A New Era for Corporate Volunteerism

It’s hard to talk about corporate volunteerism without imagining painful stereotypes: standalone projects, third-party organizing services, hosting 200 employees for an ad hoc event, one-time events for skilled professionals, staged photo ops, reporting via the company’s digital CSR tool, hunting for grant dollars, other mutually performative behaviors, and so on and so forth. In recent years, 70 percent of employees said they need to work at a company that offers giving and volunteering opportunities, yet only 10 percent of employees who worked at such companies participated in these programs. And in 2020, as we all know, a pandemic struck and the Great Resignation followed in a second wave. Employees who once frequented an office instead stayed home, then quit altogether.

As corporate volunteer organizers navigated these trying times to deliver support for critical human needs in virtual and distributed formats, a new and greater opportunity emerged: how do we leverage today’s societal trends to encourage a more dynamic and inclusive corporate service ecosystem?

What is the new normal for corporate volunteering?

COVID pandemic practices and policies forced the world to create a “new normal.” Workplace and workflow habits were reinvented, as were nearly all of our traditional ways of participating in society. The realm of corporate volunteering was no exception. As volunteer organizers, we and our corporate partners needed to adapt.

Corporate volunteering more or less followed a very specific formula before the pandemic. A company would conceptualize volunteer events (such as clean-ups at local parks or mentoring opportunities with local after-school programs), identify a partner organization to host it, and invite the corporate employee community to participate together, in person. Many corporations would identify, “value pillars,” or a handful of cause-area themes, that aligned with the company’s values. Employees may have been compelled to volunteer, with offers of paid time off, matching gifts, or a hope of a positive nod from management. 

Not everyone participated, though. Before the COVID pandemic, only around 33 percent of employees participated in employee volunteer programs. Of course, many more would have liked to participate under different circumstances.

The problem, it turns out, was that these events did not feel personally relevant enough. They were not conceived from the multitude of perspectives of employees. They’d simply followed a pattern of top-down thinking along the lines of, “This year, our company stands for mental health,” or a similarly broad, one-size-fits-all directive to which partner nonprofits had been routinely directed to conform if they hoped to receive corporate grants in return for hosting events. Many employees who love volunteering, or have pulses on local communities, felt left out of company initiatives to motivate teams toward meaningful service. 

Jessica Rodell surveyed people who chose not to volunteer with United Way programs across 50 companies (Harvard Business Review). The two top reasons for employees not volunteering were because the projects were seemingly not  flexible or personally meaningful enough to pursue. The opportunities presented were instead perceived as pet initiatives of their directors or the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) team. As organizers of volunteer programs, who often interact with our CSR counterparts, it’s easy to understand how the programs we feel are efficient to package and present to employees can sometimes be perceived as performative gestures, rather than thoughtful opportunities.

The best companies already understood these tendencies before the pandemic,. They had  already started diversifying their corporate volunteering strategies and their demands on us as program organizers, accordingly. They started allowing employee teams to guide the volunteering process, to work together to select meaningful opportunities that aligned within a looser framework of corporate values. These unofficial team leaders are sometimes referred to as “Champions.”

The COVID pandemic then pushed companies to take program diversification to another level, by improving flexibility within corporate volunteering structures. In-person events wouldn’t work, so we and our corporate partners had to shift gears to enable remote, virtual and distributed options to advance the same activities that used to require physical gathering. The Great Resignation has now led us and companies to treat flexibility as a core requirement in order to help recruit our corporate partners and for them to retain employees, whether they work in headquarters, retail locations, or remotely. Top talent may even make a decision on whether or not to work for a company based on the corporate volunteering program. That same employee, if we’re lucky, will be loyal to our programs, wherever they choose to work.

What does all of this mean, especially for volunteer managers? How can companies navigate this new normal while effectively designing volunteer programs and managing their volunteers within them to fulfill employee teamwork and personal satisfaction goals, as well as CSR impact goals?     

How has corporate volunteerism digitally transformed?

Of course, during a period of near-universal social isolation, there was a steep decline in physical volunteering. Almost all non-mission-critical, in-person events were canceled everywhere in the world. That new normal was an adjustment for everyone and every organization, and varied depending on individual circumstances - especially for isolated, vulnerable, disenfranchised, differently-abled, low income, and minority populations. New technology tools have developed during the past few years to make corporate volunteering easier and also to help companies develop new tools to keep up with the evolving status quo and to do so in an equitable way that benefits all stakeholders.

Though volunteers switched to working digitally during the pandemic, they did and still do yearn to join in-person activities. Companies, nonprofits, and other CSR organizers should take the opportunity to digitally transform, streamline, and diversify the structures of  their volunteering programs using the many, flexible features within volunteer platforms in order to meet their stakeholders where they are. Participation in these programs will massively and sustainably improve as a result.

Good volunteer engagement systems can help your nonprofit organization or company automate your administrative processes within your corporate volunteering program (for example, there are volunteer engagement systems/software resources at Energize and Golden, where I am Founder and CEO). These resources may include mirroring your pre-existing processes, roles, permissions, campaigns, audiences, partners and other considerations, all within point-and-shoot websites and apps that work on any device anywhere in the world. Here are just a few of the software platform functions that are available and can help:

• Defining and positioning private opportunities that align with your CSR partners’ and employees’ interests;
• Identifying appropriate opportunities for your Employee Resource Groups and / or Companies with whom you partner;
• Promoting activities seamlessly to your corporate groups by click-to-recommend workflows;
• Managing group signups and onboarding for team members in a single time or sequence of opportunity times;
• Handling logistics, such as schedules and automated check-in and checkout at events;
• Tracking the hours that employees log and their impact measurement (like pounds of trash collected and progress toward United Nations SDG’s) in real time;
• Celebrating the volunteer team and rewarding them with special benefits;
• Complying with relevant laws and regulations, including necessary background checks for volunteers; and
• Organizing training sessions online to minimize time spent out of the office. 

Diversifying participation means diversifying volunteer opportunities

Gen Z wants to volunteer for radically different reasons – and in radically different ways – than Greatest Generation, Baby Boomer, Gen X and Millennial volunteers do. 

In fact, younger generations your company may be looking to recruit are keen on working for companies that have meaningful volunteering programs aligned to the core of the company identity. To meet these employees where they are, this means that we must design flexible and independent company-facing volunteer opportunities and strongly encourage our corporate partners to consider personalization – not simply offer one or two events that align with management’s goals. 

Volunteer management software can, again, help here. 
 

• They can help you and your corporate partners link “value pillars” or thematic interests across offices, teams, and programs. This way, you can select opportunities and create portfolios of extremely different volunteering opportunity types to appeal to your wide audience of potential volunteers, while supporting established company strategies. You will still be able to measure the impact toward your corporate engagement goals and for your corporate partners to track impact metrics in real time, while offering a diverse range of experiences. 
• Employees, themselves, can use the platform to become champions of your organization’s opportunities that align with their company’s pillars and values. Platforms make it easy for anyone on the platform to organize their own events or piggy-back off of other events from relevant organizations. 
• You can go beyond customary “days of service” to allow for continuous volunteering opportunities in more flexible locations and in more flexible ways than you have in the past - allowing employees from anywhere in your corporate partners’ organizations to find a place where they can comfortably contribute to company objectives.

When is investing in corporate volunteer programs more than a quest for charitable contributions?

Companies have long championed corporate volunteering for the CSR benefits it can provide, and, for an equally long time, have championed our organizations to provide these benefits to their employees. These pressures have only become more prevalent in recent years, as younger generations insist on social impact demonstration from their brands and from the companies where they work. 

It’s time to think beyond the constructs of the past. Presently, there is also a lot of ground to gain. From a sense of camaraderie and belonging to increased skills and confidence, service isn’t something separate from the core of a company; it is simply the personal expression of a company’s sense of purpose. 

When companies embrace their genuine identities through service, they will see our organizations as indispensable partners in achieving their visions – not simply as “Grantees.”

We’ve heard about the benefits of volunteering to companies: it improves soft skills such as leadership development, team work and communication. Working together as a team or simply under a culture of shared values can strengthen company loyalty along with human resource capacity. Most importantly, corporate volunteering makes people happier. It releases endorphins and minimizes loneliness, while reducing anxiety and depression. People will take less sick days and be more productive. Micro engagements via employee resource groups (ERGs) help isolated individuals feel more valued as part of a cohort, especially when employees have remained in digital roles, isolated from office water cooler interactions. And the list goes on.

But how often do we, as nonprofits, stop to think, “Maybe these same benefits employees and companies derive from upskilling could benefit our organizations, as we continually train and engage these professional volunteers?”

Thriving in the new normal for corporate volunteering doesn’t have to be hard

The biggest takeaway for the new normal of corporate volunteering is to lean into diversity – the diversity of your staff, your broader sets of stakeholders and the underrepresented people you’d like to include in your efforts. Celebrate their values and enable their preferred living and working styles. It is important to listen to the voices of volunteers who are also employees of companies and understand what they want in a volunteer program. Building a volunteer program from the bottom up – based on ground-level interest combined with top-down guidance around priority issues – is the best practice.

Great technology is also a new normal for corporate volunteering programs that follow these successful models. Software can help you streamline administrative processes and automatically track impact metrics – so no more need to do retroactive, offline, arduous reporting to every corporate partner after each individual opportunity or lengthy campaign. Technology and software can enhance a culture of contribution by offering communal rewards and promoting group recognition. 

Recognition, along with ensuring your employees have chances for meaningful engagement, has a real value. One study showed that middle-class salaried workers in the United Kingdom were happier after volunteering than they were earning ￡1,100 more in a year. If employees are happier, they focus less on the other “rewards” of their work, including monetary compensation. 

Corporate volunteering may have shifted quickly after the COVID pandemic began, but seemingly only for the better!