Serve Virginia today launched the 2025 Virginia Community Engagement Index (VCEI) survey, a comprehensive study to understand the state of service, volunteerism, and civic action in Virginia. Community members are invited to complete the online survey in order to share perspectives and experiences from their lives and community. The survey is available for anyone to take at https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8147234/4d8fc75fa0e0.
Originally launched in 2023, the VCEI was designed by a cross-sector core team that solicited survey responses from thousands of Virginians to produce insights on volunteerism, informal helping, and other civic actions across the Commonwealth. The 2025 VCEI will collect new data in order to build on and provide comparison to the baselines established by the 2023 survey.
According to VCEI data from 2023, Virginians dedicate time to organizations that address the needs they care about most. Education and public health & well-being ranked as high priorities across the state. This baseline data also showed that 7 out of 10 people reported helping others through informal service with 50%+ saying they do so more than once a month.
“The VCEI has already proven invaluable in defining community priorities and helping inform community-building work across the Commonwealth,” says Kathy J. Spangler, Director of Serve Virginia. “With this new survey and its resulting data, we will have an unprecedented level of insight into community engagement in Virginia’s communities and be better equipped to mobilize around effective solutions to address community priorities and needs.”
In addition, the 2025 VCEI will build on data collected every two years by AmeriCorps and the U.S. Census Bureau for the Volunteering and Civic Life in America (VCLA) research, the most robust survey about civic engagement across the country and over time. The most recent VCLA data was released in 2024 and showed that Virginia’s formal volunteering rate increased 4.4 percentage points and informal volunteering rate increased 7.3 percentage points—the 2nd highest state increase in informal volunteering nationwide.
The 2025 VCEI will bring an additional level of regional and local focus to this data and is likely to also demonstrate a growth in volunteerism and community engagement across the Commonwealth. Further, insights from the 2025 VCEI will help inform how communities mobilize using service and volunteerism as an asset to address pressing needs and priorities, while inspiring all Virginians to get involved and make a difference.
Learn more about the 2025 VCEI at ServeVirginia.org/vcei-2025.
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