Mission & Strength

Volunteer Ottawa was established over 50 years ago as a community builder committed to supporting not-for-profit organizations in the greater Ottawa area. A not-for-profit organization itself, Volunteer Ottawa understands the needs of its member organizations and continually strives to increase the awareness of the power of volunteerism within the Ottawa community.

Volunteer Ottawa links people with community organizations. Our interactive website has thousands of volunteer opportunities from organizations who need volunteer energy to deliver their critical community services.

Volunteer Ottawa supports persons with disabilities, new Canadians, Internationally trained women, corporations and professionals connected to voluntary organizations in and around the city.

Volunteer Ottawa works directly with organizations to support knowledge development and resource distribution on topics integral to the effective and efficient use of volunteer capacity.

Website: In September 2007 VO partnered with the Talent First Initiative at Carleton University and built a multi-layered website from the ground up. We receive about 2000 volunteer applications per month to our member Organizations directly from the site. The site supports our members with tools, resources and matching capabilities in addition to a precedent setting resource list called the Volunteer Pool that currently holds the names of over 1000 potential volunteers.

Community: Volunteer Ottawa is a community builder that is the ‘hub’ for recruiting and matching volunteers. VO supports corporations looking to give back to the Ottawa community, high school student’s quest for 40 volunteer hours and community members looking to improve or share their skills. Volunteer Ottawa is positioned as the local expert on volunteerism in the Ottawa community.

Media and Social Networking: Volunteer Ottawa has established excellent media contacts that we use as a vital resource and for that of our member Organizations. VO uses the support and exposure of Twitter, our Blog, and Facebook and has volunteer opportunities published weekly in the Volunteer Roundup in the Ottawa Citizen.

Vision

Volunteer Ottawa is the centre for promoting and supporting volunteerism in our community.