SALON

Wednesday, Apr 25, 2012 6:15 AM UTC

Looking for a few good boomers to help others

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Looking for a few good boomers to help othersIn this photo taken Thursday, April 17, 2012, Mike Carr assists a client at Community Action of Northeast Indiana, in Fort Wayne, Ind. Local charities and nonprofits are looking for a few good baby boomers, well lots of them actually, to roll up their sleeves to help local schools, soup kitchens, and people in need. Carr, who retired about a year ago as an accountant for Verizon Communications, volunteers with low-income people and military families. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)(Credit: AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Local charities and nonprofits are looking for a few good baby boomers — well, lots of them, actually — to roll up their sleeves to help local schools, soup kitchens and others in need.

Boomers are attractive volunteers, and it’s not just the sheer strength of their numbers — 77 million. They are living longer. They are more educated than previous generations. And, especially appealing: They bring well-honed skills and years of real-world work and life experience.

“What we have with the transition of the boomers across the traditional age of retirement is a great opportunity,” says Dr. Erwin Tan, who heads the Senior Corps program at the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency in Washington. Senior Corps helps connect older Americans to service jobs.

“The question for us is how can we as a country not afford to mobilize this huge source of human capital to meet the vital needs of our communities,” said Tan, a geriatrician. He says nonprofits are retooling to attract more boomers by offering a variety of skills-based opportunities as well as more flexibility, such as nontraditional hours or projects that don’t require a trip to the office and can be completed at home.

Mike Carr of Fort Wayne, Ind., is exactly the kind of skillful boomer sought by communities.

Carr, 65, retired about a year ago as an accountant for Verizon Communications. Instead of golfing or parking himself on the couch, he volunteers with low-income people and military families, helping them prepare and file their tax returns.

Carr also volunteers as treasurer for a church group and helps people with paperwork for food stamps and unemployment.

“There’s so much in the news today that’s very negative and a lot of it I can’t do a whole lot about,” says Carr. “But at least here in the community that I live in, there are some things that I can do to help others.”

About a third of boomers, ages 48 to 66 years, tend to gravitate toward opportunities with a religious underpinning, according to CNCS figures. That was followed by volunteer opportunities in education, 22 percent; social service, 14 percent; and hospitals, 8 percent.

The percentage of boomers volunteering these days, however, is on the decline.

Nearly 22 million baby boomers gave their time in communities across the country in 2010. That’s about 28.8 percent of boomers, down slightly from 29.9 percent in 2007 and from 33.5 percent in 2003, according to the community service corporation.

“What I think we’re seeing is baby boomers coming out of the period of peak volunteering,” says Nathan Dietz, former associate director of research at CNCS and now a senior program manager with The Partnership for Public Service. “They are getting older, and people as they get older volunteer a little less often.”

Peak age for volunteering tends to be in the mid-30s and 40s, says Dietz, when married couples and those with children are more likely to be exposed to situations in which people need volunteers — say, coaching for a child’s soccer team or giving time to local scouts or schoolchildren as a mentor or group leader.

Many boomers are also delaying retirement and working into their golden years because their nest eggs have taken a hit in the last few years, giving them less time to volunteer.

An August 2011 Associated Press-National Constitution Center Poll found that 65 percent of baby boomers had done some type of volunteer activities through or for an organization over the past year. That is significantly less than adults younger than boomers. The top reasons baby boomers did not volunteer in the past year were not having the time, 69 percent, and health issues or physical limitations, 19 percent.

For boomer Kathy Herrala in Negaunee, Mich., volunteer service started when her now-grown children were young, in Girl Scouts and the school orchestra, and continues into retirement.

“It gives me a sense of satisfaction knowing you can do something to help someone else,” says 60-year-old Herrala, who retired four years ago from her longtime job recruiting volunteers for Marquette County.

Not only is Herrala volunteering as part of an American Red Cross team dispatched to disasters, but she also now has time to turn to a great passion of hers: health care.

Herrala says she’s seen too many people in desperate need of health care, so she began volunteering with a program called the Medical Care Access Coalition. It provides medical care to low-income people without insurance.

One experience Herrala says she’ll never forget was the day a woman without dental care came to her with dentures that didn’t fit properly. Every time the woman needed to talk, she had to take out her teeth so she could speak. Herrala helped her find a dentist.

“We all have to give back,” says Herrala. “A part of paying for our spot on Earth is to help those who need help.”

___

Associated Press News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

More Jennifer C. Kerr.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations