Boulder’s Fourth of July celebration lacked some of its usual sparkle this year. The parade and fireworks were held, but not the usual egg-on-a-spoon races, dunk tank and other post-parade activities in Veterans Park.
Why? There weren’t enough volunteers to organize them.
The absence of the traditional activities was felt by people who responded to a query the Boulder Monitor posted on Facebook July 12. Comments have been edited for clarity and style.
“We heard lots of comments at the fireworks stand that people were disappointed the activities weren’t happening,” wrote Carmen Bellanger-Craft, a Kiwanis volunteer. “We need more and younger volunteers. Some of us older folks are getting tired of putting on so many different events for Boulder. If the younger crowd doesn’t start stepping up some of these events may or will go away! We don’t want that to happen.”
“We missed the activities, too, as we have worked on them as volunteers for the past three years,” wrote Christina Binkowski of Boulder. “We simply need more volunteers to help organize the event. It’s such a fun day and so much fun to plan, but this year there were no volunteers to help the four of us.”
“People want an event, but they don’t realize the work that goes into it,” Boulder resident and frequent volunteer Connie Grenz commented in a recent interview.
The diminishing pool of volunteers in Boulder and elsewhere in Jefferson County isn’t unique. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2014 to 2015 the national overall volunteerism rate declined by 0.4 percentage points to 24.9% — a 15-year low. Broken down, the rate of volunteerism in rural areas declined from a high of 30.9% in 2003 to an all-time low of 25.2% in 2015; in suburban areas, the rate dropped from a high of 30.1% in 2003 to an all-time low of 25.3% in 2015, according to the report. Meanwhile, according to the report, the urban volunteerism rate of 23.1% in 2015 was the same as it was in 2002.
The decline of volunteers has significant ramifications in Jefferson County, where in addition to events such as the Fourth of July many organizations depend partly or wholly on volunteers. The Jefferson County Fair and Rodeo, the Animal Shelter and Care Committee, the Basin Water and Sewer Board, library boards — not to mention every fire department and most EMS services — are among the many that rely on the help and commitment of those willing to offer their time for no pay.
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The Monitor recently posted two separate surveys about volunteering, on March 21 and June 4. They garnered 18 and two responses, respectively.
All of those who responded to the March 21 survey reported being active volunteers. Ten (55.6%) reported being 51 years old or older, seven (38.9%) reported being between 34 and 50, and one reported being between 19 and 33. Seven respondents reported being retired or “semi-retired.”
When asked why they volunteer, many wrote it was because they want to give back to the community or help its people. Other reasons included a love for a cause/place/community; a belief in volunteering as civic duty; and the desire to feel good, make a difference or be a part of the community fabric.
The latter item gets at the concept of “social capital,” which the University of Maryland’s Do Good Institute — in a report titled “Where Are America’s Volunteers?” — defines as being generated by positive interactions among people and closely related to how, and how often, people engage in civic and social affairs, such as helping family, friends and neighbors and attending community events.
According to the Institute’s report, areas with the most “social capital” historically have been those with the highest rates of volunteerism, typically rural and suburban areas. However, the report shows that those areas have seen the greatest decline in volunteerism in recent years, even when compared to metropolitan and urban areas that historically have lower social capital.
The Do Good Institute has also found that areas with higher rates of poverty and unemployment, a lower rate of homeownership, a higher percentage of multi-unit homes, lower median income, higher average commute times, denser populations, lower education levels among residents and fewer nonprofits per 1,000 residents usually have lower volunteer rates.
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Grenz, a retired occupational therapist, volunteers with the Boulder Food Co-op, the Food Forest, the Boulder United Methodist Church and the Boulder Fitness Club — which she co-founded — among others.
“People don’t volunteer because they want to give back to their community,” she said, “They do it because people see an absence of what they want and act to make it happen. I want food from the co-op that is organic and healthy and cheap, I want a place in Boulder where I can work out, and until people see an absence of something they want, they aren’t going to volunteer.”
Volunteering has been a lifelong activity for Grenz. She volunteered regularly in Utopia, Texas before moving to Boulder. Noting the city’s “great group of volunteers,” she said she has noticed a shrinking volunteer pool but isn’t sure what’s causing it. It may be due to people poorly managing their time, she said, or feeling that careers or child-rearing leave no time to volunteer.
“I don’t have a job or elementary or high school kids now, so I have more time to volunteer,” Grenz said. “But I used to have kids and work a job and still volunteered, so I don’t know why other people can’t.”
Grenz also said that in her experience, people get involved because they know people who are involved. Now, because she has no school-age children, she infrequently interacts with people who do and therefore can’t recruit them.
North Jefferson County Library Director Carly Delsigne has witnessed volunteerism’s decline firsthand. She described the Friends of the Library-North — a volunteer group that helps with various projects for Clancy and Montana City libraries — as a “remarkable group of incredibly nice people who help me whenever I ask,” yet acknowledged that aging members are less able to do the physically intensive tasks —such as moving bookshelves during a renovation — the libraries frequently require.
Delsigne said she has discussed the lack of new volunteers with other librarians across Montana, and that a group of them are meeting at Montana State Library in August to discuss the issue.
Some people, such as Boulder resident Pertrisha Gray, may want to volunteer but don’t know what opportunities exist.
Gray moved two years ago with her family to Boulder from Washington, where she often volunteered to collect donations for the local Relay for Life chapter. She said she is open to volunteer whenever she is needed, but hasn’t yet volunteered in Boulder because she has never been alerted to any opportunities. “I didn’t know they needed volunteers on the Fourth,” she said. “I never heard anything about it.”
Facebook user Lauren Rafferty Carney echoed Gray’s sentiments in a response to the Monitor’s Facebook query. “My grandkids and I missed not having the games, vendors and other things at Veterans Park for the 4th,” she wrote. “I would willingly volunteer to help with any event. I never hear anything about volunteers being needed. I don’t know how requests for volunteers are announced.”
Continuing, Carney touched upon another factor potentially contributing to volunteerism’s decline.
“If planning meetings are scheduled, they need to be done in the evenings,” Carney wrote. “All the younger folks, and a number of older folks, work during the days. The days seem to be when the Kiwanis and other groups meet.”
Coupled with the problem of lack of volunteers is the problem of the age of the people who are volunteering. Jefferson County organizations that are all or mostly all volunteer-run, including the Heritage Center in Boulder, the Clancy Old Red Schoolhouse and the Boulder Fitness Club, have a majority of older members.
Many long-time volunteers and members of these organizations, such as Ellen Rae Thiel, 80, of the Heritage Center in Boulder, are slowly starting to cut back. For many of them, it’s age and burn out. “I’m getting old and tired, I guess that’s the excuse,” Thiel said. “I try to say no once in a while.”
The pressing question is, once these people decide to pull back or can no longer volunteer, who will step up to take their places?
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One of the people that answered a Monitor survey is Boulder resident and active volunteer Bear Taylor, 40, who moved here from Utah about five years ago. He is a member of the Boulder City Council, the Boulder — Bull Mountain Volunteer Fire Department, and a group that aims to motivate people to “live better” by getting out and exercising. He also dresses up as Santa at Christmas time and helps out with Kiwanis when he can.
Before he moved to Boulder, Taylor said in a recent interview that he belonged to a nonprofit offroad trail club where he logged hundreds of volunteer hours a year doing trail maintenance, toy drives and Sub for Santa programs. He attributes his serving his community to having grown up in a family with a strong sense of civic duty, and has been volunteering since he was a child.
Taylor has noticed gaps in volunteering in Boulder. “There are always vacancies,” he said. “We need to show younger people that we need to step up and do something, otherwise the fairs and events that Boulder is known for will go away.”
“People are too busy in their heads,” he said. “We say we never have time to do anything, that we don’t have time to help. We’re too focused on moving forward.”
Taylor noted that he might be able to volunteer more because his job as a maintenance technician for the Montana Department of Transportation is more flexible than others might be, allowing him the time and space to serve his community.
“I have a hard time saying no when people need help,” he said.
In June Taylor filed to run for election to his seat on the City Council, to which he was appointed earlier this year. As of July 23 no one else had filed to run to fill that seat, nor has anyone filed to campaign for another council opening.
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One thing Delsigne said she’s used effectively to get younger volunteers is to make events “task oriented.” She said that rather than the traditional volunteer set-up, where volunteers get a card and sign a volunteer contract pledging their service to a group, she takes a more informal approach where she’ll reach out to volunteers with a specific task in mind. This approach has yielded positive results, she said.
Meanwhile, Boulder Elementary School is hoping to instill lifelong service in its younger students by way of the Century 21 Program, the school’s after-school and summer program. It has a strong service learning component that encourages students, specifically fifth through eighth graders, to give back to their community.
The Century 21 Program was founded in 2003 anded funded with a federal grant. The service learning component was founded a few years later by Rochelle Hesford, the program’s current director, and Jefferson High teacher Dawn Smartnick, in response to a perceived disconnect between middle-school aged kids and community service.
The service learning portion does several outreach projects a year. These include an annual winter coat drive, visiting the Bear Grass Suites Retirement Home in Boulder and fundraising for equipment on the middle-school side of the Boulder Elementary playground, Hesford said. The Century 21 Program also includes a science, technology, engineering, arts and math club and started a food drive and pantry at Jefferson High.
According to Hesford, the program’s goal is to find the students’ likes and interests and find ways to apply that to community service.
Their longest-running project, spanning over 10 years, has been to build a half-basketball court in Centennial Park in Boulder. The group has been working to raise the money through bake sales and applying for grants, Hesford said. The cement for the basketball court was laid down July 18.
Boulder Elementary isn’t the only Jefferson County school aiming to encourage students to give back to its community. The Century 21 Program started offering a summer program to the elementary school in Basin this year, and Montana City School offers for each grade an “Acts of Kindness” class that focuses on doing good in the community. For the past two years, seventh-graders taking the class have served the community by holding an annual “Bark-B-Que” to benefit the Lewis and Clark Humane Society.
As for Boulder’s annual Fourth of July celebration, all may not be lost. In the comments of the Monitor’s Facebook query, Christina Binkowski, who was encouraged by all the statements of support of the festivities, wrote: “ It’s nice to hear that the last few years we all did the 4th in the park was enjoyed. Let’s all plan to meet next year April/May to get more volunteers. We all had a lot of fun putting the event together.”
