups out of volunteering: people with disabilities or limited mobility, rural residents far from a nonprofit's physical site, caregivers who cannot leave home for a fixed shift, and busy professionals who can spare an hour at night but not a Saturday morning. Organizations that offer a remote or hybrid option tend to widen their volunteer funnel and improve retention, because volunteers can keep contributing through moves, schedule changes, and life events that would otherwise end an in-person commitment. Expect the virtual share to keep climbing as nonprofits build infrastructure — scheduling tools, background screening, and digital onboarding — to support it.

Who volunteers? Demographics

Volunteering varies widely by age, education, and life stage. AmeriCorps' research consistently finds that parents of school-age children, people with higher educational attainment, and homeowners volunteer at above-average rates, while volunteering tends to dip among young adults and rise again in midlife. The AmeriCorps CEV dashboard lets anyone slice the data by demographic group and state. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also maintains a long-running Volunteering Supplement to the Current Population Survey for historical comparison.

Volunteering by state

State volunteer rates differ dramatically — often by 15 points or more between the highest- and lowest-ranking states. Upper-Midwest and Mountain-West states tend to top the rankings, while large, dense states often fall lower. AmeriCorps publishes State Trends Over Time, which tracks each state's formal and informal volunteering rates across survey waves, and the broader Census civic engagement release provides the national context.

Several factors help explain the geographic spread. States with higher homeownership, more two-parent households with school-age children, stronger religious-congregation networks, and smaller average commute times tend to post higher formal volunteer rates, because each of those conditions creates ready-made on-ramps into organized service. Rurality cuts both ways: rural states often rank high on informal neighbor-to-neighbor helping even when formal, organization-based rates are modest, simply because tight-knit communities lean on direct mutual aid. For a local nonprofit, the takeaway is that the national 28.3% average can badly mislead — your own community's baseline may be meaningfully higher or lower, and the state dashboards are the right place to calibrate expectations and recruitment goals.

Volunteers give more money, too

People who give their time also give their money. Industry analysis of donor and volunteer behavior finds that volunteers are markedly more generous donors — roughly $1.36 given for every $1 from a non-volunteer donor, and a large share donate both time and money to the same organizations. That overlap makes volunteers among the most valuable supporters a nonprofit can cultivate. Detailed donor-behavior figures are compiled by Double the Donation.

The practical implication for fundraisers is direct: your volunteer roster is one of your warmest donor prospects, and treating the two audiences as separate lists leaves money on the table. Volunteers have already self-selected into your mission, met your staff, and seen your impact firsthand — the exact conditions that make a giving ask land. Nonprofits that integrate volunteer management with their donor CRM, and that invite active volunteers to give at moments of high engagement, consistently report stronger conversion than cold appeals. The causal arrow runs both ways, too: donors who are invited to volunteer often deepen their financial commitment afterward, because hands-on participation makes the cause concrete.

The nonprofit sector volunteers power

Volunteers are the backbone of a massive sector. The Urban Institute's National Center for Charitable Statistics tracks the more than 1.8 million tax-exempt organizations in the United States, a large share of which rely on volunteer labor to operate. Many of these organizations could not deliver services at all without donated time — making the $167.2 billion volunteer-value figure a conservative floor on volunteers' true contribution.

How volunteering compares to charitable giving

Time and money are complementary pillars of American generosity. In 2023, individuals, bequests, foundations, and corporations gave an estimated $557.16 billion to U.S. charities, with individuals alone accounting for $374.40 billion, or about 67% of the total. The Giving USA report, produced with the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, is the longest-running study of U.S. giving.

Time vs. money: two pillars of generosity (2023)

Measure	Estimated U.S. total (2023)	Primary source
Value of volunteer time	$167.2 billion	AmeriCorps / Census
Individual charitable giving	$374.40 billion	Giving USA
Total charitable giving	$557.16 billion	Giving USA

Corporate and employee volunteering

Workplace volunteering is rebounding strongly. The Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals reported that 77% of companies saw increased workplace volunteerism in 2024. Average corporate participation hovers around 33%, and structured, company-supported programs dramatically increase participation compared with ad hoc efforts. Benevity's State of Corporate Volunteering research documents how employer-backed programs multiply volunteer engagement.

The design of the program is what separates a token policy from a meaningful one. Companies that pair paid volunteer time off with organized group events, manager encouragement, and easy sign-up tools see participation climb far above the rate of firms that merely permit volunteering in theory. For the nonprofits on the receiving end, corporate partnerships can deliver something individual recruitment rarely does — a reliable cohort of volunteers who arrive on a scheduled day, often with their own coordinator and sometimes with an accompanying grant. The fastest-growing models are skills-based and pro-bono engagements, where employees contribute professional expertise rather than a generic afternoon of manual labor, multiplying the value each hour delivers.

Volunteering and employee retention

For employers, volunteer programs are a retention tool, not just a goodwill gesture. Research compiled by CSR analysts finds that corporate volunteerism is strongly associated with higher employee retention and that a large majority of workers value workplace volunteer opportunities when deciding whether to stay. As competition for talent intensifies, structured volunteering has become a measurable lever on engagement and loyalty.

Volunteer grants and matching

Many employers amplify employee volunteering with dollars-for-doers grants — donations to a nonprofit tied to the hours an employee volunteers there. Despite hundreds of major companies offering them, awareness remains low, leaving substantial funding unclaimed. Statistics on the prevalence and untapped potential of these programs are tracked by 360MatchPro, which finds that a large share of eligible volunteers never request the grants their employer would gladly pay.

Why these numbers matter for your organization

If you run a volunteer program, these statistics are more than trivia. They establish the market rate of donated time ($36.14/hour) for grant budgets and impact reports, they confirm that volunteers are your most likely donors, and they show that volunteering is growing again after the pandemic. Documenting volunteer hours rigorously — and converting them into a defensible dollar value — turns an under-counted activity into a headline number for boards, funders, and corporate partners.

Methodology and a note on sources

The federal figures on this page come from the Census Bureau and AmeriCorps Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement to the Current Population Survey, a nationally representative household survey fielded every two years. The value-of-time figures come from Independent Sector's annual estimate, which is derived from BLS average-earnings data. Giving figures come from Giving USA. Corporate and donor-behavior statistics come from industry research and are noted as such. Where a primary government page blocks automated access, we link the same data through its official press release or open-data portal. Every link below was verified to resolve.