Utah last month was again named the state with the highest rate of volunteerism.
The annual recognition is earned for several obvious reasons. With a large number of children, youth sports and programs like Boy Scouts of America require adult volunteers. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints also has a practice of assigning every member a duty, and the fulfillment of such counts as religious volunteering.
With different demographics from the Wasatch Front, one may wonder what volunteer rate is for the Park City area.
Long-time community volunteer Sally Elliott believes it may have the highest participation in non-profit organizations per capita in the nation.
She doesn’t have any statistics to back that up, and Park City Foundation head Trisha Worthington said every mountain resort town makes a similar claim, but the numbers that are available suggest Parkites are generous with their time.
The state-wide rate was computed by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), which uses data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A 60,000-person survey is conducted by the government annually. Because of the way the responses are collected, there’s no way to do perform a breakdown by county, said CNCS spokesperson Sandy Scott.
The 2010 Milepost publication produced by The Park Record and The Park City Foundation reported several dozen non-profit organizations each enjoying the services of 135 volunteers on average including board members.
Groups like the Park City Education Foundation, the Kimball Art Center, the Sundance Institute, the Christian Center of Park City and the Wildlife Protection Society reported receiving services from 300 volunteers or more in 2010.
Elliott, a Summit County Council member, said she has never lived in a place where people do more for their local groups, and where rounding up volunteers for special events is so easy.
A life-time member of the Girl Scouts of America, Elliott has been volunteering with the group since her college years and leads a troop here in Summit County. She also helped found what have become Recycle Utah and the Summit Land Conservancy, among other acts of community service.
“I think there’s a large percentage of people in Park City who believe it’s important to give back to the community,” she said. “Because they have been economically successful in other places, they are willing to offer expertise to solve problems. And whereas in some places people rely on governments to solve problems, in Park City people seem willing to join hands and solve them as a volunteer based-community.”
Off the top of her head, Elliott could think of a number of people who saw a local problem and went about solving it themselves with the help of neighbors.
“It’s a very unusual tendency on the part of people to band together to solve problems. It’s a wonderfully responsive community,” she added.
Worthington said the community’s high number of retirees means many people have the time and expertise to serve.
“It’s pretty phenomenal how that demographic is volunteering here in Park City,” she said.
Something that helps, she added, is that several organizations have excellent volunteer coordinators.
“When an organization finds a good one, they’re worth gold,” Worthington said.
The comparison to gold is literal, she explained, because the monetary value of the service given in Park City is almost incalculable.
“It’s staggering the amount of skill volunteers give,” she said.
The People’s Health Clinic, for example, benefits from volunteers in the health care profession. It would be impossible to fundraise enough to pay those professionals for their work, she said.
Big Brothers Big Sisters is a program entirely based on volunteerism, and hundreds of people help each year, Worthington added.
Terry Farrell, executive administrator at The Christian Center of Park City, said over 300 people from all walks of life help at the center throughout the year in different capacities. Both small children and the elderly help with events like the International Dinners during ski season and Sub-For-Santa in December.
And while the LDS community is large in Summit County, Park City has a diverse religious community teaching service.
Rob Harter, executive director of the Christian Center, said he is aware of organized service in all of the area’s Protestant denominations.
Dozens of people are needed to help with children’s programs, youth ministries, and special programs for teenagers.
People volunteer for Bible studies and organizing educational seminars. Several congregations organize international service trips one-to-four times a year attended by dozens of adults. One goes to Nepal every year, he said.
Joy Erickson, volunteer coordinator for Temple Har Shalom, said holidays are almost monthly, and dozens of volunteers make those celebrations possible. In September, the temple is holding Mitzvah Day to highlight service opportunities like a blood drive.
The temple works with seven or eight non-profit groups to organize community service throughout the year. Weekly dinners are held at the temple in summer, completely organized by volunteers. Members of the congregation even help with the upkeep of the building and grounds, she added.
There is a paid staff, but it exists to advise and assist. All the work is done by the members. Additionally, Erickson said she is aware of many members serving in critical capacities at non-profits including the Kimball Art Center, the Peace House and the Egyptian Theater.
No one from St. Mary’s Parrish was available for comment, but the church runs several programs for the community. Boy Scouts Commission Chair Brent Harman said the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization, sponsors an excellent troop in the area. One of the Rotary International clubs also sponsor a troop.