Harnessing Portland's power supply

Saturday, July 21, 2007

The area ranks among the top 10 in America for volunteering, and a new report tries to explain why.

Portlanders have known for years that our cozy culture of tight-knit neighborhoods makes it harder to bowl alone here.

Even if you want to stay aloof and uninvolved, your neighbors rarely allow it. They invite you to backyard barbecues, corner you in the coffee shop, hound you to play tennis or pinochle, help another neighbor or come to a neighborhood meeting. Before you know it, you have slipped into a more community oriented, and enjoyable, way of life.

The tell-tale signs: Stopping to chat in the driveway. Accepting garden vegetables and reciprocating. Showing up for a few meetings, signing up to help with a cause and recruiting people for your own. Without even trying, it's easy to step out of your isolation chamber in Portland and become a good neighbor and a volunteer.

Portland generates a rich supply of volunteers. We didn't really need a national report to tell us that, yet it's gratifying to see some hard numbers. A new report confirms that people in our metropolitan area aren't just kind and generous with their time. They're among the kindest and most generous in the country.

The report, "Volunteering in America," compares volunteerism rates in 50 cities. Minneapolis comes out on top, with an astonishing rate of 40 percent.

Las Vegas comes out last at 14 percent. Apparently, most people there have better, or at least other, things to do. Big-city anonymity works against civic engagement. Other cities where volunteering isn't a priority include Miami (16 percent), New York (19 percent) and Virginia Beach, Va. (19 percent).

Nationally, the rate is 28 percent, but in urban areas, the average rate dips to 24 percent. That's what makes the nearly 36 percent rate in the Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton area so impressive. Portland ranked No. 6 in the rate of volunteerism and No. 5 in per capita hours donated.

High rates of volunteerism are linked to home ownership, high school graduation rates and, among other things, commuting. "If the national average commuting time decreased by just three minutes," the report says, "we could expect to see a growth in volunteering by 2.3 percentage points."

Portland's high rate of volunteerism is a tremendous force for good, if only it can be harnessed effectively. That is always the question with volunteers, of course, because they tend to surge and fade. They are an intermittent power supply.

Keeping them happy and productive and keeping them period is a challenge, but as this new report shows, it's one Portland has good reason to embrace. Minneapolis at 40 percent?

We can top that.

Want to try volunteering this summer? Check out the wide variety of projects that need your help at the Web site for Hands on Greater Portland, www.handsonportland.org.