July 30, 2024

Summary: Early in May, you probably received an email from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announcing that as an approved volunteer with the CVITP, you had been assigned a Volunteer Identification Number or VIN.  No information was provided on its purpose other than to say it would allow the CRA to better serve volunteers.

We think the VIN could be used, at the very least, to provide CRA agents with greater confidence that volunteers can be trusted to handle confidential information and to provide feedback to individuals and groups of volunteers on their performance.  We also hope the CRA will use the VIN to undertake analyses of volunteer trends that could help to inform its volunteer recruitment and retention strategy.

Early in May, you probably received an email from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announcing that as an approved volunteer with the CVITP, you had been assigned a Volunteer Identification Number or VIN.  You were told this is a unique and permanent number that is confidential and should never be shared.  No information was provided on its purpose other than to say it is for future use.

(One of our colleagues was surprised that a third number is needed as we already have unique EFile and Rep ID numbers assigned to us.  But it would appear that the CRA has no way of telling which EFile and Rep ID numbers are associated with CVITP volunteers.)

As directed by the email, we contacted our CRA regional coordinator for more information, but they were initially in the dark as to its purpose.  In subsequent correspondence, they simply indicated that the VIN would allow the CRA to “better serve our volunteers and assist in registrations for the upcoming seasons”.

In the absence of clarity from the CRA on what they intend to do with the VIN, we would like to suggest at least two ways in which the VIN could be used to better serve volunteers.

First, the VIN could be used by CVITP volunteers to identify themselves when placing calls to the CRA on behalf of clients.  We have already proposed a secure way for improving calls by volunteers to the CVITP helpline using their EFile and RepID identifiers.  Failing any action by the CRA on this proposal, perhaps provision of the VIN will provide CRA agents with greater confidence that the volunteer can be trusted to handle confidential information.

Second, this could be used by the CRA to provide specific feedback to individual volunteers or groups of volunteers (for example, by host organization or by province) on their performance as part of the CRA’s efforts to acknowledge volunteers’ contributions.  (See our article on “How to Get Experienced Volunteers Back Next Year” for more details.)

Finally, apart from using the VIN to better identify and serve volunteers, we hope the CRA will also use the VIN to undertake analysis of volunteer trends.  In a series of articles on volunteer recruitment,  we show how the CRA could make use of data on its volunteers to inform its recruitment strategy.  (This will be key to scaling up the CVITP to serve more of those living in poverty.)

How else do you think the VIN might be used?