Board Biography

Anil Patel

Anil Patel was born in London Ontario in August 1974 and raised in the nearby farming community of Chatham. He was educated at Queen’s University, earning an Environmental Chemistry degree. Anil entered the work force with Molson Canada. After 6 years of channel marketing, territory sales and business development experience, he made a decision to pursue an idea he had to get engage people his age in community work.

In 2001, Anil, along with some of his university friends, co-founded Framework Timeraiser, a program aimed at engaging skilled and energetic Canadians to get involved in the community. The Timeraiser is part volunteer fair, part silent art auction, and part night on the town. It is an evening celebrating the kick-off of a 12 month endeavor to engage Canadians aged 22 to 35 to pick up a cause and support community development through volunteerism. The Timeraiser is a silent art auction with a twist: instead of bidding money, participants bid volunteer time, to volunteer agencies that need their skills and energy. Successful auction bidders have 12 months to complete their volunteer pledge. When they do, they get to bring the artwork home as a reminder of their good will. To date the Timeraiser has generated 36,000 volunteer hours, engaged 1,000 Canadians to pick up a cause, worked with 150+ agencies in need of skilled volunteers and invested $110,000 in the careers of Canadian artists.

Framework is the 2006 recipient of the Queen’s Alumni Humanitarian Award. In the decades ahead, Anil has made a commitment to rekindling the spirit of citizen involvement across the country. Anil was recently appointed to the United Way of Greater Toronto’s Board of Trustees and is asked regularly to contribute to other initiatives in Canada focused on volunteerism, corporate social responsibility/employee-supported volunteerism and nonprofit capacity building.