About one out of four local residents donated their time for volunteer work last year, placing Hawai'i near the bottom of a new national study on volunteering.

But the heads of several local social services agencies said they believe that the study understates the actual amount of volunteer work done in Hawai'i.

In a report released today, the Corporation for National & Community Service said that 25.1 percent of Island residents donated their time in 2006, placing Hawai'i 43rd out of 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The volunteer rate in Utah, the top state in the study, was nearly double that of Hawai'i's at 45.9 percent while Nevada had the lowest rate at 17.5 percent, the federal agency said.

The report comes after the Corporation rated Hawai'i 44th for volunteerism in 2005.

"I'm somewhat surprised by the ranking," said Kate Bepko, volunteer and public relations manager for the Institute for Human Services, which is one of the largest homeless service providers in Hawai'i and relies on a database of over 3,000 volunteers.

"In my experience, people are interested in doing volunteer work here."

The study found that Hawai'i's 240,000 volunteers conducted 39.6 million hours of service in 2006, or about $743 million of service to the state.

Local college students had a volunteer rate of 37.4 percent, which ranked fourth in the nation and exceeded the national rate of 29.6 percent, the study said.

The report also found that local participation in education or youth-service organizations almost doubled from a rate of 16.5 percent in 1989 to 29.5 percent in 2006 and surpassed religious organizations as the most popular type of volunteer organization.

Dennis Brown, president and chief executive officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Honolulu, believes that the report doesn't provide a complete picture of volunteerism in Hawai'i.

Brown, whose organization will rely on about 1,000 volunteers this year, said volunteerism in Hawai'i comes in varying levels of work intensity. It includes parents who contribute time to fundraisers and parent teacher associations, board members who attend monthly meetings of local nonprofits to the day-to-day volunteers that work for various social services agencies.

When you include all of those areas, members of the local community are very generous in volunteering their time, he said.

"I don't believe that we can be that low," said Brown.

Nationally, 61.2 million adults volunteered throughout the United States in 2006, which was 26.7 percent of the population.

While that's down from the 65.4 million volunteers, or 28.8 percent of the population, in 2005, the national volunteer rate remains at historically high levels and compared to past decades, the Corporation said.

Reach Rick Daysog at rdaysog@honoluluadvertiser.com.