If you’ve ever considered volunteering, the process may seem difficult to navigate, or even overwhelming. United Way Greater Toronto (UWGT) offers a variety of engagement opportunities that make your commitment worth it.
How to get started
United Way is a large and busy organization; volunteer work can be found in every corner of the operation, but mainly through its partners.
If you’ve ever sent an email looking for an opening, you may have been redirected towards two United Way-funded volunteer centres, Volunteer Toronto and Volunteer MBC (Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon). Both browsers provide lists of opportunities in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), accommodating various positions, schedules, and interests.
Apart from sifting through these search engines, United Way supports many agency partners with a great number of volunteering opportunities. With a map of all partners, you can find an agency near you to support members of your community.
Working with partner agencies supports United Way’s mission to strengthen the GTA’s social service network.
These partner agencies range from the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Indigenous Network, to the Scarborough Centre for Healthy Communities.
Search engines are a great step toward supporting your interest to help your community around the GTA – and through United Way’s various partners, the options are endless.
What volunteering can you do for United Way?
There are four major pillars for volunteers at United Way, each requiring a unique set of skills from participants.
These pillars are Special Events, Community Impact, Workplace Campaign, and Speaker’s Bureau. Volunteering through these pillars interacts directly with United Way, whereas finding an opportunity through search engines will direct the volunteer to the agency partners UWGT support.
Special Events provide volunteers with the most opportunities. For example, the United Way ClimbUP. This is a fundraising event that allows folks to take on the 1,776 steps of the CN Tower, requiring loads of volunteers to help set up and organize the climb.
Nadeesha Watawala, Manager of Volunteer Engagement and Community Building, says the event requires over 500 volunteers.
“That’s probably the best example of where we are able to really create massive opportunities for the community to volunteer,” she says.
In 2025, the United Way ClimbUP is on November 15 and 16.
The Community Impact team has a specific set of volunteers that help direct the funding of various organizations United Way supports. This decision-making is sustained by Community Impact staff’s knowledge of the health and understanding of these organizations.
“At United Way, when we grant money, we hold ourselves accountable and we involve community volunteers, who understand the landscape, in the decision-making process,” says Watawala.
United Way’s efforts become more inclusive when involving the Community Impact volunteers, including their input into a series of community-informed conversation about United Way’s grants.
Workplace Campaign volunteers host events, make corporate donations, and hold office campaigns to raise money, and they are the backbone of United Way’s fundraising. Getting involved as a Workplace Campaign volunteer creates positive change in the GTA’s communities and ensures those in need can thrive. The opportunity allows corporations to help with the work from their workplaces.
The Speaker’s Bureau is another essential volunteer group to United Way’s operations. This group of volunteers stands proudly in front of potential donors and shares the impact United Way has had on their life.
“Our Speaker’s Bureau program is open to anybody who’s been impacted by United Way services,” says Chantel Guthrie, Manager of Donor Engagement, “whether it’s that they work or volunteer on the board of an agency or if they’ve received services from a United Way agency.”
These speakers are trained by United Way and other volunteers to prepare their speeches, and practice becoming comfortable at public speaking. The Speaker’s Bureau allows those who’ve felt supported by United Way to use their voice for the promotion of this support, and to tell donors how they benefited from the donation.
“The Speaker’s Bureau volunteers, especially those with lived experience, are speaking in front of groups of people who they might not necessarily be exposed to otherwise,” says Guthrie. “They talk about the work that United Way is doing to support agencies and speak from a different perspective as a service user or as someone running the organization.”
This opportunity is offered in various ways throughout the year, typically through a callout system and often collecting a roster of 150 speakers.
Contact speakersbureau@uwgt.org to learn more about the program.
Why should you volunteer for United Way?
United Way is prepared to support you any way we can, and your voluntary support helps promote their work, to then help communities across Peel, Toronto, and York region. “If I can play a small part in what United Way does, and get my own personal gratification from that, I’m on board,” says Micheal James, a volunteer with the Speaker’s Bureau now celebrating his 20th year as a speaker. “I keep speaking for United Way because there is so much to talk about.”
The opportunity came to James when there was a callout for the Speaker’s Bureau at a United Way funded senior citizens centre, where he previously worked. Since then, James has been a coach for new members of the Bureau and notes the courage it takes to hold vulnerable conversations in front of crowds.
Few people are comfortable speaking in front of strangers, let alone sharing what is often a painful history, but the United Way team helps Speaker’s Bureau volunteers prepare.
“It’s not that they’re not educated in their vocabulary, it’s that they’re not educated in their emotional vocabulary,” says James, “That’s really hard, it’s a huge ask.”
In 2023, over 2200 volunteers welcomed runners at the CN Tower, ran workplace fundraising campaigns, shared their emotional journey through a United Way-funded agency, and served on boards and committees to help distribute grants to those who most need it. They are a critical part of the work that United Way does in improving communities and promoting a stronger GTA.
This story was produced as part of a partnership between Centennial College journalism students and United Way Greater Toronto.
