Volunteerism Research : Social Context in Canada

Just over half of Canada’s 160,000 nonprofit organizations are operated solely through volunteer labour and every charitable organization are governed by voluntary boards (Statistics Canada, 2004). The impact of volunteerism in Canada has huge social and economic relevance with 12.5 million volunteers (that’s almost ½ the population) donating just over 2.1 billion hours equivalent to 1.1 million jobs (Statistics Canada, 2009). This resource guide provides a list of surveys, tools and position pieces to support research and advocacy of volunteerism in Canada.

March 21, 2012. Imagine Canada has prepared a Research Note that includes a preliminary assessment of the 2010 CSGVP Tables Report data, additional analysis on overall trends from the 2004 and 2007 surveys, and provincial and territorial breakdowns. Read more.

Surveys and Reports on Volunteering in Canada

Caring Canadians, involved Canadians : highlights from the 2007 Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating (Hall et al., 2009) [available online]
For data on volunteering in Canada spanning the last 10 years, see the volunteer reports section on our Giving and Volunteering website
Volunteers in arts and culture organizations in Canada in 2004 (Hill Strategies Research , 2007) [available online]

Research on the Economic Value of Volunteering

Estimating and reporting the value of volunteer contributions : results of a survey of Canadian nonprofit organizations (Mook & Quarter, 2004) [available online]
Measuring the economic value of volunteer activity (Goulbourne & Embuldeniya, 2002) [available online]
Volunteer Value Calculator, is an easy-to-use, online tool designed to help calculate the economic value of volunteers at your organization based on their specific duties. Developed by Imagine Canada’s Knowledge Development Centre (KDC).

Journals and Periodicals

Canadian Journal of Volunteer Resources Management
All issues since 1992 are available for free download as PDfs at http://www.cjvrm.org/past.php
e-Volunteerism: The Electronic Journal of the Volunteer Community. International in scope but published in the U.S.

Volunteerism Search Tips

To do more research on this topic, either browse our pre-selected list on Volunteerism (link) OR search by keyword or phrase (in quotation marks). Here are a selection of keywords to use:

policies, polic*	guide* / manuals
Specify a demographic group: youth, seniors, immigrants, etc.	toolkit
evaluation / assess*	Corporate / "employee volunteerism"

Adding an asterisk * on the end or in the middle of the word allows a search for alternate spellings.Volunteer, Voluntarism, Volunteering, etc., can all be captured using the string Volunt*

To search our full collection of resources, visit our catalogue page

You can do further research on this and more topics at our full library catalogue. The best subject search terms for this topic are

Voluntarism
Volunteer workers

Members of Imagine Canada receive access to our reference and referral service "Ask the Online Librarian" (link to members area?). If you are having difficulty locating an item or have found a broken link, please let us know.

Contact us to arrange an appointment to visit the library.