When we write with others, we discover ourselves. Writers Collective of Canada (WCC) provides just this opportunity as a charitable arts-health organization. Our programs ignite connection through creativity by inspiring powerful, authentic stories shared in community. Like countless other charities, we negotiate the dynamics of strained financial resources and surging demand.
For more than a dozen years, one-hundred percent (100%) of our arts-health programming has been delivered by trained volunteer facilitators (more than 400 now). While national volunteer engagement numbers are down, we have had success with ongoing recruitment, retention, and volunteer re-engagement, with a 26% increase in new volunteers in 2025. Thanks to volunteers, our impact doubled while our human and financial resources remain lean.
In independent multi-year evaluations, WCC facilitators consistently cite several benefits of their time with us, including:
- Improved facilitation skills
- Improved mood
- Greater sense of purpose
- Improved technical skills
- More open-mindedness
- New leadership skills, including communication, compassion, creativity, and increased emotional intelligence
Below, I unpack our success to offer fresh ideas for volunteer engagement.
1. Volunteers at the core, not on the sidelines
Placing volunteers at the heart of an organization’s mission transforms them from mere helpers into the heartbeat of the work.
By positioning our volunteers on the frontlines, WCC ensures that our mission is delivered through authentic human-to-human connection. Our volunteers receive a front-row seat to their impact and the impact of our collective. This inspires deeper and sustained engagement with us.
In every workshop, WCC facilitators witness the healing power of being deeply listened to and fully heard. They watch new connections form between strangers. They experience stories shared, many for the first time. As WCC facilitator Helen Kennedy expresses it: “My WCC workshops are inspiring, and I leave each week with renewed belief in the power of the written word and my faith in humanity restored.”
Take-away: Inspire your volunteers by engaging them in ways that they can deliver on tangible aspects of your mission, and in ways that allow them to witness the impact.
2. Volunteers as empowered community builders
WCC volunteers receive a rigorous 16-hour practical, interactive training before they are matched with a co-facilitator and connected to a community partner organization to begin leading our community writing workshops—sometimes within just days or weeks of completing their training.
While all WCC workshops follow the same structure and abide by the Six Essential Practices that are the architecture of our workshops, our facilitators are encouraged to bring their own unique personalities into their workshops. They are also empowered to introduce our workshops into spaces and places that are personal to them.
Through passionate volunteers, we have launched workshops in new spaces ranging from public libraries outside of the centres where we have Chapters, to the Canadian Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine. WCC facilitators are empowered community builders who carry the organization’s values into the world, effectively doubling the impact and ensuring the mission remains both urgent and deeply personal. As volunteer Mya Moniz puts it, “Volunteering with the WCC just brings me one step closer to the world I want to see!”
Take-away: Put volunteers at the heart of your mission and empower them with information, resources, knowledge, and the support they need to expand the mission.
3. Diverse opportunities for diverse volunteers
WCC volunteers represent the diversity of the communities we serve. More than half encounter us first as program participants (writers). This allows us a unique opportunity to activate them as peer-leaders if they so choose. Understanding and adapting to the diverse needs of volunteers and prospective volunteers can be the catalyst for organizational innovation, growth, and long-term sustainability.
During the volunteer application process, prospective WCC facilitators express their preferences for the communities they are passionate about serving (e.g. BIPOC, seniors, youth, Veterans), the spaces where they are comfortable facilitating (e.g. onsite, online, hybrid), and their availability. Volunteer engagement is celebrated at any capacity: weekly, seasonal, or sporadic.
Last year, we diversified how we train volunteers, realizing that this would allow us to support a new type of volunteer. To accommodate staff at partner agencies who wanted to train and embed our program into their place of work, we developed a modular weekday training format offered exclusively for these potential volunteers. This resulted in the creation of new training tools that now benefit all our volunteers.
Take-away: Learn from your volunteers. Adapting to their needs and understanding their lives can help to diversify and expand how you engage with them and enable you to attract more volunteers.
4. Enriching volunteers’ lives enriches the organization
As our efforts to increase meaningful engagement with volunteers have expanded, so has our capacity—engaged facilitators volunteer more hours, bring our workshops to new communities, connect us to new partner organizations, and recommend us to other potential volunteers.
Our volunteers’ initial weekend of training is just the beginning of their engagement with us. We provide them with monthly engagement opportunities to build connection and shared learning. At the same time, we become a more diverse, aware, and resilient organization. Once per month, we alternate between these one-hour Zoom sessions:
- A quarterly facilitator meeting
- Storytelling circles
- Enrichment sessions featuring guest speakers—these have included craft-focused writing workshops, crafting your own land acknowledgement, breathwork education, and more
- Community Learning Circles (CLCs)—these moderated panel discussions with partners, community leaders, and facilitators with lived experience help us deepen our understanding of how best to serve the unique needs of diverse populations
Our volunteer facilitators are also invited to attend formal WCC events, open mic nights, and casual coffee shop catch-ups. Each April—Volunteer Month in Canada—we dedicate a campaign to them. We feature their wisdom, highlight their impact, and celebrate their volunteerism. This also raises awareness of our organization, our programming, our impact, and our breadth.
By integrating volunteers into the fabric of our identity, supporters become stakeholders. Most of our staff have also received the volunteer training and serve as volunteers—our leadership (including me) maintains a first-hand perspective on how to create the best possible experience for both volunteers and program participants.
Take-away: Find meaningful ways to engage with volunteers through joint learning and sharing—everyone and the organization will benefit.
While WCC’s community writing workshop program is a powerful social prescription, volunteering itself can be a social prescription. “WCC brought me from grief to purpose,” is how one volunteer facilitator, Irene, puts it. Another facilitator, Georgina, reminds us that when we create deep, varied ways to engage, our mission stops being a task and becomes a personal value for our volunteers. My experience as a WCC volunteer facilitator since 2019 has been beautiful and humbling. … I am more patient, loving, kind, and less judgmental because of it.”
Volunteers at the heart of it all
At WCC, we conceive of the relationship between the organization and its volunteers as a circle. Volunteers are at the centre—the heart—and all other work surrounds and supports their service.
As our volunteers deliver our program in their communities, they bring their learnings, observations, and ideas back to us and to each other. We are always learning together, always practicing our core values of listening and responding in community.
While every organization differs, the principle remains the same: when volunteers are treated as the heartbeat of an organization, the impact is transformative. By empowering our community to lead, we have done much more than grow our numbers; we’ve built a resilient, human-centered movement that ensures our mission lives on in every word shared and every connection made, expanding our impact well beyond each workshop.
Shelley Lepp is CEO, Writers Collective of Canada. She has spent her career working in the non-profit sector, with ample experience in volunteer management, major events fundraising, communications, and strategic planning. Shelley holds a certificate in Management of Volunteer Programming and a Master’s Degree in Adult Education and Community Development from OISE, University of Toronto.
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