With fewer people to draw from, rural Alberta is feeling the pinch for volunteers

Rural municipalities in Alberta say it's getting harder to find volunteers to help run events and support essential services.

University of Alberta researchers who spoke to 27 municipal officials across the province learned there has been a persistent decline in recent years in the number of people able to volunteer.

The findings are in a report titled Declining Rates of Volunteerism in Alberta and the Increasing Threat to Rural Municipalities.

It was prepared for Rural Municipalities of Alberta — which advocates on behalf of Alberta's 69 counties and municipal districts —by the U of A's Alberta Centre for Sustainable Rural Communities.

Report co-author Clark Banack, the centre's director, said rural communities have been struggling to attract new volunteers while numbers of longstanding volunteers fall off.

"The existing volunteers are, in many cases, aging out," Banack told CBC.

"They're experiencing burnout. They're ready to kind of move on, and they're finding it much harder for ... new blood, younger people to kind of step in and take these roles."

The report explains that rural communities in the province "are aging faster than urban ones" while also seeing population declines, especially in relation to the proportion of Albertans who live in large urban centres.

They have fewer people in general and "especially fewer younger people," the report says.

National organization Volunteer Canada found up to 65 per cent of organizations across the country are experiencing a shortage of volunteers, causing a ripple effect on programs and services for people in need.

"It is not an exaggeration to suggest that volunteers are the backbone of rural communities," Banack's report said.

Volunteers play critical roles within rural Family and Community Support Services offices, local firefighting and victims services, recreation and cultural organizations, municipal committees and more.

Tim Carson, CEO of the Alberta Association of Agricultural Societies, said there has been a difficult transition period in changing how to reach out to volunteers.

"The pandemic was, I call it a bit of an accelerator, where we've become very self-focused, if you will," Carson said in an interview.

"How do I manage my particular world? The complexity of today is very time-taxing for individuals, for families." 

Banack said larger issues of affordability have claimed large portions of any available time people may have to volunteer.

"People literally have less time than they did 20, 30, 40 years ago to do this kind of stuff," he said.

"[With] affordability issues, that's even more pressure for people to be putting in more hours trying to find that additional income to deal with it, so that that leaves far less time."

Carson also noted that less available time also impacts an organization's ability to train volunteers and foster their leadership skills.

"The ability to govern an organization is far different than organizing an event," he said. 

A volunteer in a leadership position may have to deal with more volatile factors, such as rising costs of operating a facility.

"If you're operating a facility of any sort, the value of that facility has in some cases, tripled. That 50-year-old facility that was years ago, $180,000 is now $3.2 million.

"And [volunteers] operating multi-million-dollar facilities, they're operating million-dollar-plus budgets, and we're trying to do it as a nice club off the kitchen table — and that governance model isn't really effective today." 

Tackling the problem 

Debbie Oyarzun, manager for the County of Barrhead, northwest of Edmonton, said the county has endeavoured to undertake six goals to bolster volunteer numbers. 

These include improving marketing and awareness of volunteer programs and grants available to get financial support, increasing community engagement, and upgrading facilities and services to deal with more volatile circumstances.

"We see it's very cyclical," Oyarzun said about rising and falling numbers of volunteers in the county. 

"It'll go on a peak, if things are exciting and stuff is happening, and then after a couple of years, those volunteers will start to tire out, and then that the volunteer pool dwindles down again.

"Our community halls, which are run by volunteer groups, we're seeing that they're still quite stagnant, or even seeing a decline in volunteerism here."

CBC requested comment from the Ministry of Arts, Culture, and Status of Women to determine what supports are available to support volunteerism in rural communities.

Press secretary Garrett Koehler said Alberta's government provides almost $130 million to the Community Facility Enhancement Program and the Community Initiatives Program, which help build or repair community infrastructure or help non-profits run festivals, art shows and community programming.

Last week, the province announced the most recent round of grants, which included over $11 million to 226 non-profits. 

"So far this fiscal year Alberta's government has distributed more than $24 million through 474 grants to non-profits, of which 47 per cent are going to rural communities," Koehler said in his statement. 

The province also runs the Crowdfunding Alberta Platform, through which the province matches 50 per cent of funds raised by an eligible campaign. 

READ | U of A report tackles issue of fewer volunteers in rural Alberta: