Synthesis

• Most of the data used comes from supplements to the Current Population Survey (CPS), the US government’s official survey for labor force statistics. By design, CPS samples are very large (more than 90,000 adult respondents) and geographically diverse, with a representative sample of households from every state.
• This research helps us understand the critical factors that enable or inhibit everyday people to give, volunteer and engage with their communities.
• A modeling strategy has been applied to study the relationship between different types of civic or philanthropic activities. It includes an examination of the relationship between giving and volunteering, two closely related activities that may very well influence each other: volunteering makes people more likely to give, and giving may also make people more likely to volunteer. 

The results suggest the following: 

• People who volunteer in the previous year are more likely to give in the current year, by 14.5 percentage points, and people who give in the previous year are more likely to volunteer in the current year, by 9.3 percentage points. 
• People who belong to, or participate in, one or more community groups or organizations in the previous year are significantly more likely to volunteer and also significantly more likely to donate money. 
• The strongest group influences on giving and volunteering are associated with belonging to a congregation. At the other extreme, belonging to a sports or recreation organization has a much smaller (but still positive and statistically significant) influence on both giving and volunteering. 
• Volunteering in the previous year increases the likelihood of joining one or more community groups or organizations by 24.4 percentage points, and giving in the previous year increases this likelihood by 9.9 percentage points.
• Volunteering in the previous year does seem to encourage people to do favors for their neighbors more often, including how often the neighbors did favors for one another last year. 
• Volunteering and giving do appear to increase the likelihood that adults vote in national elections, controlling for all other factors. Volunteering increases the turnout probability by 12.0 percentage points, while giving increases the turnout probability by 10.1 percentage points.