Nonprofit Workforce Issues

Background

When many people think of the voluntary sector, they immediately think of volunteers, but in Alberta, in addition to over 2.5 million volunteers, there are over 176,000 full-time, paid positions.

Across Canada, the sector’s GDP is growing and in 2000, it was larger than the mining, oil and gas-extraction industry and more than 50% larger than Canada’s entire retail trade industry.

At the local level, participants in CCVO’s Strength Under Stress study (2005) indicated that the strength of local nonprofits and charities is their people, both paid staff and volunteers. However, human resources-related challenges continue to be a key issue for voluntary sector organizations, including:

• Difficulty recruiting and retaining qualified staff with the skills and experience needed for positions.
• Difficulty offering compensation and benefits that are competitive with those offered in the private and government sectors.
• Little additional funds for staff development and training opportunities.
• Large amount of temporary and part-time work, as well as unpaid overtime.
• Many small and mid sized organizations do not have human resources expertise in-house.