Volunteer Participation Research Project
Volunteering can be a deeply meaningful experience that offers opportunities for personal fulfillment, connection, and active participation in community life. Through the Volunteer Participation Project, we explored the conditions that help make volunteering meaningful for people across Alberta and the rest of Canada.
Drawing on volunteer voices and lived experiences, this project examines patterns of participation, key motivations and barriers to involvement, and emerging perspectives on how volunteers engage and stay engaged. It also surfaces practical insights and recommendations to help foster more meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable volunteer experiences.
This project is part of our broader Research portfolio.
National Volunteer Participation Insights Report
In September 2024, we partnered up with Volunteer Canada to conduct a National Volunteer Participation Survey exploring the motivations, benefits, challenges, and supports that shape volunteer participation in Canada.
Informed by responses from over 800 volunteers, we are proud to share the Insights Report showing how highly engaged individuals and volunteers define, experience, and reflect on volunteering in their own words.
Whether you're a nonprofit leader, policymaker, or volunteer yourself, we hope this report deepens your understanding of what makes volunteer experiences meaningful.
Read Our Blogs
Looking for a quick summary of key insights? Read our three-part learning series exploring the insights from our National Volunteer Participation research conducted in partnership with Volunteer Canada. We share findings on how people engage, the impact volunteering has on their lives, and what makes for meaningful experiences.
Volunteering as Care, Connection, and Contribution
In this first post, we focus on how people define volunteering. Their reflections reveal that volunteering is a deeply personal way of expressing care, connection, and contribution.
More Than a Role: Volunteering As a spectrum
In this post, we discuss the countless ways that volunteering can show up. There isn’t just one way to volunteer or contribute time and energy to one’s community. As our respondents shared, volunteering takes many forms—some are structured and formal, while others are spontaneous, relational, and deeply rooted in community care.
Meaningful Volunteer Experiences
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.