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The $14 billion question
By Cam Tait
January 8, 2007
One might see giving at the office flying out the window, along with the typewriters and ashtrays. In its place, it seems, is the willingness of people to share their time with charities. I am somewhat surprised this is the case in Canada, considering the trend that is surfacing.
Statistics Canada recently released an interesting figure on volunteer activity. Even though the numbers are outdated - the data was from 2000 - it's somewhat staggering when we give it a good chew. The value of volunteer effort by Canadians was calculated at around $14 billion. That's to say $14 billion would be needed to replace the volunteer commitments with paid salaries.
Now, here's the mind-boggling fact (hang on to your morning coffee): the $14 billion is almost double what Canadian households contribute financially to charity. That figure was $7.9 billion in 2005. This is very curious to me on several levels.
We've been told that volunteering in Canada, generally, is on the decline. And we must factor into the equation that theses numbers are seven years old. Okay, there, we're done with that; time to move on. We tell ourselves - very silently - that writing a cheque is faster. Find chequebook. Rip one cheque out. Reach for a pen. Glance at calendar for correct date. Think for a few seconds of the amount you can contribute. Fill out the cheque. Sign it. Fold it in half. Find envelope. Write down name of charity. Place it in your jacket pocket and drop it off on the way to work. Compare that to spending five or six hours volunteering at a charity bingo or casino night. The cheque-writing option definitely takes less time.
But back to those volunteer figures. It would indeed be interesting to see what the numbers would be today, seven years later. The economy is good and there really doesn't seem to be any signs of it cooling down. So writing that cheque may be even easier now. Plus, we live in such a hurried world now with so many demands for our time. To reference an earlier point, that might be why volunteering in Canada is said to be down.
And, just to add more intrigue to the story, how about this? Just before Christmas, CharityVillage had an interesting nugget from the Corporation for National and Community Service in the United States. They're finding that Americans are sharing more time with charities now than they did fifteen years ago. The U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who helped with the study, discovered that the overall volunteer rate in the United States has increased by more than 32% since 1989. Wouldn't it be a great bit of news if Canadians were doing the same?
All of this is good. All of this is an indication that we are still volunteering. But the thing we have to remember is to keep doing it. The fact is, we can't afford not to. Fourteen billion dollars is a tough nut to crack, even for large corporations, never mind community members. We can't let it slide.
Cam Tait is a sports reporter for the Edmonton Journal. He covered charitable issues for almost 20 years. Thoughts, comments, ideas or a simple hello are welcomed at cam@charityvillage.com.
Opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CharityVillage.com®.
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