While New York City has no shortage of charitable benefactors — Mayor Bloomberg is among a handful of city residents who made BusinessWeek’s list of America’s “most generous philanthropists” — the city has one of the nation’s lowest rates of volunteerism, a new study shows.

In a report gauging the percentage of residents who participated in hands-on volunteer work in the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, New York ranked 48, behind only Miami and Las Vegas. The first-of-its-kind study, to be released today by the Corporation for National & Community Service in Washington, links low rates of home ownership, high population density, and longer-than-average reported commutes — New York City fits into all three categories — to lower levels of volunteerism.

The director of the Corporation for National & Community Service, Robert Grimm Jr., said New Yorkers’ long commutes to work and their busy schedules create a significant hurdle to volunteerism. “New Yorkers spend less time in their neighborhood; they have less time with their kids,” he said.

Like many other American cities, New York suffers from a “leaky bucket,” failing to retain 42% of its volunteers from year-to-year, according to Mr. Grimm. He said promoting youth involvement in community service and providing volunteers with training and project management could increase the retention rate.

Each year, 18.7% of New York-area residents, or about 2.7 million people, do some form of volunteer work, the study shows. Combined, New Yorkers volunteer about 341 million hours annually, which the study sponsor has valued at about $6.4 billion.

With a volunteerism rate of 40.5%, individuals living in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area are the most likely to participate in community service. By contrast, 14.4% of Las Vegas residents reported volunteering.

A spokesman in Mayor Bloomberg’s office yesterday took issue with the study, saying that it measures volunteerism subjectively, based on the self-identification of the 100,000 respondents; and measures the quantity of service hours, but not the quality of the volunteer work.
About 10,000 survey respondents lived in the New York metropolitan area.

“While we do not agree with the survey’s methodology, it is a good reminder that there are plenty of organizations and causes throughout the five boroughs that need dedicated volunteers,” the executive director of the Mayor’s Volunteer Center of New York City, Nazli Parvizi, said in a statement.

Ms. Parvizi yesterday said New Yorkers could call 311 to find hundreds of opportunities to volunteer through the city’s Community Assistance Unit.

Earlier this year, Mr. Bloomberg merged the Community Assistance Unit and the Volunteer Center in what staffers said is an effort to employ volunteers — not just government resources — to improve the quality of life in city neighborhoods.

A founder of SmartVolunteer, an organization that connects local professionals with skills-based service opportunities, Howard Felson, said New Yorkers often worry about not having the time or the needed expertise to be a volunteer. “Sophisticated professionals view their time as so valuable that they say, ‘I’ll probably have more impact if I give $1,000 than if I work the line in a soup kitchen for two hours.'”

Mr. Felson, a lawyer who earlier this year started the organization with four friends, surmised that more New Yorkers would do more hands-on volunteer work if they could draw on their professional background. Through its Web site, SmartVolunteer can set up an attorney with pro bono legal work, or put a public relations professional in charge of publicity for a charity fund raiser. “Instead of just being another warm body painting a house, they’re giving in a smarter way, and they’re building their own skill set,” he said.

Americans donate in time the equivalent of $152 billion a year, according to the Corporation for National & Community Service. Its chief executive officer, David Eisner, said the organization is working with nonprofits to engage new volunteers and retain existing volunteers. He said the goal is to increase the number of adult volunteers by 2010 to 75 million — up from 61 million.