More data is always better, but are non-profits making the best use of data they already have?

Volunteer managers rely on data when formulating strategies that meet the needs of their organizations and communities, but those in the field say it’s rarely collected in meaningful ways.

“We collect data about volunteering hours, we collect data about volunteering interests, but we are not yet collecting data that tells us how communities are impacted and changed by volunteerism,” said Lisa Mort-Putland, chair of Volunteer Canada’s board of directors and executive director at Volunteer Victoria.

Statistics Canada last released comprehensive data on volunteerism in 2018, she said, but those findings are based on information collected in 2015.

“Which makes this almost a decade old,” Mort-Putland told attendees at a recent Volunteer Management Professionals of Canada conference in Vancouver. 

“We’re still using it like it’s current.”

Canadian volunteerism has undergone a seismic shift since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared four years ago, but those in the sector say the underpinnings of this transformation are poorly quantified.

Nadine Collison, volunteer coordinator for Capital Regional District Regional Parks in Victoria, said scant national data isn’t just frustrating; it’s a barrier to developing new volunteer strategies.

In response, her organization launched a comprehensive volunteer satisfaction survey to help build localized recruitment and retention strategies based on localized data.

“I think it would also be really interesting to have Volunteer Canada create surveys that could be distributed more at a decentralized local level,” she said. 

“So, instead of Volunteer Canada doing all the work, it’s like, hey, if you can include these five questions on your next volunteer satisfaction survey over the next two years and give us that data, it would be really helpful.”

Little is known about how subsectors within the larger volunteer ecosystem have been impacted by recent societal upheaval, Collison added. However, there seems to be a general shift towards informal volunteering and micro-volunteering.

“But it’s very hard to move forward without proper statistics,” she said.

Suzanne Eckstadt, volunteer service coordinator at Bethany Care Society in Calgary, thinks non-profits and service organizations could do more to share the data they already have with other organizations.

“I’m a big believer in collaboration,” she said. 

“Just to see what (other organizations) are trying, what practices they’re doing, which are successful and where we can find ways to work together.”

Too often, people get stuck in data silos focused on organizational differences rather than similarities, she said.

“I’m not one of those people who feels that, if you’re in healthcare, you don’t talk to the environmental people,” Eckstadt said. “There is information that we can be sharing, especially around volunteering.”

One type of data that isn’t collected nearly as often as it could be is volunteer exit surveys, said Shaminda Perera, Volunteer Canada’s knowledge, practice and learning lead.

“I like to call them volunteer term conclusion reflections,” he said. “And a lot of the time, you will find golden nuggets of information in them.”

Those golden nuggets can include insight into economic challenges driving volunteer trends or physical limitations affecting older adults who could keep volunteering with simple accommodations.

“It’s about finding those tangible sets of information, let’s call them data, and really analyzing to figure out what story is being told,” Perera said.

However, he said collecting and analyzing data are often two separate challenges. Organizations may not have the financial capacity or skills to fully utilize the information they collect.

“They may have volunteer management software … but they may not know how to really analyze the data that you find within that software,” said Perera.

“For example, if you find that volunteers are applying to a specific type of volunteer position on one side and you are finding less traffic to another, that is the data point where you can figure out that micro-volunteering opportunities are getting more traffic than long-term positions.” 

Tara Gilroy-Scott, volunteer services coordinator for the Victoria Police Department and current president of Volunteer Management Professionals of Canada, said volunteer coordinators work diligently to take advantage of available technology.

“But I think the thing to keep in mind is that most of our organizations using volunteers are not-for-profit, so their ability to keep up with … trends and practices depends on their resources,” she said.

Fifty-eight per cent of all Canadian non-profits are entirely volunteer-run.

Like Mort-Putland, Gilroy-Scott would like to see more data collected on volunteer programs’ impact on the communities they serve.

“Each of us … has come into this field of practice because we want to make a difference in our community,” she said. “How does that data relate to the mission and values of our organizations?”

“A piece of technology that would help us do all that would be absolutely amazing,” Gilroy-Scott said.

Six years ago, Volunteer Victoria predicted an 18 per cent decline in volunteerism by 2023. 

“But we didn’t predict it based on our feelings or our anecdotal evidence. We predicted it based on the stats in our community,” Mort-Putland said.

Statistics that went into that prediction included age, stage of life, and the local cost of living. She said it was accurate and allowed the organization to prepare and plan ahead.

“For the first time in almost five decades, the fabric of our community is shifting. And if we only look backwards, we will be unprepared for today and tomorrow,” Mort-Putland said.