MONTREAL -- Canada's $90-billion-a-year voluntary sector is skating on thin ice because half of its donations and volunteers come from a tiny and shrinking core of supporters, a leading researcher has warned.

"We have one in 10 Canadians providing the majority of all support, more than half all the donations and volunteer hours," Michael Hall told the annual conference of the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy yesterday.

"Because of this, we are very vulnerable. Any decline at all in this group will have dramatic impacts on the sector," he said.

Mr. Hall, the vice-president of research at the CCP, said charitable groups should worry about their overwhelming reliance on this tiny group because "they are a pretty unusual slice of Canadian society," one that may actually be disappearing.

This "civic core" of almost 11 per cent of the population comprises older, religiously active Canadians, who are well educated, have incomes well above average, and have children aged 6 to 17, research has shown.

"I think we have to ask ourselves why we don't have more committed donors and volunteers who are representative of the general population," Mr. Hall said from Toronto. The two-day conference is being staged simultaneously in Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton via satellite hook-up.

The 1997 National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating revealed that 78 per cent of Canadians had made a charitable donation in the previous year, that 31 per cent had given time as an unpaid volunteer to a non-profit organization and that 50 per cent were members of one or more civic organizations.

But Mr. Hall said that these numbers can be deceiving. "Almost everyone is involved in charitable giving but the depth of that support is very shallow, leaving us on thin ice," he said. For example, 80 per cent of all charitable donations come from only 20 per cent of donors.

Similarly, 72 per cent of all volunteer hours dedicated to charity are contributed by a mere 8 per cent of volunteers.

More worrisome still, Mr. Hall said, is the tremendous overlap in those two groups, meaning that one in 10 people account for a majority of giving and volunteering in Canada.

These introspective concerns, paradoxically, come at a time when the voluntary sector is gaining an unprecedented voice.

Lucienne Robillard, president of the Treasury Board and chairwoman of a ministerial group on the voluntary-sector initiative, said yesterday that charities and non-profits can expect to have a growing role in shaping public policy and delivering services.

"You have a responsibility and a role greater than you realize." Ms. Robillard said the voluntary-sector initiative, a program under which senior public servants and leaders of the voluntary sector are working together to bolster the role of and support for charities in Canada, is working tremendously hard and will result in significant changes in how a range of programs are funded and administered.

RETURN TO SELECTED CHARITIES STORIES