June 18, 2026
Join us for a powerful keynote on reimagining wellbeing in volunteer leadership, along with engaging breakout sessions and hands-on presentations exploring ethical storytelling, confident communication, and smarter approaches to volunteer data and impact.
Date: Thursday, June 18, 2026
Time: 9am-1pm PST, 10am-2pm MST, 11am-3pm CST, 12-4pm EST, 1-5pm AST
Format: Virtual half-day seminar
The VMPC Forum was created to foster meaningful connection among volunteer engagement professionals across Canada. Because our community does not gather in person every year, the Forum provides an important annual opportunity for members to come together virtually to share ideas, learn from sector leaders, and strengthen professional relationships.
The forum is held every one to two years, typically in years when an in-person conference does not take place. Each forum features a distinct theme, reflecting emerging trends and priorities in volunteer engagement.
Importantly, the VMPC Forum is offered free of charge to members, reinforcing VMPC’s commitment to supporting the growth, connection, and advancement of volunteer engagement professionals across Canada.
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VMPC Members, please register below.
Jenna Wray (they/she) & Jayden Fox (she/her) are co-founders of Better Belonging, an organization dedicated to creating workplaces that foster psychological safety and collective well-being. As queer and neurodivergent entrepreneurs, with a combined 30+ years of professional experience, they use storytelling and evidence-based strategies to influence change that supports mental health and inclusion.
Maggie Stewart (she/her) is a dynamic leader and engaging speaker with over 12 years of experience in people and volunteer management. She brings an innovative mindset grounded in seven post‑secondary credentials, including certificates in volunteer coordination and management, and a Bachelor's of Science. Maggie is Manager, Foster Program at the BC SPCA and Chair of the BC Regional Committee for Volunteer Management Professionals of Canada. Her work has earned the Emerging Leaders Award (2017), Valedictorian Award (2022), and the 2025 VMPC President’s Award. Outside of work, Maggie enjoys time with her partner, family, friends, and her Golden Retriever, Rio.
Volunteer managers are often asked the same question: “How many volunteers do you have?” But what if growth in volunteer engagement isn’t always about increasing that number?
In this session, Maggie introduces a simple but powerful metaphor she uses to explain volunteer program data: The "Fluid Resource Bucket". The volunteers we need represent a line in the bucket determined by operational needs. Recruitment pours water into the bucket, while volunteers inevitably leave through holes—some we can fix (like poor onboarding) and others we cannot (life changes, health, relocation).
This metaphor helps reframe how we interpret volunteer data. Maintaining the same number of volunteers may actually represent success if fewer volunteers are leaving. Likewise, growth might mean improving volunteer experience, increasing efficiency, or strengthening the quality of engagement—not just adding more people.
Participants will explore how to challenge assumptions about growth, identify meaningful indicators of success, and use data-driven insights to guide program decisions. The session will also highlight the value of qualitative feedback, thoughtful survey questions, and collecting baseline data to demonstrate meaningful change. Because measuring the wrong things can send us chasing the wrong goals.
Vladyslav Hryhorenko, CVA, ABCP, is Executive Director of Volunteer Bénévoles Yukon and Principal of Rigóre Consulting, a management advisory practice specializing in nonprofit governance and organizational strategy. He holds the Certified in Volunteer Administration and Associate Business Continuity Professional designations. He is developing a book on volunteerism and the cultural dimensions of civic participation, drawing on Hofstede’s cultural framework and the Inglehart-Welzel model. His writing on volunteer sector trends has been developed for professional sector audiences across Canada and the United States.
The volunteer sector has a preferred explanation for falling participation: people care less, younger generations will not commit, and the pandemic broke habits that never came back. This session challenges that diagnosis directly.
Drawing on Statistics Canada’s 2023 Survey on Giving, Volunteering and Participating, Labour Force Survey data on gig work, and Canadian Social Survey findings on affordability, the session identifies two structural forces that better account for the observed decline: economic competition for discretionary time and the fragmentation of civic participation across informal, digital, and non-institutional channels.
Participants will work through the data together, examine what it can and cannot tell us, and apply a structural diagnostic lens to the planning assumptions their own organizations are currently operating under. The session is designed to be genuinely interactive: participants will be invited to identify which of their current recruitment and retention strategies address structural barriers and which assume a motivation problem that may not be the primary issue. The goal is to give practitioners a more accurate diagnostic frame so that organizational strategy starts from the right problem.
Marcela Zafra is a fractional marketing strategist with over ten years of experience in the nonprofit and social impact sector. She helps small and mid-sized nonprofits move from reactive marketing and communications to proactive strategy through partnering with nonprofits, working as an embedded marketing partner alongside leadership, programs, and fund development teams. Marcela also runs Comms Connect, a free monthly community of practice for nonprofit communicators and marketers. Her work is grounded in the belief that marketing is capacity building, and that strong systems, clear messaging, and ethical storytelling create sustainable impact.
Most organizations know storytelling matters. Fewer know how to do it without causing harm.
Volunteer engagement professionals are often at the center of storytelling, whether they are gathering stories from volunteers, sharing impact narratives with leadership, or helping community members feel safe enough to share their experiences. But without a clear framework, even well-intentioned storytelling can cross lines around consent, dignity, and privacy.
This interactive workshop moves beyond principles and into practice. Participants will learn a four-phase ethical storytelling framework that covers the full lifecycle of a story: gathering, crafting, distribution, and stewardship. We will explore what informed consent actually looks like, how to conduct trauma-informed interviews, how to craft stories that center dignity over drama, and what to do when something goes wrong.
Participants will walk away with a downloadable ethical storytelling toolkit, including the full framework, a media consent form template, and practical guidelines they can adapt and implement in their own organizations right away.
Whether you manage five volunteers or five hundred, this session will give you the structure to tell stories that build trust instead of breaking it.
Jessica is a volunteer engagement thought leader who helps organizations build trust, create impact, and inspire belonging. She is the recipient of the 2021 Alison Caird Young Leader Award in recognition of her leadership and excellence in volunteer engagement and the recipient of the 2023 VMPC Exemplary Leader Impact Award in recognition of her contributions to the field as a mentor, leader, trainer, and advocate.
Jessica was named one of the Top 10 Volunteer Leadership Voices in 2025. She earned her CVA credential in 2023, became Trauma of Money Certified™ in 2025, and has facilitated Fleming College’s Volunteer Management: Spectrum of Engagement course since 2022. She has held professional volunteer and community engagement roles at Crohn's and Colitis Canada, Pathways to Education Canada, the Heart & Stroke Foundation, Volunteer Toronto, and WWF-Canada. Jessica has the privilege to work on the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Learn more about Jessica at www.learnwithjpp.com.
Do you ever struggle to talk about the amazing work you do as a leader of volunteers, including to boards and executive teams, without feeling like you’re bragging? You’re not alone.
Many volunteer engagement professionals find it easier to shine the spotlight on others than on themselves. The truth is: your voice, accomplishments, and impact deserve to be seen and heard. This interactive session is all about finding ways to share your work that feel natural and aligned with your values. We’ll explore why some forms of self-promotion make us cringe, and how to reframe visibility so it feels authentic, empowering, and even enjoyable.
Using Mentimeter, you’ll have the chance to reflect anonymously, brainstorm with peers, and practice new techniques in real time. You’ll leave with practical tools and the confidence to show up more fully: whether on LinkedIn, at networking events, or in conversations.
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