AFP Canada — Volunteer Canada Partnership
AFP in Canada has been involved since Phase 1 of the Data-Driven Engagement (DDE) project, funded through Employment and Social Development Canada. This work has focused on strengthening how our sector understands and uses national data on giving, volunteering, and civic participation. Phase 2 continues to build on that momentum.
At its core, the project is about increasing awareness, access, and practical application of data from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey on Giving, Volunteering, and Participating. This includes building sector capacity for data-informed decision-making, expanding access through the Canadian Knowledge Hub for Giving and Volunteering, and developing learning opportunities such as the Data-Driven Engagement Certificate.
There has been great progress to date. The webinar series is underway, the certificate program has seen strong engagement, and the team has been actively developing new ways to translate complex data into more accessible and actionable insights for the sector.
As part of this work, AFP in Canada is pleased to continue supporting the promotion and delivery of learning opportunities that help fundraisers and nonprofit leaders apply data in meaningful ways. We encourage members of our community to take advantage of the upcoming webinar series led by Volunteer Canada's Knowledge Translation and Mobilization Manager, Chantelle Ramsundar. These sessions offer timely insights into the changing landscape of giving and volunteering in Canada, while demonstrating the practical value of the data and tools being developed through the Data-Driven Engagement project.
Upcoming Webinars
Giving in Canada: Insights from the Latest GSS-GVP on a Shifting Donor Landscape
JULY 15, 2026 | 12-1pm ET
Canada's giving landscape has shifted sharply in recent years. This webinar walks through high-level insights regarding the demographic terrain of that shift: who is giving more, who is disengaging, and where the dollars are increasingly concentrated. Drawing on Statistics Canada's most recent release of the General Social Survey on Giving, Volunteering and Participating (GSS-GVP), we examine giving patterns across age, gender, education, income, marital status, religious attendance, labour force status, and household composition. The session also brings a critical lens to what the instrument can and cannot see, including the forms of generosity (mutual aid, remittances, ceremonial and Indigenous giving, in-kind support) that fall outside the formal tax-receiptable frame.
Participants will:
- Identify the demographic shifts behind the recent concentration of donation dollars among older, higher-income, and religiously active Canadians.
- Recognize the structural pressures facing specific donor segments, including early-career adults, dual-caregiving households, and lower-income brackets.
- Apply a critical lens to GSS-GVP data, distinguishing between what the instrument measures and the broader landscape of generosity it cannot capture.
Two Declines, One Story: What the Data on Volunteering and Donating Tells Us About the Future of Giving in Canada
JULY 29, 2026 | 12-1pm ET
Drawing on the GSS-GVP, the only longitudinal dataset that tracks giving and volunteering simultaneously at the national level, this session examines a striking pattern: every major measure of civic participation has declined between the most recent comparable survey cycles. Donor rates and volunteer rates have fallen together, and a substantial share of the volunteer hours that disappeared represents unreplaced civic labour with a meaningful economic floor. The webinar moves beyond the headline figures to surface what the data reveals about concentration risk, the withdrawal of early-career adults, and the structural implications for organizations that continue to manage volunteer engagement and donor development as separate functions.
Participants will:
- Interpret recent GSS-GVP trends in donor rates, volunteer rates, and overall civic participation, and identify the structural forces driving them.
- Apply a concentration-risk lens to their own volunteer and donor portfolios, recognizing the parallel concentration pattern across both sides of the sector.
- Reframe volunteer engagement as a leading indicator and pipeline strategy for fundraising, rather than a separate operational function.
Speaker:
Chantelle Ramsundar is the Knowledge Translation and Mobilization Manager at Volunteer Canada, where she leads the Data-Driven Engagement program and contributes to the National Volunteer Action Strategy. Her background is in public health and global studies. She speaks and writes on the future of volunteering and giving in Canada, donor and volunteer concentration risk, knowledge translation in the social sector, the ethics of care, and the conditions that sustain civic participation within Canada and globally.
