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It's election time in Alberta. Many feelings surround this event, and not all of them are positive. For some sectors in the non-profit world, an election can mean uncertainty. A new government could mean new priorities, budgets, and funding. As a result, there is a level of fear and concern, not just for agencies that do good in many communities but also for the jobs and livelihoods they provide. It’s a shame that issues surrounding volunteerism, or even meeting basic needs, have become partisan instead of just being about helping people. Sometimes it's hard not to feel discouraged.

At times, it can feel as if we care more about the colour of the campaign billboard than the greater good. It's no longer about doing what's best; it's about being right. More than ever, we need to learn, or relearn, how to have healthy discourse. When we stop trying to understand where others are coming from, when we stop caring about opinions and perspectives different than ours, we lose our ability for empathy. Regarding politics, astrophysicist turned pop culture personality Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “Without rational discourse among ourselves and our elected representatives, we are non-interacting stovepipes on the brink of burning down the house.”

Committing to learning and understanding is vital if the goal is to better ourselves, our province, and our country. So let's get into the habit of hearing each other out. Let’s get into the practice of having compassion for each other's struggles and perspectives. Let’s make empathy commonplace in our discourse. If you're struggling with your decision to vote, I would encourage you to do two things. First, use the Vote Compass tool to see where you might lie on the political spectrum. Second, do your research. If you value community building and support for those in need, research different parties' policies surrounding those topics.

So where can you go from here? Find the needs in your community and equip yourself and those around you to meet them. How can you make a difference? Don’t wait for someone else to tell you where you should serve. VolunteerConnector exists for this very purpose, a way to connect volunteers to causes. If you are passionate about something, about helping somehow, there is more than likely a space for you to serve.

As always, I wish to encourage everyone reading to remember our privilege. Our privilege of democracy is the freedom to choose our leaders and not feel threatened or afraid to go out and vote. So honor this privilege, don’t take this freedom for granted, and go vote.

Every once and awhile I get on my soapbox about boards, and this is one of these times! My inbox has entered the AGM era and with that comes board recruitment times. Fun times for all! There are often two versions of the coaching conversations we have around board recruitment, the first one is around scarcity “we can’t find board members” and the second one is around diversity, “our board is not reflective of the community”. The response to both of those needs is the same question and it is the one that I will pose to the reader now; what are you willing to do? The answer might be nothing and that is ok, it is not ideal, but it is honest which is something. If you are willing to do something different this year I would invite you to think about who is not at the table and spend some energy thinking about what is preventing them from being there. Maybe it is thinking about when and how you meet? The number of steps it takes to apply for a board position? Perhaps, it is the number of words and requirements in your opportunity? It could be far more complicated and require more intensive collective work but starting and trying are real accomplishments! 

A couple resources if you are thinking about doing something different for board recruitment:

Gateway to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Hub

An Interview with Stanford Scholar Roberta Katz

The Circle 

Our 2022 AGM is coming up on June 1. Join us as it will include:

• A brief business meeting
• A presentation of the year in review
• A discussion on how to use our/your data to support volunteer recruitment to your cause

See you all there: REGISTER

We were so lucky to host Tyler Sinke from Mohawk College for a session on the experience of the post-secondary student volunteer.

Great things happening in Hamilton, Ontario! The key takeaways for organizations looking to engage with this demographic are:

Get to know the school in your area… they can look different and have varied specialties which may or may not align with the work your organization does. There will be a student life human there who will be interested in building an authentic relationships and connection. So, reach out and see what can happen! 

Pre-emptively address barriers that students face; provide transportation, give out meals and snacks, vary the time commitments, maps, prioritize community belonging and fulfilling roles.  

Most students live by the post-secondary school calendar semesters, consider that when establishing your roles. 

During pandemic times lots of students missed out on co-op and work placements so opportunities that align to careers goals are interesting along with providing a letter of recommendation and/or references.

Check out the Mo Team on Instagram 

Sharing and learning with our fellow humans is one of our most favourite things here at VolunteerConnector. We love hearing how organizations and communities are navigating the world. It is also fun for us to share what we have been working on! We have some opportunities coming up to create spaces for building understanding and relating. Please feel free to join us for any or all and to let us know at info@volunteerconnector.org if there is something you want to chat about! 

We know where some volunteers are! 

Festivals, Fairs, Rodeos Oh My!

Tips and Tricks for Boards 

Can I ask you a question? 

Earlier this year, Statistics Canada released their 2022 fourth-quarter data on volunteering. It is essential to understand the results and see what trends might be appearing. The numbers convey the narrative that volunteerism is down, but they may not be accurately telling the whole story. Nevertheless, we can use these statistics to gauge trends, and if organizations pay attention, it's possible to increase volunteerism in areas that might be experiencing a lack.

The Generation Gap

Gen Z boasts the highest rate of volunteering across Canada. Young people are passionate about helping and have developed an understanding of the personal benefits that accompany it. Volunteer recruitment needs to learn to engage every generation to volunteer at all levels. Organizations should determine the demographics of their volunteers and assess why they are attracting or lacking in specific areas. Take time to learn the motivations of different individuals. For example, many younger volunteers surveyed cited increasing job prospects or college applications as the reason for volunteering. We must understand what motivates other generations, such as the social benefits of volunteering, the valuable service to a community, or religious causes. Once an organization understands these motivations and how to apply them to recruitment, it can see growth in those demographics.

Needs of organizations run by visible minorities

Over 90% of Black and West-Asian-run organizations surveyed in Canada stated a shortage of volunteers. What does that actually mean, and how do we address that need? First, it's vital to understand that those living within a community are the best equipped to serve their respective communities. They have knowledge and experience of the struggles unique to those communities. Therefore, it's crucial to support those communities that are experiencing a lack of help by supporting those organizations that already exist within them. A big step towards decolonizing volunteerism is understanding that racialized communities don't require others to "save" them. Understanding racial barriers and how formal volunteerism may not be the right path for every community and organization is crucial. These communities have the ability to empower their own, and those organizations within the communities should be supported, not replaced.

Grassroots AND established organizations

Another trend from the data is the difference in volunteer engagement between older and younger organizations. The survey stated that only 3% of organizations under two years old were experiencing volunteer shortages, while 63% of organizations over 20 experienced the same deficits. There are two possible reasons for this trend. First, individuals might overlook long-standing institutions because, sometimes, the “crisis of the day” takes priority over long-term work. The news cycle often dominates where our time and money go. Sometimes timely and immediate support is necessary, but sustainability is crucial to meeting many community needs. Long-term organizations and volunteering can be a massive help to the stability of specific communities or advancing structural change.

The second explanation for the volunteer disparity is that individuals deem these older organizations out of touch. Grassroots initiatives are on the rise, which can lead to the decline of formal volunteering institutions. Research has shown that the pandemic exposed the gaps between traditional volunteerism and the need for grassroots organizations in some sectors. Determining what needs exist in communities and how individuals wish to meet those needs is crucial to the success of organizations that rely on volunteers.

Going forward

It is vital for organizations seeking volunteers to properly communicate the value they give to the community and the volunteer. The benefits of volunteerism can change the life of an individual as well as positively impact a community in need. The needs of communities within Canada are significant. How we attempt to serve communities and meet those needs will be dictated by those who wish to make a difference and how they wish to volunteer. If you're not listening or paying attention, that is when you will feel the decline in numbers. Not because there is no one out there to give of their time.

Fun fact- there are just over 2 million students enrolled in post-secondary institutions in Canada. That means there are many communities where a college or university and the humans who spend time there are part of the fabric. On May 10 @ 11am MST, we are pleased to welcome guest speaker Tyler Sinke, from Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario. Tyler works in the Student Life department, as the Campus to Community Coordinator. He has been working in Community Outreach roles since 2017, and has worked closely with volunteers in many different capacities during that time. He has a passion for ongoing learning, and finds the best learning comes from interacting and gathering knowledge from others.

In the session we will discuss key elements of post-secondary student volunteer engagement and retention with a focus on a Volunteer-First mentality. Additionally, we will discuss barriers for student volunteering and possible solutions to overcoming those barriers! 

Register HERE, looking forward to seeing you on May 10! 

In celebration of National Volunteer Week I had this great idea of visually displaying the thousands and thousands of different roles that humans have connected with over the past year via VolunteerConnector. Alas, it turns out that a 100 page pdf is pretty hard to condense in a way that is not just a black void so here we are, a bejewelled valentine of sorts as a deep and heartfelt acknowledgement (with a couple of those volunteer roles inside the heart).

To the people who wake up in the morning and think about someone else, to the person who wakes up and sees a gap in their community and tries to fill it, a person who speaks out at town council on causes they care about, the person who manages social media for the group that does not really know about this space, the person who hears a neighbour has a bunch of sick kids and leaves some muffins, the people that use their skills on boards, the people who share their community stories, the list goes on and on. You not only make people’s lives better, you make our communities places of comfort and belonging, you make other people want to keep going, you create places and spaces where people feel safe. So from our hearts- thank you. Profoundly thank you for being the reason we get to exist. Thank you for believing that changing our world is possible. Thank you for trying. 

Happy Volunteer Week! We’ve got some big news for you about the tools that you use for recruiting volunteers.

Have you ever wished that it was possible to have a posting automatically renew instead of disappearing from the VolunteerConnector? If so, you’re not alone — it’s regularly been one of our most requested features. Well, we are happy to announce that now you can set your posting to auto-renew, either when editing it, or from our completely re-designed postings page.

We had a huge list of improvements that we wanted to make to the postings page, so we used this opportunity to re-think it from the ground up. If you run a national organization with postings across the country —or a regional organization with multiple locations— you will love that you can now see the location and audience of each posting at a glance. No matter the size of your organization, you will love that you can now quickly get access to all of the key details about all of your active postings. This is a massive upgrade to the postings page, and we hope that you find it useful.

We've already started work on a revamped dashboard and features that will make reaching your volunteers and new volunteers in your community even more accessible!

Context

I watch 90% of the Toronto Blue Jay game every year as I try to relieve my ongoing sadness from the 1985 playoffs in spite of my joy in 1992. Melancholy anyone?

• Rabbit Trail 1: I still can’t look at a picture of George Brett without feeling anger from somewhere pushed down deep for many years.
• Rabbit Trail 2: I still can't think about Lloyd Moseby without shedding a tear for a trapped ball that was definitely NOT a trapped ball!

Back to the story

The Blue Jays play in one of the oldest baseball stadiums in the major leagues. It was opened in 1989 to much fanfare as the first retractable roof for a major sporting venue. Quite the source of pride for Canadians and in even fans nostalgic for Exhibition Stadium. The “Skydome” was built as a multi-purpose venue and therefore not uniquely suited to baseball. Still, no one was complaining.

Fast forward 30 years, low and behold the way fans expect to interact with their professional sports team has changed. In some cases, changed expectations and in some cases increased expectations. So, the Jays looked at building a new stadium or renovating the existing one. They chose to renovate and bring some exciting new changes to the game and fans. We shared last week some of the trends shaping volunteer expectations today, here is how the Toronto Blue Jays adapt to trends.

7 Lessons

Here are seven lessons from that renovation that can be applied to engaging volunteers in your cause:

• We don’t have to start from scratch every time. Too often when there is new person or a change in our organizations the approach is to start from the beginning, again and again. There’s a time and a place for abolish and rebuild. But what the Jays demonstrate is that a thoughtful approach to renovating can be wildly successful as well.
• Sure, take the old and make it new – but look around and learn from others and what’s working for them. A small team of people took time to travel to other sporting venues, not just baseball venues, to learn and personally experience what works and what doesn’t in other contexts. When was the last time you volunteered yourself? I love an opinion survey and a coffee to learn from people’s experiences but there’s something to experiencing it first hand as well.
• Book that coffee and grab those surveys! To hear Mark Shapiro, the Jays President, tell the story, they met with loads of people . . . loads of people to hear from them what they knew about trends, what works for baseball fans and what key things should have their attention. It focused their travel times. Data informed, intuition led.
• Think about how to treat all the people well. That seems like an easy one for our sector but sometimes it’s good to be reminded. They revamped whole sections for fans. They expanded the exercise facilities for players. They created a new specially designated space for the player’s families. They are thinking about everyone and how to improve for everyone. Even the three-year-old kid gets consideration because their experience has an impact on the game.
• Speaking of impact – include everyone, all the ways. There are places where the fans are almost hanging over the outfield. By lowering the fence in the centre field, they have removed a barrier preventing a game changing play. In the second inning of the home opener that play happened! Centre fielder, Kevin Kiermaier, jumped up reaching over the 8 ft fence to catch a ball destined to be a home run. To hear KK talk about it, he is adamant that having 42,000 people engaged can change the course of the game. What do we all gain when we remove barriers to our programs? Everyone can feel the impact that we all can make on the mission and the cause
• Create many ways, not just one way, to connect with other people. Encourage all the connections. From family friendly spaces with a hot dog see-saw to standing room tickets for other fans to bleacher style seating for some. More options to connect allows the fans to decide how they want to experience the game vs one size fits all approach. What happens when we curate community connections that otherwise may not exist?
• Don’t keep people away from the “important stuff”, people belong . . . the Jays decided the fans belong as close to the bullpen as possible. Look at the pictures, fans are almost inside the bullpen with the players. The knock-on effect of that decision, as shared by the Blue Jay pitchers, a feeling of being in the game before joining the game. Fan induced adrenaline starts before taking the field which gives the pitcher a competitive advantage over the other team. How much richer is community when we all know we all belong in all the places?

Bonus time

Of course . . . above all, the Blue Jays renovation wants us to know it’s okay to have fun, cheer loud and hey guess what . . . even the Blue Jays must take a multi-year approach to their program changes, probably due to funding (an all too familiar refrain). There are more renovations to come in the next off season. Perhaps you’ll get a part two to this post!