Nominations Open for Canada’s Volunteer Awards: Recognising Outstanding Contributions in Helping Communities

Deadline: 15 June 2018

The Canada’s Volunteer Awards are open for nominations and invites volunteers from across the country, to recognize the significant contributions of individual volunteers, not-for-profit organizations and businesses across the country in helping communities.

Award Categories

Thérèse Casgrain Lifelong Achievement Award: Recognizes dedicated individuals who have volunteered for at least 20 years and have inspired other volunteers, led volunteer groups or made other exceptional achievements through volunteering.
Community Leader: Recognizes outstanding individual volunteers or groups of volunteers who have taken a lead role in developing solutions to social challenges in communities. This category does not include not-for-profit organizations or registered charities.
Emerging Leader: Recognizes volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 who have demonstrated leadership and helped to build stronger communities.
Business Leader: Recognizes businesses that demonstrate social responsibility in their practices, including promoting and facilitating volunteerism locally, regionally, and nationally.
Social Innovator: Recognizes not-for-profit organizations that address social challenges in innovative ways.

Eligibility Criteria

Nominees can be individuals or groups, businesses or not-for-profit organizations and must meet specific eligibility criteria. Political and public advocacy work is not eligible.
Individuals or groups must:
- be Canadian citizens, permanent residents or protected persons within the meaning of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act;
- be between the ages of 18 and 30 for the Emerging Leader category and 18 years of age and over for all other categories;
- have contributed to addressing social challenges in their community.
Businesses or not-for-profit organizations must:
- be Canadian (for example, registered not-for-profit organizations or businesses registered in Canada). For the purposes of the administration of the Canada’s Volunteer Awards, not-for-profit organization means entities incorporated under either federal or provincial not-for-profit legislation or registered charities that do not have transferable ownership interests and are organized and operated exclusively on a not-for-profit basis for a variety of purposes including social, educational, professional and charitable purposes;
- have contributed to addressing social challenges in their community in Canada.