Latest News | January 2022

We don’t often talk about it but in the last couple of weeks many of you have reached out to ask how you can support the work of the VolunteerConnector. The work being:

• Quickly connecting individuals to community organizations/grassroots initiatives
• Simple management tools for organizers to engage individuals
• Identifying and removing barriers to those connections and engagements like the Antiracist Approach to Volunteering Report

If you are part of one of the 4000+ organizing groups using the VolunteerConnector then it’s easy. Simply login to your account, look to the lower left and click on “Subscription” and look for the Upgrade Now button. This is a simple $10/month subscription that gives you added management tools and helps us to identify future upgrades.

If you are one of the millions of individuals visiting the platform each year who would like to support the work, then it’s easy as well. Simply click on the Donation button here and follow the steps to make a one-time donation or monthly recurring one. All donations receive a charitable tax receipt.

BTW, all the revenue from subscriptions and donations go to improving the VolunteerConnector experience for everyone and adding in new features that further remove the barriers to your #communityconnection.

Finally ... never quit doing the beautiful work each of you do every, single day to make our communities great!

Thanks to work funded by City of Calgary FCSS and our ongoing work and friendship with Dr Moyo Mutamba, we were able to complete what we hope is the start of a deeper dive into understanding the colonial structures inherent in volunteerism. Here is an excerpt from the report:

"We can assume that asking racialized people to interact with the police to request a police check could be triggering, but we would be remiss in not understanding more about this experience. How many people are affected by this potentially harmful practice and what other barriers do BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) volunteers face in the sector?

We knew that to get a clear picture of these issues in our sector, we needed concrete data from volunteers."

Find the full report here - An Anti-Racist Approach to Volunteering

This is the type of thing that frustrates me. If you think society works just fine then this post and article aren’t for you.

Government admits there’s a resourcing issue and the solution for youth mental health is to punt into nonprofit land. This would be fine and even perhaps better for the individual IF nonprofits weren’t a) chronically underfunded and b) put under undue administrative burden just to collect and report on those precious little resources.

If you think society works just fine then this post and article aren’t for you. I’m telling you though … our “great” society is so broken and aligned to the wrong values and articles like this expose it yet again.

Simple answer of what to do until society wakes up … increase your 2022 donations to nonprofits, without strings attached, let them do their great work of being our social safety net. Your $50-100 a month makes a massive difference in a nonprofit or charity!

CBC Article - Kids in Crisis