There are plenty of ways to make a dent in New York’s social and economic ills without giving a penny, as demonstrated by the volunteers honored yesterday by the Community Service Society. A finance supervisor at UPS, Dionis Cochrane, serves as a mentor for boys in the fourth and fifth grades. Gregory Browne, the manager of community affairs at Maximus, which consults to local and state governments, helps inmates at Rikers Island.

Two Pfizer employees, Mary Racho and Melissa Maxwell-Avila, spent six months working for non-governmental organizations in India. Their company sponsored their work as part of its Global Health Fellows program.

Three customer-service representatives at Con Edison, Gloria Teel, Joan Sandiford, and Kelia Williamson, perform at hospitals and senior centers as members of the company’s chorus, aptly named A Light Touch. The group, founded in 1982, has more than a dozen singers, a bassist, and a pianist.

Those volunteers and about 100 others were selected by their employers to receive the honors, presented at a luncheon at Tavern on the Green.

Corporations sponsor the event to help raise money for the Community Service Society’s Retired & Senior Volunteer Program, which launched the national movement to engage retired people in bettering society. This year’s corporate participants were Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Altria Corporate Services Incorporated, Colgate-Palmolive, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Deloitte & Touche, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Maximus, Pfizer, JP Morgan Chase, Macy’s, New York Power Authority, and United Parcel Service. The event raised $40,000.

“We’re expecting samples of Viagra on our way out,” the emcee of the program, the journalist Jeffrey Toobin, said to the Pfizer employees.

Mr. Toobin’s mother, Marlene Sanders, is chairwoman of the fund-raising group that supports the Retired & Senior Volunteer Program, Friends of RSVP.

Retirees who volunteer have many ways to donate their time. One of the most rewarding options is to join the Experience Corps, an intensive program focused on literacy that requires 16 hours a week during the school year.

An East Flatbush resident, Charles Johnson, spends that time at P.S. 40 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, working one-on-one with first- and second-graders who are below their grade reading level.

“I was getting sick and tired of hearing about children falling through the cracks and getting no help from black males,” Mr. Johnson said.

While the program emphasizes academics, Mr. Johnson, who just finished his fourth year as a volunteer, has more to offer.

“I’ve found that kids with the difficulties, they want to be seen and heard. They want to be recognized. Sometimes they just want to talk about something,” Mr. Johnson said.

He likes listening. “There’s quite a bit of fulfillment. It’s a balance. I give to it, and it gives something back to me,” he said.

Mr. Johnson is one of 9,000 New Yorkers who find volunteer work through the Community Service Society. Five-thousand of those volunteers are black and Hispanic.

“Most of our volunteers are working-class,” the Community Service Society’s president, David Jones, said. “We need volunteers who connect to the people they are trying to help.”