". . . Voluntary initiative has helped give America her national character . . ."

-- Merle Curti, Pulitzer Prize- winning historian      

The question is asked, is there still a civic spirit in the United States?

There is a pervasive view that in earlier times, Americans were far more willing than we are today to help one another and to become involved in causes and public issues. It almost seems a given to some that we are now a less caring society and that we should worry about what's happened to all that neighborliness, public spiritedness and charity.

Actually, the past was not nearly as good as remembered and the present is far better than perceived. A far larger proportion and many more parts of our population are involved in community activity today than at any time in our history.

Fifty percent of all Americans are now active volunteers. That's a staggering hundred million people, or one out of every two of us over the age of 13. And we devote an average of four hours a week to the causes of our choice. The base of participation is also spreading. There are more young people, more men and more senior citizens.

We organize to serve every conceivable aspect of the human condition and are willing to stand up and be counted on almost any public issue. We line up to fight zoning changes, approve bond issues, improve garbage collection, expose overpricing, enforce equal rights or protest wars. In very recent times we have successfully organized to deal with rights of women, conservation and preservation, learning disabilities, conflict resolution, Hispanic culture and rights, the aged, voter registration, the environment, Native Americans, the dying, experimental theater, international understanding, population control, neighborhood empowerment, control of nuclear power, consumerism and on and on. Volunteers' interests and impact extend from neighborhoods to the ozone layer and beyond.

Three out of four U.S. citizens are regular contributors of money to charitable causes, and give more than $1,000 per family each year. Almost 90 percent of giving comes from them. Foundations and business corporations, as important as they are, provide only 10 percent of all contributions. People of all incomes are involved, and contributors at the lower end of the scale are more likely to be generous than those better off.

From where does all this activity and generosity stem? Obviously, the United States is not the only participatory society in the world. Giving and volunteering occur in most countries, and nonprofit organizations can be found around the globe. But nowhere else are the numbers, proportions and impact so great.

It's not easy to sort out why there is so much more of this activity here, but if we hope to sustain it into future generations, we need to understand the phenomenon better than we do. The research and literature are sparse; still, one can begin to piece together an explanation.

Most often the participation is attributed to our Protestant ethic and English ancestry; but as important as they are, they are only two of many sources. What we identify as Judeo-Christian impulses were also brought to our shores by each wave of immigrants -- from Sweden, Russia, China, India or elsewhere -- who followed Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha or other sages and prophets.

One of the most fundamental explanations for voluntary activity centers on religious expression and protection of that freedom. The 1993 edition of Independent Sector's report, < based on the largest study ever undertaken of the community service role of religious congregations, shows that these groups are the primary service providers for neighborhoods. It's my experience that the poorer the community, the larger that role and impact.

Beyond the exercise of religious freedom and the community services provided by religious congregations, these institutions have been and continue to be the places where the moral issues are raised and pursued. In his mid-19^thcentury observations on the American scene, Alexis de Tocqueville saw this country's network of voluntary organizations not so much as service providers but as "the moral associations" where such values as charity and responsibility to others are taught and where the nation's crusades take root.

As important as religious influences have been, we can't ascribe our tradition of voluntary action solely to their lessons of goodness. The matter of mutual dependence and assistance cannot be overlooked. The Minutemen in Revolutionary times (1775-1781) and the frontier families in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries practiced basic forms of enlightened self-interest. To portray our history of volunteering as relating solely to goodness may describe the best of our forebears, but it ignores the widespread tradition of organized neighborliness that hardship dictated and goodness tempered.

One of the most striking points about the origins is that we shouldn't assume that these characteristics and traditions were imported. In American Philanthropy, historian Robert Bremner makes clear that the Native Americans treated us with far more "Christian" goodness than we practiced on them. Reading his descriptions of the kindly way in which the Native Americans greeted and helped us adjust to their world, one is absolutely wrenched out of prior notions about imported goodness.

We came into a country where there was very little structure. We had a chance to start all over again. For most people, for the first time in generations, the family hierarchy was absent. There were few built-in restraints imposed by centuries of laws and habits, and yet we were terribly interdependent. In the absence of families and controlling traditions, we addressed our dependence and gregariousness by becoming, as journalist-social commentator Max Lerner described it, "a nation of joiners." These new institutions -- churches, unions, farmers' associations, fire companies or other specific organizations -- became our networks for socializing and mutual activity.

It's also important to realize that we were people determined never again to be ruled by kings or emperors or czars and thus were suspicious of any central authority. We were resolved that power should be spread. This meant that voluntary institutions would accomplish in the United States what governments did in other countries. In "What Kind of Society Shall We Have?," an article written for Independent Sector, Richard W. Lyman, former president of Stanford University, reminds us of Edmund Burke's description of "the little platoons" of France that became America's own way for achieving dispersion of power and organization of mutual effort.

As we experienced the benefits of so much citizen participation, including the personal satisfactions that such service provides, we became all the more committed to this kind of participatory society. Along the way, we constantly renewed our faith in the basic intelligence and ability of people.

We have never found a better substitute for safeguarding freedom than placing responsibility in the hands of the people and expecting them to fulfill it. We can be disappointed at times in their performance, but the ultimate answer is still the democratic compact. There is still wisdom and comfort in Thomas Jefferson's advice that "if we think the people themselves...[are]...not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."

We really meant and continue to mean what is written in the Declaration of Independence. We do believe in the rights and power of people, and these convictions cause us to stand up and be counted on a broad array of issues, and to cherish and fiercely defend the freedoms of religion, speech and assembly.

If we accept that our patterns and levels of participation and generosity contribute importantly to our national life, it is essential to understand and nurture all of the roots that give rise to such pluralism. One of the basic challenges is to be sure that the American people understand that there is this third way by which we address our problems and dreams.

Volunteering obviously begins with the individual -- the golden rule and lending a hand. The hundred million Americans who volunteer are involved in an extraordinary array of acts of compassion and service. They inform, protest, assist, teach, heal, build, advocate, comfort, testify, support, solicit, donate, canvass, demonstrate, guide, feed, monitor and in many other ways serve people, communities and causes.

Beyond all the indications of the good that results when so many people do so many good things, it is important to recognize what all these efforts mean to the kind of people we are. All of this voluntary participation strengthens us as a nation, strengthens our communities, and strengthens and fulfills us as individual human beings.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Merle Curti, says, "Emphasis on voluntary initiative has helped give America her national character."

In examining most of the great citizen crusades of our history, what comes through again and again is that the participation, the caring and the evidence that people can make a difference add wonderfully to the spirit of our society. For example, in Inez Haynes Irwin's study of the fight for women's suffrage, she returns repeatedly to the spirit of those women, not only in deciding on the task and accomplishing it, but what their success meant to them as individual human beings. "They developed a sense of comradeship for each other which was half love, half admiration, and all reverence," Irwin writes. "In summing up a fellow worker, they speak first of her spirit, and her spirit is always beautiful, or noble, or glorious . . ."

When one thinks of the giants of the voluntary sector, one is likely to think of women's names, at least in the past 150 years -- names like Clara Barton, Jane Addams, Mary McLeod Bethune, Susan B. Anthony, Dorothea Dix, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dorothy Day, Mother Seton, Carrie Nation, Margaret Sanger and Lucretia Mott.

In my recent book, Voices From the Heart: In Celebration of America's Volunteers, I depict volunteering through the experiences of 25 individuals, who reveal what they do, why they do it, and what the experience has meant to them.

Listen to some of their voices:

Scott Rosenberg is an artist who teaches at-risk teenagers to produce films and videos. He describes the experience: "On a visceral level, volunteering is a natural high. You get lifted in the right way when you work with people on something you believe in. It's arduous work, but you come away feeling exhilarated."

Valdimir Joseph, a college counselor, founded Inner Strength, which provides mentoring for young African- American men. He says: "Everyone has something to offer. Working with other volunteers has helped give me strength. They are struggling, too. I feel empowered watching volunteers develop relationships with these kids, watching them both grow. . . . Everyone I've met who volunteers, even if they only do two hours a week, makes a difference in someone's life."

Amber Coffman, a teenager, provides food to the homeless and summarizes her reaction: "It's about changing people's lives because of a few volunteers who get together on weekends and just give from the heart. That's what gets me up early when I don't feel like making lunches. I do it because of the wonderful feelings involved with giving. Once you truly give of yourself, you're hooked for life."

John Gatus, a retired steamfitter, supervises an anti- gang street patrol and reflects: "Volunteer work brings real change, change you can be a part of, change you can see with your own eyes. You don't need politicians or the police to tell you things are better. You can see it and feel it for yourself and know you were a part of it. . . . There's a real pride involved. We're part of the community."

Katherine Pener has counseled post-surgery breast cancer patients for 22 years and proclaims: "I guarantee anyone who volunteers will feel better emotionally, physically and psychologically. I don't care who you are or what you do. The people I know who volunteer have smiles on their faces. The hours they give are worth more to them than any money they could ever receive."

Voluntary organizations include major institutions such as universities, museums and hospitals; large national crusades such as the American Heart Association and the National Trust for Historic Preservation; and local associations dealing with almost every possible cause and concern.

There are three general roles that volunteer organizations assume: service (such as youth hostels), advocacy (such as Americans for Indian Opportunity), and empowerment (such as the National Organization for Women).

Voluntary organizations provide individuals with interconnections to extend almost every important element of their private lives including religious expression and mutually beneficial projects. A great many of these relationships are informal, but many require some structure, which leads to the creation of associations.

Whether one's interest is wildflowers or civil rights, arthritis or clean air, oriental art or literacy, the dying or the unborn, organizations are already at work; and if they don't suit our passion, it's still a wonderful part of America that we can go out and start our own.

Social activist and onetime government official John Gardner says that "almost every major social breakthrough in America has originated in this voluntary sector.

"If volunteers and voluntary organizations were to disappear from our national life, we would be less distinctly American. The sector enhances our creativity, enlivens our communities, nurtures individual responsibility, stirs life at the grass roots, and reminds us that we were born free. Its vitality is rooted in good soil -- civic pride, compassion, a philanthropic tradition, a strong problem-solving impulse, a sense of individual responsibility and an irrepressible commitment to the great shared task of improving our life together."

It is this joining together of compassion, spirit and power that often makes the difference for the most serious issues facing all of us. Such enormous and complicated problems as cancer and poverty require thousands of volunteers focusing on service, prevention, public awareness and public policy.

Usually when examples of volunteer power and impact are cited, they relate to the distant past -- to such issues as slavery, women's suffrage and child labor laws. As important as those examples are, their constant repetition tends to support the notion that things of significance are less likely to occur today.

It is my distinct experience that in just the past quarter-century, there has been an absolute explosion of citizen impact on a vast range of human considerations. For instance, in just the past 20 years, volunteers have broken through centuries of indifference to the needs of the dying. As a result of their noble crusade, almost every community today has hospice services providing relief to the terminally ill and their families.

In very recent times, volunteers' passion, courage and tenacity have forced the nation and every region in it to realize that we must preserve for future generations our precious resources of water, air and land. That ethic and practice are now spread to every form of local and national asset including wetlands, forests, farmland, historic buildings and entire urban centers.

Volunteers stood up and were counted on behalf of common decency and adequate services for retarded children, and with those breakthroughs showed the way to many others who then dared to do the same for cerebral palsy, autism, learning disabilities and hundreds of other problems we hadn't even heard of a few decades ago.

With the establishment and growth of Alcoholics Anonymous, volunteers pioneered a model of mutual assistance that today extends to almost every serious personal problem. In almost every community there's a group of people who have weathered the storm and are reaching out to others newly faced with such threatening crises as death of a child, mastectomy, depression, stroke or physical abuse.

And all the time a number of people served by promoting the importance and availability of arts and cultural opportunities as central aspects of a civilized society. One of the great waves of voluntary activity and impact has involved community theater, dance and music to provide opportunities for creativity and enjoyment of it.

The list goes on almost endlessly with preschool education, day care, social services, cancer control, consumerism, population control, conflict resolution, ethnic museums, early infant care, independent living for the elderly, teen pregnancy, substance abuse and job training -- which, when taken together, blanket the U.S. social landscape.

Through our voluntary initiative and independent institutions, ever more Americans worship freely, study quietly, are cared for compassionately, experiment creatively, serve effectively, advocate aggressively and contribute generously. These national traits are constantly beautiful and must remain beautifully constant.

__________

Brian O'Connell is founding president of Independent Sector and professor of public service, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts. Most recently, he is the author of Voices From the Heart: In Celebration of America's Volunteers (Jossey-Bass and Chronicle Books, 1998), and the forthcoming Civil Society: The Underpinnings of American Democracy (University Press of New England and Tufts University, 1999).