D.C. Region's Volunteer Ethic Stronger Than U.S. Average

The study looked at volunteering trends from 2004 to 2006 among 180,000 households nationwide whose members were interviewed as part of the Census Bureau's current population survey, Grimm said. The study notes that fundraising or selling items to raise money was the top activity for area volunteers; the amount of money collected was not measured.

Even in farther-out suburbs such as Prince William County, many volunteer bureaus are bustling, with high-schoolers competing for the chance to help at the local hospital and recruiters hosting teas to enlist seniors at the many new active-adult communities there.

"You're always going to have a certain population that's just so stressed with the commute and the house and the kids. But on the whole, the number of people looking to volunteer increases each year," said Mary Foley, executive director of the Voluntary Action Center of the Greater Prince William Area. "We're a growing community."

Maryland schools require students to complete volunteer work before graduating, which also helps, said Molly Callaway, operations manager for the Montgomery County Volunteer Center.

Yet gaps remain. A third of the region's population may be volunteering, the study's authors noted, but that means two-thirds aren't.

Bilingual volunteers for tutoring and outreach to the burgeoning Latino community are always in short supply, officials said. Agencies that need volunteers with special training can also suffer. For example, there's a waiting list of 40 children at Fairfax CASA, a nonprofit group that trains people to serve as court-appointed advocates for abused and neglected children.

The group is having a harder time finding volunteers because it is not as well-known as other organizations and requires extensive training and a commitment of as many as five hours a week, said Lynda Williams, CASA's executive director.

Some localities are changing the way they ask for help from busy professionals, who may shy away from volunteering because they can't make a weekly commitment. They have started e-mail lists detailing one-time events that volunteers can fit into crammed schedules.

Eisner suggests that the region's localities work with corporations and local businesses to push for more telecommuting -- to keep workers off the roads and give them more time in their neighborhoods -- and increase workplace volunteer programs.

Early Saturday morning, a line stretched a block long in the hot sun at the Arlington Food Assistance Center in a warehouse in the Shirlington area. The center distributed nearly a million pounds of food to local families last year with the help of volunteers who gave 17,000 of hours of service -- the equivalent of eight paid staffers, according to its executive director, Christine Lucas.

The center benefits from its proximity to Washington in a multitude of ways: Its books are kept in order by three federal budget analysts in their off hours, for example.

As volunteers from a local church passed out milk, eggs and other staples to those in need, Arlington residents Heidi and Jon Wood arrived with their son, Lukas, 5.