Canada’s population is aging. The first wave of baby boomers are beginning to turn 60 and entering retirement. The impact of this and other demographic changes was reported by Statistics Canada last week in its census report on age and sex. For a copy of the full report visit: www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/analysis/agesex/index.cfm  

 

 

The following is a brief discussion on some of the impacts that the shift in aging will have on volunteering. Who are the volunteers that support our non-profit and charitable work? What are some of the challenges facing organizations in recruiting and retaining older volunteers? Are the organizations that depend on the work of volunteers prepared for the changes?

 

 

 

While Canada remains one of the youngest countries in the G8 (only the United States has a lower proportion of elderly people), there are 4.3 million citizens, one in seven Canadians, aged 65 or older. At the same time the proportion of the under-15 population is at its lowest level ever at 17.7%.

The number of people aged 55 to 64, many of whom are workers approaching retirement, has never been so high in Canada, at 3.7 million in 2006.

Baby-boomers, people born between 1946 and 1965, were between 41 and 60 years of age in 2006. Despite the fact that they are now older, they were still a very large group in the population: nearly one out of three Canadians was a baby-boomer in 2006.(1)

 

 

It is predicted that by 2016 there will no longer be sufficient numbers of new workers to replace retirees. Canadian companies will need to redefine their retirement policies if they want to stay on top of this impending labour shortage.

 

This trend in population age will also affect the workplace in the areas of labour law, employee relations, as well as volunteer recruitment and retention.

 

Volunteers are involved in most aspects of Canadian life and they continue to be the heart of non-profit and charitable organizations in Canada. While the overall amount of volunteer hours contributed annually to these organizations is high (12 million Canadians contributing almost 2 billion volunteer hours), a relatively small number – 11 per cent of Canadians – contributes 77 per cent of all volunteer hours (2) .The average hours volunteered is highest among seniors. (3)

 

The ‘civic core’, or post WWII, volunteers are the generation that built and sustained the non-profit sector over the last three decades. This aging group, now in their 70’s and 80’s, is expected to erode volunteer capacity in this country over the next decade. The subsequent loss of this core group will have a resounding impact on volunteerism and the organizations that they support. As a result, organizations are beginning to report shortages in volunteers. This is exacerbating their existing recruitment challenges and could pose a serious burden to future recruitment and retention efforts if innovative solutions are not found to reverse this trend. (4)

 

Baby boomers (10 million born between 1947 and 1966) represent an enormous opportunity to the voluntary sector. In replacing the existing cohort of older volunteers, these new retirees are poised to fill the gaps left from the previous generation. Given their large numbers, any participation by the boomer population will have a positive effect on the voluntary sector; yet questions remain about whether this will happen at the rate required to fill the gaps.

 

This group is more discerning in how they spend their volunteer hours. They come equipped with higher education levels and more specific skill sets than their predecessors. They are looking for opportunities for personal growth and want to invest their time in innovative and challenging experiences (5). They tend to seek out more short-term and episodic volunteer opportunities with explicit outcomes and described benefits, as opposed to their predecessors who were more likely to commit long-term to one organization performing a specific task. If organizations are to be successful in recruiting and retaining this potential new group of volunteers, they will need to be creative in how they adapt the way that they manage their volunteer programs.(6)

 

Some strategies for recruiting and retaining volunteers include flexible schedules and job sharing, training and skills upgrade, a greater degree of responsibility in volunteer work, innovative volunteer programming (i.e. family volunteering opportunities), volunteer opportunities that ‘make a meaningful difference’ and the involvement of volunteers in design and management of service delivery (7).

 

Another trend that could have a potential negative impact on the recruitment and retention of volunteers from this group of Canadians is the fact that these older workers are increasingly being kept in the labour force by employers who are not able to replace them. A result of the marked decline of younger workers joining the workforce. This younger group of volunteers is also more likely than the previous generation to be caring for elderly parents. They will not be entirely free to volunteer at the rate of today’s senior volunteer, making retention of existing volunteers all the more important for organizations who depend on the volunteer work of others to help carry out their missions.

 

 

 

Volunteer Canada and Investors Group have recently partnered to develop valuable volunteer programming for the baby boomer, the largest generational cohort ever in society. We will work together to promote and increase the volunteer participation of the baby boomer population while demonstrating the link between volunteering and healthy aging.

 

The challenges of a changing society and the impacts these changes will have on volunteering are an opportunity to re-think how we engage volunteers and to highlight, to others, the difference that volunteers make in everyone’s lives and why volunteering is imperative to a civil society.

 

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1. Portrait of the Canadian Population in 2006, by Age and Sex, 2006 Census, Statistics Canada

 

2. 2004 Canada Survey on Giving Volunteering and Participating (CSGVP)

3. The amount of time a senior spends volunteering increases with age; however the actual numbers of hours they volunteer are lower than those for other age groups (18% vs. 28%)

4. Volunteer Zone Bénévoles , Final Report, Volunteer Canada (A voluntary sector think-tank meeting bringing together leaders in the sector for 3 days in February 2005)

5. David Foot “Boom, Bust and Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift” (with D. Stoffman) (Toronto: Stoddart 2001),

6. Volunteer Connections: New strategies for involving older adults, Volunteer Canada, 2001

7. Ibid