The president of the Volunteer Management Professionals of Canada issues a call to advocate for investment in Canada's chronically underfunded volunteering ecosystem, starting with a 10-question survey for leaders of volunteers across Canada.
I’m guessing you saw something about volunteering in April – that the algorithms allowed you to see that April 18 to 25 was National Volunteer Week here in Canada, an annual week of awareness and celebration of the giving of time, talent, and care.
Maybe you heard that total volunteering, last measured in 2023, provided 4.1 billion hours of support to Canadians – equivalent to 2.4 million full-time jobs (or, for perspective, almost double the entire workforce of Canada’s four easternmost provinces).
That is quite a lot.
However, you may also know that that number is down 900,000,000 hours annually (the equivalent of 500,000 full-time jobs) since 2018. This is despite Canada’s population growing by more than three million people during that span.
There is still lots of volunteering happening, thus the celebration, but we know there should be more, both by the need being greater and 45% of not-for-profits saying they need more help from volunteers. Interestingly, an Ontario poll shared that more than 50% of people seeking volunteer roles struggled, because they had a hard time finding something they saw as a match or the process kept them waiting or left them confused.
So as we move on from our kudos and give well-deserved recognition, I want to issue a call to action. Chronic underfunding of volunteering systems, infrastructure, and resources has led to our current environment. The Charity Insights Canada Project, which has been a wealth of knowledge, rightly concluded that investment here would help but missed that since 2001 there has not been significant investment in Canada’s volunteer infrastructure. This is a missing piece of key infrastructure that has allowed years of erosion in volunteering communities.
Fig 1: General trends of volunteerism in Canada
As a lifelong volunteer and leader of volunteers, across several sectors, I have seen this infrastructure up close and have witnessed, like many colleagues, significant shifts in it. While complexity and demands have steadily increased, volunteer centres have shrunk, the profession of volunteer engagement has eroded, and access to resources has contracted. College programs are closing, regional associations folding, membership dropping at other associations, teams of professionals at national not-for-profits shrinking; many leaders of volunteers must add more to their plates and titles to maintain full-time jobs, even though leading a volunteering community is more than a full-time job at most organizations. Most concerning from my perspective, many leaders of volunteers don’t see this job as a career and aren’t staying in roles or the field long-term.
I am asking all of us who see the value of volunteering and who care for the social good in Canada to come together to advocate for investment in our volunteer engagement infrastructure.
This call ties in to the amazing work Volunteer Canada is doing with its national action strategy and the new Canadian Principles for Volunteer Involvement and more, but it also comes from those in the volunteer engagement profession and others doing the impactful work of supporting volunteerism across our country.
To truly help people, we must build great systems, invest in leaders, and provide space for tools and innovation. We also need to have a voice to shape priorities, demonstrate value, and reinforce culture. That means setting up everyone who volunteers or could volunteer – and those who support them – for success.
I’ve identified three essential areas where investment would empower volunteering, and the organizations that depend on it, to thrive:
- Awareness and opportunity
Every volunteering journey begins with awareness and grows into meaningful opportunity. - Leadership and belonging
Every volunteer deserves to feel valued, supported, set up for success, and connected within a strong volunteering community. - Resources and innovation
Sustainable systems require tools, technology, and the capacity to innovate and grow.
With real investment in all three, we could see a volunteering revolution and resurgence.
Many amazing people are working toward this vision, yet governments and other funders broadly miss this value. The federal government made no comment during National Volunteer Week. Furthermore, 2026 is the international year of the volunteer – and federal funding has actually been reduced.
So let’s craft a collective vision and call for what a well-funded volunteering ecosystem would mean.
1. Create awareness and opportunity by revitalizing volunteer centres: These organizations have served as opportunity hubs, resource networks, and convening spaces for more than 40 years. Many operate on slim budgets and persist by spending much of their time and strategy engaging in activities beyond their missions to raise money and by charging not-for-profits for services.
Getting attention itself is a job in this new culture of screens and so many distractions. Volunteer centres can be magnifiers for small not-for-profits and convening spaces for growth and connection.
If we provided sustainable funds to revive and sustain volunteer centres, hired and trained permanent staff to engage communities, and freed them from the need to charge fees for services and to look for grants and sponsors (competing with those not-for-profits they are trying to strengthen), they’d have more time and energy to raise awareness and prepare people to volunteer. They could support youth, newcomers, companies, seniors, and others to find the right fit and help them on the journey to get there.
2. Foster leadership and belonging by strengthening leadership in volunteer engagement: Our profession is a small but mighty one, but it is in decline. Volunteer engagement was declared a profession during the 2001 Year of the Volunteer and has many leaders working and volunteering across almost all social-good and public institutional sectors, yet funding is almost non-existent for this profession and its growth.
So in this call to action, we need to have a foundation to advance, upskill, and revive the volunteer-engagement profession. In a recent conversation with Dalton McGuinty, the former premier of Ontario, I asked a hypothetical question: what he would do if, when he was in office, Ontario was primed with all the elements to build more high-quality cars but lacked the mechanics and assembly workers. He said he’d invest in that profession – help build those careers.
So let’s invest in this profession: add funds for full-time trained leaders of volunteering in more organizations, revive and update college programs to meet the moment, support professional associations and not-for-profit organizations working together to foster the growth. A combined effort to gather leaders and unite standards and elevate the Certification in Volunteer Administration credential (CVA) in our profession. We need a level of value and support to keep leaders in these roles long-term, to build strong community.
3. Enable tools, technology, and innovation: Finally, we need time and space to innovate and to be able to afford the tools of the trade – be it memberships, volunteer-engagement platforms, or other practical resources. No pilot can fly very well without a plane, and they certainly can’t take off and land without the right ecosystem.
All great systems are invested in for optimization and growth. We need a call to develop the resources and give long-standing support for technology and innovation and bursary programs for equity-seeking organizations.
Volunteer engagement, in the words of my friend and mentor Dana Litwin, CVA, is a very high-touch people role, but it is also very high tech, with lots of moving parts that require both hard and soft skills: training development, public speaking, scheduling, documenting, onboarding, screening, systems development, recruitment, strategy, advocacy, events, data management and analysis, database management, and more.
So what could investing in these three areas bring about? A relatively small investment (approximately $1 per Canadian citizen per year = $40 million) could restore up to a billion hours in volunteering – the resources are there. AND we can also with this investment increase the quality of that time given. If you calculated the cost of labour for all those hours, this volunteering investment would contribute more than $25 billion in impact to society. In meals served, in mentoring, in food delivery, in board governance, in farming, in framing, in event support, in visiting, in care, in hope, in help, in mental health improved, in relationships strengthened, in joy, in fun, in brighter futures and less harsh ends, more social integration and social cohesion, and so, so much more.
Wouldn’t that be $40 million you’d invest? I know I would.
Because it should not be hard to do good. It should not be difficult to find a place where your time and talent and care matter. And it should not lead to burnout for the professionals working to make it possible.
Given the profound impact of volunteering on health, well-being, and community resilience, investing in this system should be a priority at every level of government.
We don’t blame water for leaking from a broken hose; we fix the system. And given the profound impact of volunteering on health, well-being, and community resilience, investing in this system should be a priority at every level of government.
This relatively small, strategic investment could reshape communities – felt in every community across Canada.
I will end with this: there are spots of light across Canada where investments as I have explained are being made, and around them you will see good things happening. Just as plants grow better in good soil versus poor, strong volunteering communities abound where consistent and sustainable investments have been made in these three areas.
I work in one of those spots. I see amazing things happen out of investments in volunteering at the Ottawa Food Bank, and our organization is even bridging into ways to help the network we support. I see it in Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia with strong provincial support that can be reinforced. They are ensuring shared resources and engagement locally and creating convening spaces where leaders of volunteering and volunteers can grow and connect and have room to innovate. I see it in Quebec, where volunteering is embraced and supported, including by the government, because they see and understand its intrinsic value to society. I see it in Volunteer Toronto, with its microgranting program – but what happens when those micro efforts succeed and turn macro and more support is needed? Where is the investment in fostering success in volunteering communities? Where is the support to transform hours of leisure, loneliness, unsureness, and screen time into meaningful community impact?
Let’s build more of that!
As a first practical step, I invite leaders of volunteers – and organizations that rely on volunteers – to participate in the largest study of volunteer-engagement leaders in Canadian history, and the first of its kind in more than 20 years. It starts with a short 10-question survey to shine a light on this important system of support across Canada: vmpcprofessionprofile.ca.
Your voice will help strengthen the case for investment – now and into the future.
Thank you for your ongoing support, and for joining this call to strengthen volunteering – and the systems that sustain it – across Canada.
