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
- 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.
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.
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.
NOTE:
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.
Discuss
this
web page, or comment on it, here.
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