Our communities
Our work with communities throughout Canada is defined by our mission to expand access to education, increase economic empowerment, and facilitate the conditions communities through this shared land need to thrive.
WorldClass
Deloitte's WorldClass initiative is a testament to our commitment to delivering impact through education and skills development.
This Deloitte global program aligns with our Purpose to make an impact that matters, focusing on empowering our people to share their knowledge and skills in underserved communities to succeed in the modern economy. By supporting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—specifically, quality education (SDG4), decent work and economic growth (SDG8), and reduced inequalities (SDG10)—WorldClass aims to transform the lives of 100 million people by 2030.
In FY2024 alone, our WorldClass impact reached 754,384 people, for a total of 2,403,282 lives in Canada and Chile who have benefited from this program since its inception in 2017—and marking the fulfillment of our goal to support two million lives in these regions.
This commitment not only drives our global aspirations, but also solidifies Deloitte’s role as a catalyst for meaningful change in the communities we serve.
Pro Bono: Offering our services to our communities
Each year, our people use their professional skills and knowledge to serve charities and non-profits through firm-funded and volunteer pro bono programs. Our social impact strategy focuses on helping non-profits address their most critical issues and help drive transformational outcomes.
Through our Society Partnerships, we provide multi-year pro bono support to deliver national, large-scale WorldClass impact. And our Social Innovation Fund supports pro bono initiatives to help enhance education, skills development, and employment in Canada.
With our Community Advisory Projects (CAP), a volunteer initiative, we connect the skills, passions, and experience of our people with the needs of local non-profits, helping in areas including accessibility, poverty reduction, health care, and support for refugees and new immigrants.
In FY2024, Deloitte contributed:
Time dedicated to pro bono services—including initiatives across our Society Partnerships, Social Innovation Fund, and CAP programs
Total time volunteered—including both traditional and skills-based projects
Total value of community impact of pro bono and volunteering efforts
LIFT Impact Partners
Supporting newcomers to Canada with LIFT Impact Partners
Since FY2023, Deloitte and LIFT Impact Partners have been on a shared three-year journey to support LIFT’s Strategic Reinvention Initiative, a plan to integrate newcomers into the Canadian workforce. Deloitte’s pro bono support of this plan helps elevate service provider organizations (SPOs) focused on dismantling barriers to meaningful employment. In FY2024, we explored how AI can be used by SPOs to improve operations while revolutionizing the way they can use data to support newcomers to Canada in finding meaningful employment.
Learning for a Sustainable Future
Empowering the next generation of climate action with Learning for a Sustainable Future
Through our Social Innovation Fund, we provided pro bono support to help the Canadian charity Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF)—which has been working for more than 30 years to integrate sustainability education into the country’s school systems—develop an ethical funding framework to ensure its funding sources are in line with its values. Our support helped to build a foundation for LSF to expand its funding and educate more youth on topics of climate and sustainability.
Canadian Helen Keller Centre
Supporting the deaf-blind community with the Canadian Helen Keller Centre
Our volunteer CAP team developed a fundraising strategy for the Canadian Helen Keller Centre (CHKC)—which provides affordable housing, training, and intervenor services to the deaf-blind community across the GTA—to help it broaden its spectrum of potential donors and thus continue supporting and raising public awareness of the needs of the deaf-blind community.
“This was a tremendous opportunity for CHKC; I thank everyone involved for their time, expertise, and advice. I also appreciate the momentum and support from the Deloitte team and their excitement to see CHKC succeed. I look forward to using what we have learned and the assets created throughout this process.”
Jennifer Robbins, Executive Director, Canadian Helen Keller Centre
Wood’s Homes
Expanding youth mental-health support with Wood’s Homes
Our volunteer CAP team helped Wood’s Homes—a Calgary-based mental-health centre that provides treatment and support for young people, adults, and families with mental-health challenges—define and articulate a strategic, multi-pronged path to optimize an underperforming conference space (Inglewood Event Centre), thus enabling the organization to develop new sustainable sources of funding while continuing to serve the needs of clients. Our team also advised on matters of customer experience and innovation.
"Deloitte's Community Advisory Projects group was essential to clarify the next social enterprise project at Wood's Homes–Inglewood Event Centre. The group supported the development of a clear direction for the project, a clear value proposition, the marketing plan, and a three-year plan for development of the phases of the project, as well as some key components of our customer experience and ideas for approaches to innovation. It was the complete package that we needed.”
Janet Stewart, Associate Director, Wood’s Homes
Matthew House Toronto
Strengthening community support with Matthew House Toronto
We collaborated with Matthew House Toronto—a charity supporting refugees—to improve its ReCourse program, which prepares refugee claimants for their hearings with the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. This work included creating an impact-measurement framework to help increase funding and double the program’s reach, conducting workshops with Matthew House leaders and stakeholders to assess key program activities and desired outcomes, and creating informational materials and training for the organization’s staff to enable the continuous use and refinement of these newly implemented impact-measurement practices—all to help ensure the ReCourse program reflects the true impact and vision Matthew House aims to deliver.
“The Deloitte team listened to our team and took the time to truly understand the challenge we were facing in the terms of our organizational capacity to implement their findings. We were thrilled with the outputs of the activity, and we have already implemented their recommendations.”
Jacky Tuinstra, Executive Director, Matthew House Toronto
Impact Every Day and Impact Day
Impact Every Day
As part of our corporate responsibility strategy, our Impact Every Day initiative supports our people in making an impact that matters year-round by addressing the issues that are most important to our local communities and larger society.
Through volunteering and workplace giving, our people invest their time, skills, and knowledge to make a positive impact where it is needed—helping communities address their specific challenges, strengthen collaborations, and implement meaningful initiatives. Moreover, these efforts help our people build stronger connections with their colleagues and communities, develop leadership skills, and feel a sense of shared Purpose.
Impact Day
A proud, long-standing tradition at Deloitte, Impact Day is a dedicated day of volunteering and putting our communities first.
More than 2,700 of our people came together in October 2023, in-person and virtually, to connect with our communities and each other. They participated in mentoring sessions, hosted employment workshops—including the Deloitte-facilitated Business Chemistry, which offers a simple yet powerful way to identify meaningful differences in people’s working styles—organized beach cleanups, helped prepare meals for underserved communities, and facilitated financial literacy workshops in high schools across Canada. These were just some of the many Impact projects that demonstrate how our people take care of each other and work together for measurable effect.
Grace Steedman, Senior Consultant in Workforce Transformation, and Regional Impact Lead in the Prairies, emphasizes the importance of community engagement:
“To me, it is incredibly important to take time out of our days to connect and give back to our communities. At Deloitte, we are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do so through Impact Day and year-round volunteering opportunities. We all have a role to play in making our communities a better place—and the world more equitable, connected, and sustainable.”
Stories of impact
Workplace giving
Deloitte has a long tradition of giving back to the communities in which we work and live, through our annual workplace giving campaign and year-round fundraisers.
In FY2024, this amounted to:
Community Changemaker Awards
Recognizing exemplary community service
This year’s Community Changemaker Awards recipients are inspiring leaders, innovators, and volunteers who are effecting meaningful change in our communities through Deloitte initiatives. Applying their unique skills, passions, and perspectives, they’re living our Purpose, as well as our Shared Value to “take care of each other.”
Their initiatives supported marginalized groups, connected our people to volunteer opportunities in sustainability initiatives such as Earth Month and the firm’s vegan challenges, and helped increase access to education and skills development.
Through the transformative power of volunteering, our Community Changemakers serve as reminders of the meaningful effects of contributing to building a future in which everyone can thrive.
Sheri Penner
