Working Together to Futureproof Volunteering in Canada

Volunteers touch every aspect of our communities. This National Volunteer Week, as we celebrate those volunteers and their contributions to making our communities more vibrant and wonderful places to live, it is more important than ever to pause and reflect on their collective impact.

This year’s theme, Every Moment Matters, truly gets to the heart of the volunteer experience. At its core, volunteering is a series of moments. A series of little acts. Little connections. But, taken together, these moments contribute exponentially to creating the communities, and the country, that we want to live in.

Along with a chance to celebrate, National Volunteer Week also provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the state of volunteering in Canada. Unfortunately, what we see is not a particularly pretty, or sustainable, picture. Many community-serving organizations are struggling to get volunteers back following the disruption brought on by the pandemic. Demand for services is high, as are rates of loneliness and social isolation. Interpersonal and institutional trust is declining as polarization in our society increases.

The Call for a New, Collaborative Plan

With all of this in mind, and with the goal of optimizing and futureproofing volunteering in Canada, Volunteer Canada recently launched an initiative to develop a National Volunteer Action Strategy.

Canada’s last Volunteer Strategy was released in 1967 to coincide with the centennial. That strategy aimed to foster a spirit of unity and pride in the country and to encourage everyone to contribute their time and skills. While those goals still resonate today, Canada’s new strategy must go beyond the inspirational to provide an integrated, consistent, and cohesive approach at the national level to protect, support, and facilitate volunteering.

In 2019, a Special Senate Committee on Canada’s charitable sector urged the federal government to develop . The Committee identified several key challenges, including funding for the sector, consistent rules to govern it, and the need for a “home” for volunteering within the federal government.

With the volunteer sector at a tipping point, it was time to revisit the Committee’s recommendations, consult with diverse and far-reaching stakeholder groups, and start the process of building a bold new vision for volunteering that would solidify it as a foundational component of building a strong, inclusive, and resilient future for Canada.

Challenges Facing the Charitable Sector

The wide-ranging stakeholder consultations that Volunteer Canada has done to date confirmed the Senate Committee’s recommendations and identified several key difficulties faced by the sector today.

Funding:

• Lack of sustainable, flexible, and unrestricted core funding
• Low investment in addressing capacity issues in volunteer management
• Lack of a comprehensive volunteering support infrastructure

Capacity:

• Lack of resources and capacity to engage and manage volunteers in a sustainable way
• Lack of resources to communicate and engage in cross-sectoral dialogue
• Lack of capacity to implement robust governance practices, particularly for smaller organizations
• Lack of resources and capacity to reach and engage prospective volunteers

Research:

• Lack of comprehensive data on the nonprofit and charitable sector
• Gap in comprehensive, frequent, and detailed data and analyses for specific breakdowns in volunteer trends

Systems and frameworks:

• Lack of consistency in application of screening standards
• Lack of legislative framework for managing and supporting volunteers
• Lack of a national advisory structure on volunteering to guide and inform policy making

How Corporations Can Help Create Change

Through Volunteer Canada’s collaborative discussions and shared experiences with our corporate members and consulting clients, we’ve uncovered key strategies and insights to tackle some of the challenges faced today:

Give employees choice​. While dedicated “day of service” group volunteering is still a valuable and popular tactic, also providing virtual volunteering and flexible opportunities can be transformational. Accessible and flexible options allow remote and field employees to weave volunteering into their schedules and can strengthen connections within nationwide employee resource groups for individuals who may otherwise not be able to meet in person.

Define and celebrate “acts of kindness” in your idea of “what counts”.  Provide a series of recommendations of giving back activities that qualify as ad hoc, expanding “what counts” beyond traditional volunteering definitions. This can include helping a neighbour, supporting your child’s school event or sport team, or cleaning up a neglected public space. These hours can be captured in your technology platform and rewarded.

Learning is as important as doing (sometimes more so). Consider providing lunch and learns, or on-demand presentations outlining why volunteering is essential within our communities.  Or, if you are focusing on supporting a certain impact area such as youth or hunger, provide context to the challenges and solutions.  This offers a deeper understanding and appreciation of the work and can lead to higher participation and satisfaction levels.

Global Problem, Local Solutions

Canada isn’t the first country to recognize the need for a strategy that recognizes the value of volunteering and strives to provide it with the policies, strategies, and investments to strengthen the sector and ensure its long-term sustainability. Australia, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Scotland are some countries that have developed a strategy to futureproof volunteering.

While every country’s experience is different, there is a lot to learn from the processes used to develop the strategy. For instance, each strategy was developed with a highly consultative and multi-stakeholder approach, and each one identified one government department that would act as a lead alongside a national advisory or steering body. In addition, each strategy committed to a specific timeframe for action.

The National Volunteer Action Strategy

At Volunteer Canada, we aim to take this international guidance to heart as we work to develop and launch a 10-year National Volunteer Action Strategy in 2025. The goal is for that strategy to provide a shared vision for inclusive participation and volunteering that recognizes, amplifies, promotes, and supports the many different ways that Canadians work together to build strong, inclusive, and connected communities. Specifically, the strategy will strive to enhance existing supports and structures to help with the challenges detailed above; create new participation and engagement frameworks and pathways; and address critical economic, cultural, and social cohesion challenges.

First steps in the strategy development process include establishing a 10 to 12-member National Advisory Committee to provide advice, build momentum and support, and raise visibility. In addition, we will create a Technical Resource Committee, which will operate beyond the development of the strategy, to provide input into important discussions related to policy, infrastructure, research, and tools.

You can read more about the process to date and how your organization or business can get involved by visiting www.volunteerstrategy.ca and downloading A Roadmap to Meet the Moment: Co-Creating a National Volunteer Action Strategy for Canada.