This post wraps up our Volunteer Participation Learning Series, where we’ve been sharing insights from our national volunteer participation study conducted in partnership with Volunteer Canada. Over the past few months, we’ve explored how 839 participants defined volunteering, what it meant to them, and the many ways they gave their time—from supporting neighbours to taking on formal roles with organizations. Last month, we released the report, Bringing Meaning to the Volunteer Experience: Insights on What Motivates, Sustains, and Challenges Volunteers.
In this post, we look at what motivates and sustains people’s participation and reflect on what makes a volunteer experience meaningful. Overall, this study affirms that the quality of a volunteer’s experience matters.
How easily someone can contribute, how included they feel, and how fulfilling they find certain tasks all shape how they experience a volunteer role. The findings suggest that when volunteers feel valued, and when their experiences offer connection, meaning, and support, they are more likely to stay engaged and be willing to contribute.
This study in context
Volunteering in Canada has shifted in recent years. According to preliminary findings from Statistics Canada, the overall volunteer rate declined by 8% between 2018 and 2023. The total number of hours given through both formal and informal volunteering dropped from 5 billion to 4.1 billion, dropping by 18%. On average, volunteers gave 173 hours in 2023, which is 33 fewer hours than in 2018.
These findings indicate that fewer Canadians volunteered and contributed to their communities in recent years. Informal volunteering particularly dropped from 74% in 2018 to 66% in 2023, driven mostly by fewer people engaging in community activities like maintaining public spaces, coordinating events, or attending local meetings “where there was a discussion of community affairs” (2025, Statistics Canada).
Despite this overall decline in volunteering, however, highly engaged volunteers—the 10% who contribute the most hours—remained engaged, continuing to account for more than half of all volunteer hours (61% in 2023).
Against this backdrop, our survey offers a closer look at highly engaged volunteers. As mentioned in previous posts, this study’s sample of participants were regularly engaged volunteers during the twelve months prior to completing the survey:
- 92% of participants formally volunteered through organizations
- 95% reported providing informal care or support (such as cooking, doing taxes, filling out forms, or providing transportation) to family, friends, neighbours, or cultural/identity-based community groups.
- 48% volunteered weekly and 13% volunteered daily or almost daily, indicating that over 60% were regularly engaged.
This study provides an opportunity to explore why highly engaged and committed individuals continued to contribute their time, service, and energy despite declining volunteer rates. While it does not reflect the full diversity of volunteer experiences, this study offers critical insight into why hundreds of highly engaged individuals continue to volunteer.
Meaningful Experiences with Volunteering
An important theme in our research revealed that there are many reasons, motivations, and benefits to volunteering, and that a meaningful volunteer experience can look different for everyone. Why people choose to volunteer is often shaped by their internal motivations and by the impact that volunteering experiences have on their lives.
Motivational Drivers
Understanding what motivates people to volunteer is key to creating meaningful experiences and sustaining participation.
Notably, respondents often identified more than one reason or motivation to volunteer. Among those who formally volunteered in the twelve months prior to completing the survey, 97% (778 out of 804) selected multiple motivations. This shows that motivations frequently overlap and, as we can see in the chart below, reflect both social and personal needs.
Four major themes emerged in our study:
1) Offering care and contribution to others: Many people volunteered out of a desire to help others, support causes that matter to them, or give back to organizations that once offered them support. For example, 91% said helping others or the community was a top motivator.
2) Seeking social connections: Nearly two-thirds (64%) said they volunteered to meet new people and make friends. As discussed in previous posts, volunteering is not just about giving. It is also about connecting with others.
3) Personal fulfillment and growth: For many, volunteering offered chances to learn, improve one’s health and wellbeing, build skills, and engage with personal passions. About two-thirds (66%) volunteered to pursue personal interests, while others sought experience for career development or simply enjoyed perks like free meals or event passes.
4) Obligation and responsibility: A few respondents noted feelings of duty and obligation (23%), whether spiritual (8%), academic (8%), or professional (13%). For these individuals, volunteering was an expression of responsibility.
A spectrum of positive impacts
Beyond internal motivations, volunteering generates a wide range of outcomes and impacts that shape why volunteers contribute.
The following reflections, drawn directly from survey responses, capture some of the ways volunteers described how volunteering benefited or positively impacted them. Some speak to personal growth and learning, others to the joy of connection and belonging, and others to the satisfaction of making a visible difference.
In their words:
- “It makes me feel helpful, admired, appreciated and thankful I can give back.”
- “I like to feel like I am supporting others, so their day is a bit better, and they know someone cares and values them.”
- “It has been an amazing gift to me. I have met so many beautiful people and heard different stories, life experiences;
,it expands your knowledge of this world. We can learn so much from others.”
- “Very fulfilling to be able to create opportunities to engage people, impact their lives, and bring a positive experience to them or help them.”
- “Volunteering has positively impacted my life in many ways. I’ve met many lovely people; it brings me joy. l’ve learned new skills. As a retired person, l feel included and like l’m still contributing to society.”
These reflections and themes form the foundation of the Positive Impacts Spectrum presented below. This spectrum is not exhaustive, but it does give an idea of how volunteering can ripple from personal benefits to wide-reaching impact in communities.
What’s more is that these levels of impact can be experienced all at once. Volunteering for a community event, for example, can satisfy a personal interest, lead to meeting new people, and bring a whole community together. Rarely is there simply one reason to volunteer, and people’s motivations or the benefits they receive from volunteering can also change over time.
| Positive Impacts Spectrum | ||
| Personal Impacts Identity, Growth, Wellbeing | Interpersonal Impacts Relationships, Belonging, Connection | Community-Level Impacts Community Life, System Change, Social Good |
| Increased confidence, resilience, and self-worth Skill development (communication, leadership, problem-solving) Sense of purpose and fulfillment Mental and emotional health benefits | Making new friends and connections Belonging to different teams, peer groups, and cohorts of volunteers Shared experiences and collaboration with like-minded individuals Learning from and with others Feeling appreciated and recognized | Tangible community impact (e.g. events, services, supports) Increased empathy and understanding across differences Helping to build inclusive, caring communities Strengthening civil society and collective wellbeing |
Elements of Meaningful Volunteer Experiences
Although there’s no catch-all formula for what makes volunteering meaningful, our findings showed some key elements.
At their core, meaningful volunteer experiences are varied blends of purpose, respect, clarity, flexibility, and connection. Volunteers often look for roles where their time and skills are used thoughtfully and in ways that align with their passions or growth. They want to feel valued and communicated with clearly, and they thrive when opportunities adapt to the realities of their lives. They also seek genuine connection and belonging, where relationships with staff, peers, and community make their contributions feel worthwhile.
When organizations create the conditions for these experiences to happen, they attract volunteers, and may also inspire them to stay, contribute fully, and carry the impact of their work into the wider community.
| Elements | Summary |
| Purposeful Volunteering | Many people do simply want to help, and even fill some free time, but a meaningful and fulfilling experience connects volunteers to their passions, interests, personal growth, community, or clear impact. “Volunteering is doing what I can to help in a meaningful way.” |
| Respect and Recognition | Respondents emphasized the importance of being respected by staff, treated as equals, and included in decision-making when possible. Many spoke about feeling undervalued or invisible in previous roles. “A welcoming environment is most important for me” |
| Clarity and Communications | Volunteers appreciate knowing what is expected of them, and why. Good onboarding, training, and communication about goals or changes were repeatedly mentioned as signs of a healthy volunteer culture. “I want clear instructions and to understand the goals, so I know what I’m doing matters.” |
| Flexibility and Accessibility | The most valued programs offered a range of options to suit different lives, needs, and capacities. Volunteers want to be able to engage on terms that respect or even accommodate their personal priorities and barriers. “Flexible schedules mean I can still contribute when life gets busy.” |
| Connection and Belonging | Finally, the strongest experiences were ones where people felt they were part of a community. Relationships with staff, peers, or those being served were central to why many people volunteered. “The most rewarding volunteer work made me feel valued and like I belonged.” |
Bringing Meaning to The Volunteer Experience
As much as volunteers are valuable helping hands, they are even more so vital contributors to our communities, local cultures, and the services that support our most vulnerable. We hope that the motivations, impacts, and reflections identified or shared through this study can provide organizations (and anyone hoping to engage volunteers) with frameworks and reflective prompts to help them create experiences that volunteers can find some meaning in.
A persistent finding through this research is that volunteering can be meaningful for different reasons. There is no singular experience that encompasses every volunteer story and perspective. Often, the impacts and benefits of volunteering are experienced in a spectrum ranging from the personal to the social, and they all bring meaning to the volunteer experience.
At the same time, the more volunteers can find opportunities that offer them purpose, personal fulfillment, connection, and practical support in fulfilling their roles, the more likely they are to sustain their participation in different volunteering activities and seek out other roles.
Closing Reflections
This blog wraps up our first Volunteer Participation Learning Series. Here, we’ve focused on what our study revealed about the meaning volunteers attach to their contributions, what makes experiences meaningful, and why these things matter for sustaining engagement.
But this is only the beginning. In a future series, we’ll turn our attention to the other side of the story: the barriers and challenges that make volunteering difficult.
Additionally, the high levels of engagement reflected in this study, particularly in formal volunteering roles, likely draw on certain privileges, including available free time, prior experience, ability, and familiarity with Western models of formal volunteerism (see a full breakdown of demographic profiles in the report). We hope to open up future discussions with reference to broader literature and existing research on volunteering and volunteerism.
We’ll dig deeper into questions such as:
- How do barriers like financial costs, health concerns, discrimination, or caregiving responsibilities affect people’s ability to volunteer meaningfully?
- What does meaningful volunteering look like across different cultures, ages, and lived experiences?
- In what ways might our systems unintentionally rely on over-committed or under-supported volunteers?
- How often do we ask volunteers for honest feedback about their experiences that are then reflected in how volunteering roles and activities are developed?
- Are we designing volunteer programs to be transactional (filling roles) or relational (building community)?
These are complex questions, but they matter deeply. Just as this series has shown that the quality of volunteer experiences shapes participation, our upcoming reflections will explore how barriers and systems shape who volunteers and how.
Catch up and read Part 1 and 2 of the series: