The Obvious Reason Volunteering Was at a 10 Year Low

National Volunteer Week is a time to celebrate the irrepressible spirit of goodwill, generosity and hustle that is as much a part of American culture as the 4th of July, Mount Rushmore and our aversion to the metric system.

It is a time to be reminded that America is the place where we celebrate our freedom to come together to get things done, to fight injustice and to invest in our future. It is also a good time to point out that in 2013 volunteering hit a 10-year low, and try to explain how it is that so few people seem to understand why.

Volunteering is one of our greatest cultural ideals. We give it credit for sparking our revolution and for founding our fire departments, libraries, hospitals, universities and nonprofits. It has animated our historic struggle for freedom and justice and is understood to be fundamental to a healthy community and a meaningful life.

Given its significance you might think that policy makers, political leaders and the press would have a pretty firm grasp on how it works, but the reality is that the idealization of volunteering often confuses our understanding of it.

You could see this confusion on display last month as the press struggled against common misconceptions to explain the decline in volunteering. Here is a good example from U.S. News:

Volunteering Hits Lowest Rate in More Than 10 Years: Americans are volunteering less than they have in over a decade, but why is unclear

And why it is so unclear? Well, according to the journalist, it is because the "intuitive" explanation for the decline -- that volunteering would drop off as more people return to work -- isn't true.

The underlying logic that unemployment should be good for volunteering because people will have more time on their hands is one of the stickiest myths gumming up the prevailing understanding of volunteering. While it is true that people might end up with more time on their hands, it is not true that they are more likely to volunteer. This fact, however, has not seemed to get in the way of the stereotype we all know that volunteers are lovely, well-meaning people without something better to do, like say, a job.

The truth is, volunteers tend to be well-educated, employed, parents in their mid 30's and early 40's. You are more likely to volunteer if you are employed than if you aren't and the data show that states with higher rates of unemployment tend to have lower rates of volunteering .

Despite the evidence, the wishful narrative that volunteering might somehow be the silver lining of a bad economy remains strong because of the mistaken notion that the most important thing separating volunteers from non-volunteers is free time.

To understand what is really going on you first need to recognize that volunteering is more a part of our overall economy than we generally realize. Nonprofits are not immune to difficult economic conditions, and when times are tough they typically lack the resources and extra capacity necessary to effectively engage and organize volunteers. Again, despite a strong inclination to believe otherwise, volunteers tend to be attracted to healthy, well managed and sensibly funded organizations and not to the desperate ones. Volunteering is a sign of a healthy nonprofit organization, not the solution for a failing one.

It makes sense that when America is struggling economically, so too are its nonprofits. What comes as a surprise to many is that 50% of nonprofit revenues come from fee for service and goods, so just like small businesses when the economy struggles, so do they. And on top of that, when the economy is bad people tend to give less, and that further erodes the resources, leadership and capacity to effectively engage and organize volunteers.

In the end it is not really that hard to explain why volunteering was at a 10 year low last year -- it's the economy, stupid.

If there is a silver lining here, it is that the decline in volunteering is no more a barometer of our collective interest in volunteering than a rise in unemployment is an indicator of a growing unwillingness to work.

What has happened is that the poor economy has hurt nonprofits and weakened their demand and capacity for volunteers.

The policy lesson is simple: volunteering won't recover until the nonprofit sector does, and from what we can see the outlook is improving. Demand for volunteers as indicated by the volume of opportunities available on VolunteerMatch has grown 10% since last year, vs. 3% the year before.

So this National Volunteer Week, get out, volunteer and make a contribution or two to your favorite causes.

You'll be glad you did, and they will too.

Greg Baldwin is President of VolunteerMatch, the web's largest volunteer engagement network.

(Photo Credit: Experience Corps Reading Tutor, Flickr -- VolunteerMatch.org)