A resource for corporations & other businesses

that want to make a commitment to social responsibility

by Jayne Cravens
via coyotecommunications.com & coyoteboard.com (same web site)

Employee Volunteering Initiatives:
Different Approaches & Keys to Success

This page, and all the pages in this section of my web site, are based on my philosophy about CSR, which is quite different than the advice of other consultants.

There are a number of ways that employees from a corporation or other business can donate their time and expertise as volunteers to mission-based organizations: nonprofits, charities, NGOs, schools, etc. They can volunteer:

as a group or individually, or a mix of both, for one nonprofit or school or several different ones
just once or on an ongoing basis at one program over several weeks or months
during work hours (if the company allows for such) or outside of work hours (evenings, weekends and lunch hours)
onsite at an organization
online, remotely, either from their office (if the company allows such) or from home (virtual volunteering)
under the auspices of the company, reporting their volunteering hours to the company's human resources office or whichever company department is in charge of employee volunteering
entirely on their own, outside of work hours, without any reporting back to the company about their activities

Here's what all these different ways of employee volunteering can look like:

The staff of the facilities department spending six hours on one Friday doing minor repairs and other work at a space that is or will be used for homeless families
The staff of the marketing department spending 20 hours over four weeks during regular work hours putting together the annual report for a local nonprofit theater
An administrative assistant helping at a Saturday community farmer's market
The web manager redesigning a website for a local nonprofit so that it's accessible for people with disabilities / differently abled users
A corporate Vice President serving on the board of directors of a local nonprofit
A company nurse serving on the county government's public health advisory board
An employee in your human resources department designing and leading a staff retreat for a nonprofit
A senior manager spending his or her last six months while employed at the company, before retirement, working at a nonprofit
The IT staff building a new, fully accessible web site for a school
A group of employees participating in a Habitat for Humanity build or helping with National Night Out

Which of these activities happen during work hours? That's up to your company's policies.

Which of these activities happen during work hours, and employees still get paid for these hours? That's up to your company's policies.

Which of these activities does the company get to take credit for ("our company's employees contributed 500 hours of volunteering to local nonprofits!")? That depends on your discussions and agreements with your employees.

Companies and businesses can support volunteering by employees at nonprofits, charities, NGOs, schools, etc., by:

Educating employees about volunteering opportunities in the community, but leaving it entirely up to employees themselves as to whether or not they contact an organization to participate in such; no volunteer signups are done through the employer but, rather, employees express interest in volunteering directly to the agency that hosts volunteers (the nonprofit, the charity, the school, etc.).
Officially partnering with a mission-based organization regarding a volunteering activity, appointing an employee as the main contact and asking employees to sign up with that main contact person at their company - that contact person liaisons with volunteer host organizations.
Creating a policy that allows employees to volunteer during work hours and creating a process that approves organizations supported by such employee volunteering, tracks projects, hours and impact, etc. - this can be paid time or unpaid time, depending on the policy.

To encourage employees to volunteer at nonprofits, charities, NGOs, schools, etc., companies don't have to create a formal employee volunteering program, one that happens during work hours or that requires employees to volunteer together or even to get approval for volunteering. Some companies choose, instead, to just encourage employees to volunteer, on their own time, and provide links to sites like VolunteerMatch or other volunteer opportunity databases, or let employees know about specific one-day events, like a Habitat for Humanity build or a beach cleanup. Companies may invite employees to write about their volunteering activities in the employee newsletter, but not organize employee volunteering tasks. The company can still brag about how its employees are about the communities in which they live, but has to be careful about what it, the company, takes credit for in terms of what volunteers do and what they accomplish.

Your company may create a policy that, if employees are going to volunteer during work hours, or if employees are going to volunteer as employees of your company, that they must get prior approval from your company for the organization they want to help. If so, you need to have a written policy for what criteria you will use to determine the which organizations are and are not acceptable. For most companies that have a written policy, the limitation is volunteering for organizations that are registered as (c)(3) nonprofits with the state and federal government, and with community programs coordinated and hosted by government agencies (state parks, a police department's National Night Out event, etc.). With this limitation, volunteering with religious organizations (churches, temples, mosques, etc.) or political groups as an employee volunteer is prohibited under the auspices of the official company CSR program - but an employee volunteering with these groups on their own time is perfectly acceptable and appropriate.

If a company has a a written policy regarding official employee volunteering, the company needs to remind staff that employees are absolutely free to volunteer on their own time, in any way they choose, with any organization they choose, and are not required at all to report that volunteering to the company. The company also needs to remind employees that they are absolutely free to opt-out of a volunteering activity organizations for their office or department. No one should ever be required to participate in an employee volunteering program.

The company may want employees to report their hours and may want the hosting organization to evaluate the impact of the volunteers' contributions. Some employees are happy to do their volunteering under the official banner of their employer, with their employer counting their volunteering hours and issuing a press release about it. Some are not at all - they see their volunteering as something entirely separate from their employee identity, and if they do it outside of work hours, see no reason to tell their employer about it. Keep these range of preferences in mind as your company creates activities that encourage employees to volunteer and strategizes about how it will talk about it - and I would love to help your company create these activities at your company.

Writing your official employee volunteering policies

Finding examples of employee volunteering policies from a range of businesses is oh-so-easy: simply go to Google or Bing and search for

examples corporate volunteer policy

(no quotes)

What your policy will be depends on a great many things, such as whether or not you want employees volunteering under the auspices of your company, as employees of the company and whether or not you want employees to volunteering on company time.

One policy you absolutely must have: you must have a policy about using photos employees take during their volunteering service that you want to use your own publications, including your web site. Your company must get permission from every person in any photo that your employees take while volunteering and that you want to use on your web site or in any online or paper publication.

I offer a range consulting and administrative services regarding employee volunteering programs, including developing your official volunteering policies.

How to find volunteering projects for employees

Believe it or not, the vast majority of nonprofit organizations are not saying, "Gosh, we have all this work laying around that just anyone could do if they would simply walk through the door..." Nonprofits, charities, schools and other organizations, more often-than not, need volunteers with specific skills, experience and availability. In fact, even if one of your executives is going to take a six month sabbatical and wants to spend it working at a nonprofit, that agency may not need his or her specific expertise and skills - just as your company many not need someone with expertise in directing dance productions, in child psychology, in animal behavior, in farming cooperatives, or in a range of other expertise areas that staff at a nonprofit, charity or school may have.

Volunteers are not free: the staff at a volunteer hosting organization need to create volunteering opportunities, to supervise and support volunteers, to trouble-shoot and to evaluate and report on the experience. If you ask an agency to create volunteering opportunities specifically for your employees, you are asking them to spend money and resources they may not be able to afford - so be ready to make an appropriate financial - CASH - donation to a nonprofit or school if you want a customized volunteering gig for your employees at that nonprofit or school.

Otherwise, you can find volunteering opportunities through a range of channels:

Via third-party web sites that various agencies use to promote their volunteering opportunities, like VolunteerMatch or All for Good in the USA and Volunteer Canada. Here is a list of such sites third party sites worldwide.
By contacting your local United Way agency, if you have such, and asking if they have a database of volunteering opportunities.
By sending an email to various nonprofit organizations in your area to ask them to contact you when they have volunteering opportunities available (and specify what kind you are looking for - IT projects? Group volunteering?).
By monitoring keywords on social media, like the word volunteer and the name of your city and state on Twitter, to see if local organizations are publicizing their volunteering needs.
By monitoring online groups on Facebook, Reddit or other social media that are focused specifically on your region, to see if local organizations are publicizing their volunteering needs.

Here is even more detailed advice on finding volunteering opportunities, including group volunteering activities, online volunteering opportunities, opportunities with seniors/elders, opportunities for using business skills specifically, and creating your own high-impact volunteering activity.

You can also write organizations and propose a specific volunteering idea. For instance, you could contact your local historical society and coordinate a Wikipedia edit-a-thon. Or you could contact area nonprofits and request proposals for your marketing department to design their annual report.

Virtual volunteering - volunteers providing service via a computer, smart phone, tablet or other networked advice - presents a great opportunity for companies to expand their employee philanthropic offerings. Through virtual volunteering, some employees will choose to help organizations online that they are already helping onsite. Other employees who are unable to volunteer onsite at a nonprofit or school will choose to volunteer online because of the convenience. Detailed advice for mobilizing employees to engage in virtual volunteering is here.

You could also contact a school and talk about creating an online mentoring program, where employees mentor young people online during the employees work hours. HOWEVER, this is much more involved than just trading emails: this is one of the most labor and resource-intensive virtual volunteering programs there are. Before you embark on this, you should have at least two employees onboard who have already participated in an onsite mentoring program of some kind (and being currently involved in such would be even better), and you should read The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook - there is an entire chapter devoted to this type of volunteering.

Taking on a Pro Bono Project

When a department or employee at a corporation or business wants to take on an entire projects for a nonprofit, school, etc., like revamping the agency's promotional materials, creating a video, training staff in using various online tools, creating a new web site, surveying clients, etc., there are some things to keep in mind to ensure success and avoid negative public relations:

These kinds of volunteer activities are often fulfilling a critical need for that agency. A company's employees' contributions may be vital to the group's mission and perception by the public. When employees commit to a volunteer project, the agency becomes dependent on those employees. Unlike paying customers, they usually cannot move the project to another company if agreed-to goals are not met. So if a company's employees agree to create an accessible web site for a nonprofit, but then don't create that web site, that nonprofit is left in the lurch: they not only don't have a web site, they may now have to have a very uncomfortable conversation with their board, clients or supporters.
Designate one person at a company or department as the coordinator of any group project. This person will be the contact for both the agency being helped and the employees donating time to the project. This person will document the time spent on the project, communicate its progress to the agency, etc.
Create a written document that outlines exactly what the project will accomplish, includes a timeline for completion, and details the corporation or business's commitments (just as the company would with a paying customer).
Communicate to both employees and the agency WHY this company is donating this service.
Clearly outline with both employees and the agency how a company's donated services will be recognized.
Evaluate the time the project will take, just as that company would a paid-for job.
Budget time for employees to participate in the volunteer project/donated services. Don't assume employees will work on the project "when they have time" or only when other projects are completed. The group employees have volunteered for is counting on those employees, just as groups that pay for a company's services are. Their deadlines and needs are just as real, and just as critical.
Estimate how much time a day or a week employees will spend on this donated project, and record the time each employee actually does spend on the project.
If employees can't donate enough time for a desired project, it's okay to say so, but BEFORE work begins. Avoid frustration on everyone's part by only agreeing to what employees really can commit to.
Don't force any employee to work on a donated project. Employees should feel enthusiastic about the assignment. Their buy-in is important. Most agencies are happy to take employees on a tour of their facilities, or come to the employer's office and make a presentation about the organization and its mission. This can help employees understand the importance of the agency and how their work will further its mission.
Communicate regularly with the beneficiary agency about how work is progressing and how many hours your employees have spent to date.
When employees are finished with the volunteer project, talk to the agency staff involved and find out how they felt about the experience. Were their expectations met? What do they think went best about the project? What do they wish had gone differently? What was the primary benefit they have experiences as a result of your work?
Celebrate successes! Coordinate a way for participating employees and the group that helped to meet.

Here is much more advice on employees taking on a project pro bono - one that aligns with their particular area of skills and expertise.

Also see Dos & don'ts for technical assistance volunteers / volunteers donating expertise
There are many people that want to donate - to volunteer - their professional skills or expertise to a nonprofit, NGO, charity, school or a community or environmental project. They are sometimes called "skilled volunteers." These volunteers might build a web site, or build an app, or build a garden, or design a building, or provide legal assistance, and on and on, for a nonprofit, or even a government program that engages volunteers and supports a particular community, like a women's shelter or a home for people with addicted issues. These are volunteers that are going to work primarily with a program's staff, including other volunteers, rather than directly with clients, but the result of their service may directly affect clients. But these type of volunteering gigs don't always work out, leaving both volunteers and programs frustrated and disappointed. The advice on this page will help everyone involved have a more worthwhile experience.

Group volunteering

There is probably very little at a corporation that could be accomplished in one day by a group of outsiders who show up at the company's door and say, "We'd love to work for you for an entire day - without pay!"

The same is true for nonprofits. A great deal of time and effort goes into creating activities that a group of volunteers can do in one day. Even a beach cleanup requires a lot of preparation so that volunteers can show up, get to work quickly, accomplish a lot and leave quickly. A staff person from a nonprofit, or more than one, may have to spend a lot of time coordinating a group volunteering event for one company's employees (and even more time if employees want to involve their families). Who is going to pay for that person's time to do all of the coordination needed? There may be equipment needs as well: bags, tools, gloves, trucks, gas for those trucks, etc. Who is going to pay for all that equipment and materials?

Talk with the organization about how many hours they will spend coordinating a group activity for your company, and what equipment and materials will be needed, and consider how your group could cover some or all of these costs. And don't be offended if a nonprofit tells you upfront that you have to pay for these costs - just as your employees would balk at the idea of working for free for your company, the staff time of employees at nonprofits needs to also be funded.

Other preparations for your employee volunteering event:

One person from the group will need to be the primary group contact and deliverer of information. This person will receive all communications on behalf of the group regarding volunteering, and will be responsible for communicating with all group members. This person will also attend any orientations required before volunteering, and communicate information from this orientation to other members.
The group's leadership needs to take an assessment of all group members' availability for, interests in and goals for a group volunteering activity. This will help you in choosing a group assignment, and ensure that everyone has a positive experience and that their expectations will be met. For instance, the group may interested in environmental issues and members may be available to volunteer only on Saturdays after 8 a.m.
Does your employee group want to be engaged in the same activities during the entire group volunteering endeavor? Or, would your group be willing to separate at the event or location to engage in a variety of tasks; for instance, at a community center, one person reads to an elderly person while others help at an activity for youth and others help re-organize the center's stock room.
What talents and experiences are volunteers interested in sharing in this group effort? For instance, the marketing director may not want to help with marketing efforts as a volunteer but, rather, share her talents at basic home repair.
Do members of your employee volunteering group want to bring family members along to volunteer? The nonprofit you assist will tell you if this is acceptable - but in most cases, it probably will NOT be. Also, you may need volunteers to provide childcare for other volunteers so that group volunteering is possible for some employees.
Someone in the group needs to have the responsibility to fill out application forms, and ensure all individuals in the group have filled out appropriate forms; often, volunteer hosting organizations require the completion of such forms not only for the group as a whole, but for every individual that will participate. A representative of the group or just one member may be asked to complete a Waiver of Liability form.
Do not wait until the last minute to try to volunteer in a group! You will probably need to call many, many, many places just to get an appointment for an interview! It may take a few months before you get your group booked for a volunteering activity even if you start calling right away!
Do NOT show up unannounced to engage in any of these activities. Do NOT call a day or a week or even just one month in advance and ask to volunteer as a group -- you need to call months in advance. And any activity you do, even at someone's home, at school, your own meeting site, etc., should be with permission of the nonprofit, NGO or other institution you are trying to assist, or the local government in charge of the site where you plan on engaging in a group volunteering activity.
Make sure all team members understand that they must be on time for a volunteering event, and that they understand that they must follow the policies of the organization.

Advice regarding executives on loan & board service

As noted earlier, if one of your executives is going to take a six month sabbatical and wants to spend it working at a nonprofit, there may not be an agency that needs his or her specific expertise and skills - just as your company many not need someone with expertise in directing dance productions, in child psychology, in animal behavior, in farming cooperatives, or in a range of other areas that staff at a nonprofit, charity or school may have. I've put my advice regarding executives on loan and board service on a separate page.

Talking about the impact of your employee volunteering

Spoiler alert: the number of hours your employees gave as volunteers is not impressive. It's just a number. Do you measure your employees' and business success by the number of hours your employees work? Of course not. So why in the world do you think that's a good measure of volunteer achievement?

If you want to talk about employee volunteer success and impact, then you need to know:

what employees did as volunteers (what activities they undertook)
what those activities achieved toward's the organization's bottom line or its mission
what the organization's staff and clients think of those volunteer contributions

Want organization's to track and provide this information to you? Great: consider making an appropriate financial (CASH!) contribution to cover the costs of making this happen.

Your Attitude Matters

In 2015, a post on the question-and-answer site Quora caught my eye:

Why are many charities full of stuck-up people?
I have built an association/network of professionals willing to help charities in the form of skills-based volunteering – i.e. consulting charities with our skills, for free.
But with a very few exceptions, most charities response was to just shrug us off, don’t reply to us or when they reply sound either skeptical or ask for all sorts of background check information.
Worst, some of the people I got in touch with in person would look away at events (or ignore immediately), not accept my invitation on LinkedIn and other little behaviors that make me feel these are some of the worst people I have met in my life. Which sometimes makes me wonder: are they afraid of “competition”? Or have some kind of deep-rooted prejudice against people from the corporate world?
...many of the charities we approached are doing pretty poorly and could do much better with help of “corporate” professionals who can offer a different perspective. Our purpose is to consult, not to join their ranks. Frankly we have seen charities with the most awful and off-putting websites and advertising material. No offense, but sometimes low resources and lack of corporate experience DOES lead to low quality – that’s what I have seen.

The problem is, of course, right there in his approach to nonprofits and the language he uses, and sadly, it’s the approach so many corporations have regarding donating their expertise to nonprofits: we know so much more than you, you should be grateful we're here and not question us.

Nonprofits are businesses. And just as a business cannot hire every marketing manager that shows up to work, a nonprofit cannot involve every volunteer that wants to help with marketing, no matter how experienced that person is. In addition, nonprofits have procedures and policies and strategies that must be respected - if your employees cannot do that, they should not be volunteering. Employees that are volunteering should understand that the nonprofit they are assisting is a client that deserves respect, to be listened to, to receive quality work and to have their staff's expertise honored.

Remind your employees regularly in your employee communications, such as your employee newsletter, that nonprofit's have culture and expertise that deserve respect. Don't just say it once: remind them about the importance of a respectful attitude regularly.

NOTE:

I offer a range consulting and administrative services regarding employee volunteering programs, including helping your company track and talk about the impact of your employee volunteering activities.

Coming soon

Employees volunteering abroad

Some corporations cover the costs of employees going abroad to work on short-term assignments. I will have a page of advice on this later in 2019.

Also see:

Virtual volunteering - a corporate guide for involving employees
Virtual volunteering - volunteers providing service via a computer, smart phone, tablet or other networked advice - presents a great opportunity for companies to expand their employee philanthropic offerings. Through virtual volunteering, some employees will choose to help organizations online that they are already helping onsite. Other employees who are unable to volunteer onsite at a nonprofit or school will choose to volunteer online because of the convenience. Advice for employees engaging in virtual volunteering is here.
Short-term Assignments for Tech Volunteers
There are a variety of ways for mission-based organizations to involve volunteers to help with short-term projects relating to computers and the Internet, and short-term assignments are what are sought after most by potential "tech" volunteers. But there is a disconnect: most organizations have trouble identifying such short-term projects. This is a list of short-term projects for "tech" volunteers -- assignments that might takes days, weeks or just a couple of months to complete.
One(-ish) Day "Tech" Activities for Volunteers
Volunteers are getting together for intense, one-day events, or events of just a few days, to build web pages, to write code, to edit Wikipedia pages, and more. These are gatherings of onsite volunteers, where everyone is in one location, together, to do an online-related project in one day, or a few days. It's a form of episodic volunteering, because volunteers don't have to make an ongoing commitment - they can come to the event, contribute their services, and then leave and never volunteer again. Because computers are involved, these events are sometimes called hackathons, even if coding isn't involved. This page provides advice on how to put together a one-day event, or just-a-few-days-of activity, for a group of tech volunteers onsite, working together, for a nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO), community-focused government program, school or other mission-based organization - or association of such.

Return to my index of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) resources & advice for ethics, strategies & operations.

I'm Jayne Cravens. I'm a consultant regarding communications and community engagement, primarily for nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations. I have many years of experience working with corporations, governments, foundations and other donors, and for two years, I ran a corporate philanthropy program at a Fortune 500 company. I created these corporate social responsibility (CSR) pages on my web site out of frustration of the continuing disconnect between what mission-based organizations, including schools, are trying to accomplish and what corporations and other businesses want to fund and volunteer for. Most advice for CSR comes from people in the for-profit world who have never worked for a nonprofit, charity, public school, etc., and often has a paternal approach to working with mission-based organizations. My approach is different: I am urging the business world to be partners, not dictators, when it comes to the third sector.

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Employee Volunteering Initiatives: Different Approaches & Keys to Success