Nation of Hypocrites? Shrinking the National "Service Gap"

A week ago, President Barack Obama called for a new era of personal responsibility and national service to overcome the current challenges facing America. Today, Porter Novelli released some interesting research that shows how far we have to go.

Porter Novelli's study shows a significant "service gap," the difference between the number of people who claim specific causes are important to them and those who actually have donated time to the cause.

For high profile categories like health research and environmental causes, the gap is over 60 percentage points. The smallest gap was volunteer care giving at 34 percentage points, but that was largely due to less interest in the cause, not more participation. When we do get involved, it's often on behalf of our children. Improving schools and mentoring youth had the highest engagement at 17 percent.

The good news is that the data comes from a survey conducted in June 2008 and we've seen signs that Americans are making a renewed commitment to service.

If this positive trend is to continue, organizations are going to have to prepare themselves for different levels of engagement. With increasing unemployment, there certainly will be a number of committed volunteers on which to build programs. But there also needs to be a move to tap those who have less available time and fewer resources in unique and interesting ways.

The way to do that seems to be bringing these problems "home" for Americans. The categories that have the highest level of participation are those that personally impact us through our loved ones - caring for our children, parents and disabled relatives. Helping connect us on a personal level with systemic social problems like homelessness, poverty, starvation, literacy and health research will be a key challenge for closing the "Service Gap."