It's not that people in those cities are necessarily kinder or gentler. They just have the right circumstances for volunteering: They feel connected to their communities, have more education, own their own homes, spend less time commuting and have more opportunities to give back, the report says.

For instance, 70% of Minneapolis-area families own their own homes. It had the highest overall volunteer rate at 40.5%, says the report. By contrast, Honolulu, where only 49% own homes, ranked 42nd with a 23.3% rate of volunteering.

Residents of cities where people spend a lot of time commuting or live in apartments, by contrast, tend to feel less connected to their communities, so they don't volunteer as much. Cities that ranked lowest are New York, Miami and Las Vegas.

Residents of rural areas volunteer more than urban areas, the report says.

This is the first time it has ranked cities.

Communities may not be able to do anything right away to improve such structural impediments as education levels or homeownership rates, Grimm says, but they can come up with creative solutions such as urging businesses to allow more telecommuting and helping organizations reach out in new ways — for instance, online.

Why would communities care where they rank?  There is a growing amount of research that has been demonstrating that volunteering is not something  that's just nice to do in the community.

Volunteers contribute about 8.2 billion hours — worth about $152 billion a year — and also provide instrumental help to schools and mentoring programs, he says. If that's not enough reason to go out and do good, volunteering is actually good for you, says Stephen Post, a bioethics professor at Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine in Cleveland.

With baby boomers rapidly aging, volunteering will become even more important.  Seniors, who are increasingly retiring where they are planted, are becoming much more active as volunteers.

The corporation, an independent federal agency which also runs AmeriCorps, based the report on phone and in-person interviews with 180,000 households conducted by the Census Bureau each September from 2004 to 2006.

Metro areas with the most helping hands

The 50 metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of residents ages 16 and older who volunteered in 2006:

Rank	Metro area	%.
1	Minneapolis-St. Paul	40.5%
2	Salt Lake City	38.4%
3	Austin	38.1%
4	Omaha	37.8%
5	Seattle	36.3%
6	Portland, Ore.	35.8%
7	Kansas City	34.9%
8	Milwaukee	34.4%
9	Charlotte	34.3%
10	Tulsa	33.7%
11	Cincinnati	33.4%
12	Columbus, Ohio	33.3%
13	Pittsburgh	32.6%
14	Bridgeport, Conn.	32.3%
15	Washington	31.9%
16	Louisville	31.6%
17	Denver	31.5%
18	St. Louis	30.9%
19	Nashville	30.5%
20	Dallas	30.3%
20	Oklahoma City	30.3%
22	New Haven, Conn.	30.2%
23	Hartford, Conn.	29.6%
23	San Francisco	29.6%
25	San Diego	29.2%
26	Baltimore	28.6%
27	Albuquerque	27.8%
28	Indianapolis	27.7%
29	Richmond, Va.	27.6%
30	Boston	27.5%
30	Cleveland	27.5%
32	Chicago	27.4%
32	San Jose, Calif.	27.4%
34	Detroit	27.0%
35	San Antonio	26.7%
36	Philadelphia	26.6%
37	Sacramento	26.5%
38	Atlanta	26.1%
39	Houston	25.8%
39	Tampa	25.8%
41	Phoenix	23.5%
42	Honolulu	23.3%
42	Providence	23.3%
44	Los Angeles	22.3%
45	Orlando	22.2%
46	Riverside, Calif.	20.6%
47	Virginia Beach	19.3%
48	New York	18.7%
49	Miami	16.1%
50	Las Vegas	14.4%

Source: Volunteering in America: 2007 City Trends and Rankings by the Corporation for National and Community Service