Giving in Canada: Insights from the Latest GSS-GVP on a Shifting Donor Landscape

Canada's giving landscape has shifted sharply in recent years. This webinar walks through high-level insights regarding the demographic terrain of that shift: who is giving more, who is disengaging, and where the dollars are increasingly concentrated. Drawing on Statistics Canada's most recent release of the General Social Survey on Giving, Volunteering and Participating (GSS-GVP), we examine giving patterns across age, gender, education, income, marital status, religious attendance, labour force status, and household composition. The session also brings a critical lens to what the instrument can and cannot see, including the forms of generosity (mutual aid, remittances, ceremonial and Indigenous giving, in-kind support) that fall outside the formal tax-receiptable frame.

Participants will:

• Identify the demographic shifts behind the recent concentration of donation dollars among older, higher-income, and religiously active Canadians.
• Recognize the structural pressures facing specific donor segments, including early-career adults, dual-caregiving households, and lower-income brackets.
• Apply a critical lens to GSS-GVP data, distinguishing between what the instrument measures and the broader landscape of generosity it cannot capture.