Overview
Every day, volunteers work in our community to make it a better place for everyone to live and play. Imagine your community without volunteers. Who would coach the local soccer teams, or deliver meals to the elderly?
In Canada almost 12 million individuals volunteer their time to charities and organizations every year and contribute almost 2 billion volunteer hours. While this is a staggering number, it is important to note that the face of volunteering is changing. The "super" volunteers, those 11% who contribute 77% of all volunteer hours, are part of an aging population. We must continue our work with the government of Canada to ensure that front-line community organizations will have access to a sufficient supply of volunteers to match the demand. This is where you can help.
Here, you will find tools and resources, posted and updated on an ongoing basis, for you to use in moving forward with public policy issues that are relevant to you in promoting and supporting volunteerism.
Building a stronger Volunteer Community
Making the case
Advocacy on the Agenda: Preparing voluntary boards for public policy participation
Increasingly, voluntary organizations recognize that playing an active role in influencing government policy is key to achieving their missions. At the same time, government acknowledges that the voluntary sector has a valuable and crucial role to play in shaping effective public policy. Yet many voluntary boards of directors face challenges regarding how to engage in policy dialogue and often lack in the skill set to do so successfully. In response to this need Volunteer Canada has developed Advocacy on the Agenda: Preparing voluntary boards for public policy participation(PDF) to build capacity and support voluntary organizations and their boards of directors in their policy dialogue efforts.
CSGVP
Click here for information document produced by the Voluntary Sector Forum on the CSGVP that outlines the history of the CSGVP, its extensive use within the sector in carrying out our missions and the economic importance of the sector.
Click here for a templated letter to the Minster that your organization can use. It is also important to copy your local Members of Parliament so that they are aware of our campaign to keep sector Survey within Statistics Canada.
