Honolulu's volunteerism rate is better than reported
By John Flanagan
Sunday night, the phone rang. It was a Star-Bulletin reporter calling to ask me why Honolulu was ranked in the bottom ten, 42nd, among 50 major U.S. cities in volunteerism. This wasn't really big news, since the Corporation for National and Community Service has been announcing the results of their annual volunteerism survey for several years and Honolulu has never ranked high.
Last year, in fact, Honolulu was 44th, but Monday's headline was not: "Honolulu climbs two places in national volunteerism survey." No, the lead paragraph of this year's story read: "A national report has ranked Honolulu as one of the 10 worst cities for volunteering out of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the country." Ouch!
I should have suggested checking the Star-Bulletin clips. The paper published an editorial on June 15, 2006, titled "Survey unfairly portrays Hawaii residents as stingy" and listed reasons the editors felt that way, which included:
- Hawaii's hotel and food service jobs pay less than other industries.
- Because so many jobs in Hawaii don't pay well, many people have more than one job and time to volunteer is relatively scarce.
- Hawaii has higher proportions of ethnic groups that statistically have lower incomes and volunteer less.
The 2007 report includes the fact that 240,000 Hawaii residents contribute 39.6 million hours of volunteer service a year. Based on the estimated value of a volunteer hour, $18.04, that represents a contribution to the community of more than $714 million per year, mostly through nonprofits.
Another 14,000 people in Hawaii participated informally by working with their neighbors to improve the community, the survey reported. What's more, "Hawaii’s college student volunteer rate of 37.4 percent exceeded the national rate of 29.6 percent. Hawaii also ranked fourth in the nation for the average volunteer hours contributed by college students."
Unfortunately, neither of the local papers reported those facts or that volunteerism in Hawaii is holding steady at 24 percent, while it is waning the western region as a whole. It's clear that volunteerism is alive and well in the Aloha State.
Judith Cantil is assistant vice president for commuity building at Aloha United Way and supervises the VolunteerHawaii.org web site that matches volunteers with opportunities at Hawaii nonprofits. Happily, she was home Sunday night, too, and the Star-Bulletin story included her comments. "It's a culturally cold study," she said, which asks people whether they 'volunteer,' which people in Hawaii do not do. Instead, they do more 'neighboring' or 'kokua.'
"It's not a culturally appropriate term as a starting point," she said. "It's so different here. It's much more person to person." Rather than working at a soup kitchen, for example, Hawaii residents might pick up groceries for a senior citizen neighbor.
She cited the Aloha Corps, a project that encourages condo residents to hold barbecues and gatherings to recognize each other as family – a kind of volunteering that the national study does not recognize. "Turning to the neighborhood is our solution here in Hawaii, and it fits so culturally with who we are as well," she said.
Cantil told me, "I want people to start hooking up in their minds the question 'Did you volunteer in the last year?' to little acts of kindness in their own neighborhoods (what people on the mainland call 'neighboring') and the words 'aloha' and 'kokua,' etc. Ultimately if this connection is made in their minds they might respond 'yes' to the survey question."
She also hopes more people and nonprofit organizations will use the VolunteerHawaii.org website, which will soon include a place for volunteers to list skills the community can call on in disaster situations.
John Flanagan is president and CEO of the Hawaii Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations.
