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Are you struggling to recruit volunteers?
If the answer is yes, then you need The Kindness Framework.
Often when asked, people will identify volunteer recruitment as their primary barrier to success in running volunteer fueled activities. Calgary Seniors has learned through more than 30 years of experience that it isn’t this simple.
There are many components that make a volunteer fueled approach work well, including: volunteer opportunity design, program design, volunteer philosophy and culture, and so much more. Volunteer recruitment is very important, but without understanding how all the pieces fit together, recruitment alone will not solve your problem.
Through The Kindness Framework project, Calgary Seniors is striving to learn, share, teach, and replicate everything we know about volunteer engagement.
We will help you evaluate what you’re already doing, teach you how to make it better, and encourage curiosity, playfulness and experimentation.
Our philosophy of volunteerism centres on the belief that most people don’t want to do boring, menial tasks, like lick envelopes, no matter how worthy the cause. Gone are the days where people volunteer purely out of obligation. Let us help you evolve into something where volunteers are genuinely excited and motivated to get (and stay) involved!
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At Calgary Seniors, we have been running volunteer-based programs for over 30 years.
We've learned A LOT through those years!
We’ve tried new things, made programs, made more programs, and made many mistakes along the way.
From this experience, we’ve learned about what motivates people to volunteer, how to find them (they’re out there!), and how to keep them around (once you’re in, you’re in). We’re ready to share our learnings in new places, with new faces, and in new ways!
Jessica White – Jessica is the Director of Programs at Calgary Seniors. Inspired by her Nana, who helped found Meals on Wheels in Sooke, Jessica is passionate about volunteering and seniors. Jessica’s specialty is everything data and analysis. Her secret talent is seeing the trends, root causes, and stories that lay behind the facts. Jessica brought the concept of human design principles to Calgary Seniors and has helped to transform the way our agency develops and delivers volunteer fueled programs.
Annastasia (Anna) Sommer-Stevens – Anna is the Co-Executive Director at Calgary Seniors. Also inspired by her grandparents and their aging journey in rural Alberta (Strome, Heisler, Daysland), Anna has spent the past two decades designing, developing, implementing and evaluating volunteer fueled programs. Anna is deeply passionate about seniors personally and professionally. She applies creativity, human-design theory, and visual language to support social inclusion of older people and to promote kindness and build mutually beneficial relationships and community connections.
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Join Anna and Jessica for a “Kindness Catalyst Consultation”. These consultations are totally free and are phased out in four parts: discovery, exploration, iteration and reflection.
They kick off with very thorough interview conversations intended to help us deeply understand what is currently happening. Following that, we dig deeper into areas we collaboratively identify as being ripe for enhancement. In the iterative phase, we work alongside you to develop a clear plan for how to level up your volunteer fueled activities. And finally, in the reflection phase, we will present back to you a full overview of what we learned, recommendations for future steps, and provide ongoing support as implementation occurs. At the end you will walk away feeling super confident, inspired and full of new ideas!
In 2026, we will be offering three free learning network sessions. The sessions are intended to cumulatively build off each other in a chronological order (aka, you need to attend all three to reap the full benefit). Each session will have a unique focus with the end goal being that people leave with real tools, skills, fresh ideas, and renewed energy. We have a lot of creative ideas to make the sessions fun, productive and practical.
These sessions will be virtual, but highly interactive. This is a camera on for the whole thing kind of situation. Expect to engage in small group breakout activities, complete fun exercises, participate in lots of collaborative brainstorming, and to walk away invigorated. We will need to know if you’re attending in advance, because we plan to snail mail “kits” to each participant that they will open parts of as the sessions unfold.
Trust us when we tell you, these will not be like any virtual meeting you’ve attended before.
June 17 - Volunteer Model Session – Learn about the philosophy and models that bring volunteer fueled activities to life.
September 9 - Community Assessment Session – Assess your community, organization, or program to find opportunities to level up your volunteer fueled activities.
December 2 - Prototype Session – Put your learnings to action and create, test, or enhance a kindness inspired prototype.
Do you think this all sounds great, but you’re worried about finding dollars to actually implement anything new? Relax! We’ve got you!
We have a modest pot (approximately $30k) to divvy up between participants to get things started. As part of our learning network prototype session, we will be offering financial support for people to go away and try the best of their new ideas. We’re not working with a large pile of gold, but it’s enough to help you gain information, confidence and experience.
Please note that to access this special financial support, you will need to attend all three learning network sessions described above.
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