Our goal is to help build and strengthen Canada's non-profit sector by connecting non-profits across the country with job seekers as well as suppliers of services or products - at prices that even the most financially challenged of non-profit organizations can afford - free!

Well, there are numerous reasons.

We don't employ sales people to convince organizations to advertise on our website so we can generate more profits. Every cent that other sites spend on advertising and sales is ultimately added to your cost of posting a job on their site. We firmly believe that if we offer an unbeatable service at unbeatable rates (can't really beat free) people will use our site and spread the word themselves.

Our site is designed from the ground up to be fully automated. This means we don't need to have employees manually checking and posting each job. An additional benefit to you is no delays when you decide to make your job live.

We also keep our infrastructure costs to a bare minimum by using only best-of-breed open-source and free software.

As mentioned before, we keep our costs to a bare minimum by having a fully automated site. There are costs involved though, and at the moment we (the founders) are covering those ourselves in order to keep the site free. We will do this as long as possible but our goal is to have the site at least become self-sufficient. To achieve this we may eventually need to start charging a nominal amount for some services to cover these costs.

Spreading the word always helps. There are several ways to do this.
• Talk about us on social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter and others.
• Send a quick  email to your friends and colleagues.
• If you know of a regular email list or newsletter aimed at non-profits, let them know about us. If there is a specific website that you think should link to us, let them know. Alternatively, you can send us the information and we'll contact them, however references tend to work best when coming from 3rd parties.
• If you have a web site and can place a link on it to our site, that always helps.
• If you apply for a job you found on our site, please mention this fact in your cover letter.

If you have any other suggestions, by all means  tell us.

While the site has always been entirely funded privately by the founders, contributions towards running costs are always very welcome and we gratefully accept financial contributions by credit card.

Please note that we are not set up as a CRA registered charity. This means we can only issue regular receipts, not CRA-eligible donation receipts.

Absolutely, we'd love you to. We're happy with just a plain simple text link to our site, however if you prefer a graphical image, button or icon your users can click on, then please follow this link.

We officially launched on the 1st of July 2006. What better day to launch an all-Canadian non-profit work site than  Canada Day?

Glad you asked. You can view our rules for job postings here. We also highly recommend you read our guidelines for effective job postings.

For the vast majority of organizations, placing job ads on our site is completely free of charge.

Should you find your ideal candidate through our site, please note that contributions toward our running costs are always gratefully accepted.

Some organizations (for-profit fundraising agencies, recruitment firms and other bulk posters) may be required to contribute a small amount per job posting. Please  contact us if you have any questions.

Where a posting is charged for, your account must have job posting credits before the job can be posted live. Don't worry, we do not post your jobs live and then demand payment after the fact. Credits can be added to your account at any time (by credit card - quick and secure), with discounts being offered for bulk purchases. Job posting credits never expire.

Only jobs in or related to the Canadian not-for-profit sector are allowed on our site. These can be regular paid jobs where the person receives a salary, wage or contract payment as well as volunteer, unpaid positions, with one exception - please see the next question.

• Jobs unrelated to the Canadian non-profit sector;
• unpaid internships;
• positions where the candidate is expected to pay for, advance, donate or fundraise amounts to get the position.

Yes, but only internships where the interns receive payment. Unfortunately, due to the increasing abuse of unpaid internship positions, we no longer allow them on the site.

First of all, if you don't already have an account, you need to create one by clicking 'Sign up' (top-right corner of page). To avoid delays, it is highly recommended that you use an organizational email address if you have one.

Email addresses from bulk free email providers (like gmail, outlook, hotmail, yahoo, etc.) trigger additional checking on the account and increase possible job posting delays. Once you have created your account, simply log in and click on the 'post jobs' tab (top-right). Follow the links from there to create a job posting in your preferred language.

For brand new accounts, once you have selected to make your job posting public (go live), it can take up to 24 hours (on average about 6) for an administrator to check the account and job posting and then make it live. You'll also receive an email notification when your job is released / posted live.

Once the account is established as genuine and has a history of a few jobs posted that conform to our rules and guidelines, the account is then flagged as 'trusted' which means that thereafter, job postings are instantly live. An exception is if the system kicks out a job for admin review due to internal non-compliance triggers, then that posting will be delayed until an adminstrator can check it.

This is all to keep the hoardes of spammers and scammers at bay. You can speed up the process with new accounts by not using a generic email address (gmail, outlook, hotmail, yahoo, etc.) to create your account. You can always specify a different email address to receive email applications in your posting.

Jobs will be posted publicly for up to six months (180 days). After that your job will remain in our database and visible only to you.

Absolutely not! Last time we looked Canada had 2 official languages, English and French. We think it's rather cheeky for other sites to charge substantially more for bilingual job postings. Quite un-Canadian, eh?

Absolutely. You post an RFP exactly the same way you do a job - just select RFP from the job type list when prompted. RFP's can be posted for up to 6 months and are also free of charge.

Yes. We think it's only fair that you control the font formats, bullets and colour, not us.

Short answer - no. Long answer - our research found that logos ranked last on the list of features that were deemed desirable by job seekers. Remember your job posting here is not like a print media advertisement where your colourful logo is what initially grabs the job seekers attention to that section of the page and hopefully makes them want to read further. Job seekers on our site are focussed and looking at your posting because they've already searched for certain conditions and seen the job title as well as which organization is posting the job. In fact, many respondents actually found logos distracting while they were trying to quickly find the important facts about a job (bear in mind they're browsing through perhaps dozens of postings at a time).

Logo files also slow down page load times (never good) and guzzle bandwidth (this can translate into increased costs for people browsing our site from mobile devices where they pay for bandwidth used).

So, given that the most important requirement for a job seeker is getting at the information in each posting quickly and effectively, and the negligible benefits of displaying logos on job pages, we decided against providing this facility. But don't despair - when a job seeker wants to find out more about your organization, they'll follow the link to your website where they'll then be exposed to your organization's logo in all its glory!

Just log in, click on the 'post jobs' tab, and you will be able to edit your job. No waiting for approval or intervention from our side. The only thing you cannot change once a job is public is the job title.

Yes. Simply edit your job and change the closing date. No waiting for approval or intervention from our side. For your convenience we also send you an email reminder 2 days before your job closes so you can decide if you'd like to extend it.

Nothing at all.

If you decide to close a job earlier than the posted closing date, you may do so by simply logging on and then clicking on the 'close' action link next to the public job you want to close. This closes the job immediately and the job will no longer be displayed in regular job searches.

Any job in unreleased state can be deleted completely by hitting the delete button while in edit mode. Alternatively clicking the 'delete' action link before going into edit mode will also achieve the same result. Once a job has been made public however, it can no longer be deleted. This is by design so that you (or someone else in your organization, if you're unavailable) can refer back to it at a later date. You can of course still close a public job any time you want to.

Not at all. You can view every job you have posted with us, even if it has long expired. With one click you can copy an old job, make any changes you desire, and make that new job live. No more hunting through old files for previous job description examples, when you need to advertise a new job. You'll always have an electronic record of all your jobs posted on our site just a login away.

Fax? What's that? More seriously, sorry no. One way we keep our costs down is by minimising human intervention in the entire process. Our site has been designed from the ground up to be easy for you to help yourself and is fully automated. Plus, the trees tend to like it better this way.

Sorry, no. However you can cut and paste your description from your favourite word processor into our editor. It is smart enough to try and interpret the formatting and does a reasonably good job of doing so. Any minor deviations and you can correct them yourself after pasting. Our built-in editor allows you to change many formatting options with the ease and familiarity with which you do it in Word. Try it out.

Sorry, we don't allow this for the following reasons. By placing multiple positions in one ad, you miss out on your job posting being emailed to potentially many users who have set up email alerts that trigger on words in the job title. For example, someone who has an alert for titles containing the word 'manager', will not be notified when you post your job which only has those words in the job description itself. Also, most job seekers don't like to have to click on obscure titles like 'Various Positions' in order to find out what exactly an organization is looking for. It wastes their time (imagine sifting through many postings like that) and they are very likely to not bother clicking on it in the first place - again reducing your list of potential applicants.

Yes, in cases where you have multiple identical positions to fill within the same organization, you can post them as one job ad. If you like, you can mention that there are multiple positions in the body of the posting.

No, for these reasons:
  1) Many users of our site set up automated email alerts that notify them whenever a job matching certain keywords in the description is posted. This means that any jobs posted without detailed job descriptions are not likely to trigger the alerts and therefore possibly qualified candidates will not be notified of your job posting.
  2) A reasonable number of visitors to our site search for jobs containing certain keywords from the search page. Once again, if your posting on our site does not have any details in it, then it will likely not be brought to the attention of job seekers browsing for jobs in this manner.
  3) Postings with minimal descriptions get significantly fewer click-throughs because job seekers are often browsing quickly through available jobs and, unless they know the organization or are particularly captivated by the job title, they tend to skip it and move on to the next job posting, rather then break their train of thought and go hunting on another site for one specific job posting.

No, not at all. Unfortunately there are many sites out there that 'scrape' jobs in their entirety off legitimate job sites and then repost these jobs on their site without permission. They do this to make it look like their site is popular and game search engine rankings, and, because many people aren't aware of this practice they're often fooled into thinking the site has a lot more traffic than it actually has. Frustrating as it is for us, unfortunately there's not much we can do about these leeches.

If you object to your ad being posted on the other site, you could try to contact them directly and insist they remove your posting - although your chances of winning the lottery (without buying a ticket) are probably higher than getting them to comply.

Yes, in the same way as any other job poster, you simply need to abide by our job posting rules and follow our guidelines. In addition, we'd like to highlight the following additional rules for recruiters:

1. No résumé farming. You are not allowed to post an open ended, generic job to accumulate résumés. Why? Because it frustrates the heck out of job seekers. You may only post a specific job ad on behalf of a client with a specific opening for that job. We reserve the right to ask for proof that a job exists.
2. No teaser jobs. Do not post a job title and then require the job seeker to go to your site for any further information about the job.
3. No postings for unnamed or confidential organizations. This is not only due to many complaints of suspected 'phantom' jobs previously, but most job seekers care about which organization they will be working for and don't want to waste time applying for a position in a non-profit whose cause they do not support. The organization name field must clearly state who the applicant will be working for.
4. No postings for employment fairs, workshops, and so on.

Sorry, our site does not store resumes and allow job seekers to shotgun those out at the click of a button.

This is by design. While this approach increases the volume of applications employers receive, it also unfortuntely greatly reduces the quality of those applications. This then results in employers resorting to software to weed through all the applications - software that is notorious for missing the best qualified candidates if a certain buzzword is not present in the resume. Nobody wins.

Each job has its own specific application instructions and these differ for each organization. Read the "How to Apply" section and main body of each posting carefully and then follow those instructions.

Sorry to hear about your missed opportunity. Unfortunately, sometimes an organization's situation changes and they have to close the job early. Forcing the job to remain posted for the original advertised duration makes no sense because 1) many job seekers would waste time applying for a job that is no longer available, and 2) organizations would continue to be bombarded with résumés they have no intention of processing. We're sure you agree this is a total waste of time for everyone concerned.

To avoid possible frustration, we encourage you to apply for a job as soon as you spot one you're interested in.

Yes. If you have the job number, go to the Search page and type in the job number. This will return only that one single job even if it has already closed, provided that it closed within the past 90 days. When you view any particular job, the job number is displayed at the top of the posting.

Another option, if you want to keep tabs on an interesting job, is to place that job in your personal job folder (by clicking the 'add to job folder' button when viewing the job). After that, just go to your job folder (from the menu, top-right of the page) to see the jobs you've flagged.

Save those trees!!! We offer various ways for you to find recently closed jobs.
1) If you know the job number, just type it into the keyword box on our 'Search Options' page.
2) Any jobs you placed in your personal job folder, stay there even after they've closed. They only get cleaned out of your job folder 3 months after they've closed.
3) However if you do still want a permanent copy, we suggest you print to PDF file format and store the file locally on your hard drive.

For your convenience, jobs in your personal job folder can be accessed up to 90 days after the job is closed. After that it is automatically removed from your list. If you'd like to keep a copy of a job for longer than we suggest printing it to PDF format (see our Technology FAQ for details) and saving it on your hard drive.

Yes, you can create job alerts in one of the following 2 ways.
1) After any search on the results page, you can simply click on the 'save as job alert' button;
2) From the 'My Account' section, you can choose the 'My personal job alerts' link to create, edit, delete, de-activate and schedule your job alerts.

Note that in order to save job alerts, you need to have created a free account on the site. Also note that you must log in at least once every 12 months to maintain the alerts active.

First of all, login to your account and go to 'My job alerts' from the 'My Account' section. This page shows you the last time your alert scanned for new jobs, as well as the last time it found some matching your criteria and tried to email you. Review your alert parameters... a reasonably common mistake is to enter a search keyword with a typo (e.g. "exceutive"). For obvious reasons, not many jobs will trigger this alert! If the last-emailed date on the alert says it recently sent you an email but you didn't receive it then please:
1) check the email address shown on that page and verify that it is your active email address;
2) Check that you do not have spam filters on your email client that may be incorrectly deleting emails from WorkInNonProfits.ca.

No, sorry. We do not offer résumé or skills posting facilities on this site. This site is for employers to post their job vacancies only.

To the best of our knowledge, current federal and provincial laws make exceptions for non-profit organizations to give preference to members of a group whose interests are being advanced by the organization (as many of these exist solely to serve a particular group of people). For example, here is  BC's exemption statement.

Sure, no problem. We know working in non-profits can be stressful and occasionally lead to short-term memory loss. Just click on Login, and then "Lost Password?" or from the login page you can also click on the 'Help, I forgot my passphrase' button. Enter your email address and we will send you passphrase reset instructions by email if your email address exists in our database.

We'll certainly try. Just  send us an email with your name and organization's name. We'll check our database and do our best to help you.

Your browser communicates with our server as follows. You create a connection to our server and request a page to view. Our server acknowledges your request and sends the page to your browser. Your browser displays the page and breaks the connection. Next time you want to view a page, it creates a new connection and repeats the entire process. The problem with this procedure is that we then have no way to know what you requested as you navigate through our site.

Enter the cookie. A cookie is a tiny file that our website uses to keep track of you while you are connected to our site. The cookie we set contains a few random characters (for example, QW8d3Ef12) that allows us to identify which browser made a request from our database so that we can deliver the requested data back to that browser. This cookie can in no way identify you personally or give us any personal information. As soon as you close your browser the session cookie is automatically deleted. Since all our data is stored in a database, without your browser accepting cookies, there is no way for us to display our data to you.

We also use cookies to remember your search preferences when you search for a job as well as site preferences. If you allow persistent cookies (cookies that are kept even after your browser closes) then we can provide this functionality. If not, you can still use our site but you will have to re-enter your preferences each time, which could become a pain.

A cookie is not a program and does not run or do anything on your computer. A cookie can not read other data off your hard drive or read cookie files created by other sites.

You need to have a modern web browser. We recommend using the excellent and free  Mozilla Firefox. Your browser must accept cookies from our site and have javascript enabled for certain functions to work.

Please note: Internet Explorer is now end of life and no longer supported. Please use Microsoft Edge (or any other modern browser) which should be automatically installed on your computer already as Microsoft transitions Windows users from IE to Edge.

Any modern browser that has javascript enabled and accepts cookies should work with our site. Having said that, some browser versions have certain quirks, bugs or 'undocumented features' that can be quite unpredictable.

Please note: Internet Explorer is now end of life and no longer supported. Please use Microsoft Edge (or any other modern browser) which should be automatically installed on your computer already as Microsoft transitions Windows users from IE to Edge.

We have implemented as many accessibility features as possible and have followed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG v2.0) to the best of our ability and knowledge. If there is anything on this site not according to the standard, please contact us and we will attempt to fix it.

Open Source software is software whose source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees. Open source code evolves through community cooperation. These communities are composed of individual programmers and, in some cases, even very large companies. These people volunteer their time and expertise to create and maintain products that anyone in the world can use free of charge. Many of these organizations are non-profits themselves. We'd like to extend a big thank you to everyone involved in the open source software movement worldwide. Find out more about  Open Source Software.

We're big fans of open source software and encourage all companies and especially non-profits to consider using quality, free software. It just makes no sense to keep paying large commercial software companies for often inferior products.

For our internal office suite we use  LibreOffice.

Our entire site is created using the following 100% free and open source components:

• Our site runs on servers using the  Linux operating system, more specifically  CentOS.
• It is written using the powerful  Python scripting language and uses the  web2py python web development framework.
• We use a combination of  Apache and  NGINX as our web servers.
• For the database backend we rely on the robustness and industrial strength of  PostgreSQL.

Our servers and other critical infrastructure are provided, managed and hosted by the absolutely brilliant folks at  Opalstack.