The University of Pennsylvania's Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society studied 2,644 active LDS members and measured their annual volunteer hours. The findings led researchers to describe active Latter-day Saints as "the most prosocial members of American society."
Active LDS members volunteer an average of 430 hours per year. The national average is 48 hours. That is a 7x difference.
The breakdown: 242 hours in religious service, 152 hours in community service, and 34 hours in non-Church volunteering. Pew Research separately confirmed that 72% of LDS members volunteered in the past year — the highest of any religious group by a 20-percentage-point margin.
The annual volunteer value per active LDS member is approximately $9,140.
Evangelical Protestants, the next highest group, average approximately 220 hours per household — roughly half the LDS rate. Catholics and Mainline Protestants average approximately 140 hours.
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