The nonprofit and charitable sector is Canada’s largest workforce, and our social services as we know them would not exist without the people who deliver these essential services in our communities every day. A recent report by Imagine Canada entitled People First: A Portrait of Canada’s Nonprofit Workforce has gathered data that tells us more about the 2.5 million people working in the sector, and notably the unique challenges facing those working in our essential community based charities and nonprofits.
The nonprofit sector in Canada is diverse and includes government nonprofits like hospitals and universities as well as business industry associations and community nonprofits. At United Way Centraide Canada we are particularly focused on the strengths and challenges facing community nonprofits, their employees and volunteers. The United Way Centraide Movement is the largest non-government funder of these essential services in Canada, supporting an ecosystem of over 3,800 unique community service organizations serving local communities across Canada and meeting the needs of over 8 million people annually.
The Imagine Canada report shines light on the important value of nonprofit sector to our economy contributing 8.3% – or $211 Billion – to Canada’s Gross Domestic Product. This report also highlights that workers in the broader nonprofit sector experience annual wages 13% below the private and government sectors. Frontline workers in community service nonprofits – the people we depend on every day for essential services – face a wage gap of 31%.
Carleton University’s Charity Insights Canada Project adds more data to this picture, emphasizing that the community service sector is facing a “trilemma.” The first of the three challenges is that demand for services exceeds capacity, and the gap is widening. Second, the sector faces ongoing financial instability due to unpredictable funding that is shrinking in real terms while the costs of programs and the demand for services increase. Thirdly, the nonprofit sector as a whole is facing a workforce recruitment, retention and wellness crisis.
Community services are not “nice to haves” – they are essential infrastructure embedded in the fabric of our communities that provide care, build social connection, address affordability challenges and enable economic participation. Community services deliver employment and upskilling for workers; housing and homelessness prevention programs; childcare and services for youth, seniors and people with disabilities; mental health and counselling; and support for survivors of gender-based violence. Increasingly, the sector is on the front lines of emergencies like wildfires, playing a critical role in community resilience, response, and recovery from disasters that too many of us are now familiar with.
As we face growing economic uncertainty, the community services sector is vital to meeting the needs of Canadians, enabling economic participation and mobilizing the caring power of volunteers to support and strengthen our local communities. Yet the sector has been testing the limits of compassion fatigue, pushing organizations to be more creative than ever with solutions to increasing demand and dwindling resources, and considering scaling back or closing programs that communities depend on. The sector is reporting elevated levels of absenteeism, burnout and mental health leave among staff and volunteers. The uncertainty created around investment in Canada’s economy has the potential to instigate economic restructuring with lasting impacts on employment and household incomes.
There are challenges but there are also solutions to building and maintaining a strong and resilient community services sector.
First, individual donors, government, foundations and others need to prioritize giving and funding to community-based nonprofits, with a focus on longer term mission-based funding that includes committing money over time to support core activities and nurture longevity within the sector.
Second, we need to invest in community infrastructure like service hubs that provide local services with sustainable, affordable locations to serve communities.
Third, we need to invest in a comprehensive labour force strategy for community services that creates the capacity for essential services to recruit, retain and invest in staff and organizations to provide good purposeful employment at living wages, and enriching volunteer experiences for Canadians.
Each year, United Way Centraide mobilizes and invests $600m to advance these solutions. United Way Centraide Canada is also proud to be leading a diverse coalition of sector leaders, workers and partners, including Imagine Canada, who have been advocating for a community services labour force strategy. Made possible by the generous support of McConnell Foundation, this comprehensive national Labour Force Strategy will focus on workforce development, leveraging technology to better support workflow, enhancing workplace culture by fostering equity and inclusion and funding models and practices within the social sector. We are ready to work with the government and our community partners as well as the private sector, to implement solutions that will have a lasting impact for the workers within the sector, and the millions of people they support.
You can read more about our national Labour Force Strategy in UWCC’s 2024 Annual Report.
