Corporate Volunteering
Community Organisation
Historically community organisations have not been well equipped to engage corporate volunteers, largely because corporate volunteering in the past often took the form of a 1 day activity, maybe as a team, that sat outside the community organisations usual volunteer program.
However, there are many accessible ways to overcome the barriers associated with corporate volunteering, and incredible rewards that make the effort well worthwhile. The key to this lies in planning.
1. Identify who you would like to be involved with?
Where possible plan for desirable relationships in advance and then actively encourage them to get to know your community organisation. Don’t wait for a corporate entity or business to approach you.
Consider smaller businesses, particularly in close knit or regional communities. They often have less red tape to go through and are keen to connect closely with their local community. However, take into account that they will have fewer resources or time available to them.
Match your objectives to theirs. There has to be a reason why corporate volunteering or involvement could work well.
2. Help them understand the Sector
Invite businesses to get to know you and what you do. Big business in particular may not have an understanding of the challenges community organisations face and may envision that you are well resourced, in plush offices with a fancy reception and telephone system. Let them experience your reality and you might be surprised by the other types of help they may offer.
3. Identify potential volunteer opportunities
Businesses are used to being asked for money. Rarely however are they asked to engage with a community organisation in a more personal way, such as volunteering. Make it easy for them to consider this by thinking about real opportunities you have that will have real outcomes for you.
These could involve:
- Skill transfer: short-term mentoring around a specific task or activity
- Outcomes: such as marketing documentation or website development.
- Events: a great short-term team activity
Whatever opportunities you identify ensure that you clearly articulate your objectives, expectations and what outcomes must be achieved. A letter of agreement between your community organisation and the business is a good idea; as well as project outlines or role descriptions for employees/volunteers.
Where possible, link corporate volunteers into your existing volunteer program so that it is sustainable and aligned. This may mean taking them through a shorter version of your induction.
4. Identify different models of engagement
Volunteer opportunities do not have to be face to face, regular activities. Often tradition volunteering opportunities aren’t suitable options for corporate volunteering, but other models are:
? Project volunteering is an ideal way of providing clear objectives and guidelines, linked to a set outcome over a specific period of time
? Virtual volunteering is also an ideal way to engage employees to achieve specific outcomesExplore different ways that teams could engage with you; perhaps responsible for different aspects of a project over an ongoing period. This kind of flexible approach could make the relationship more beneficial and lead to other, longer term outcomes such as employees who become volunteers in their own time, or additional involvement ie computer equipment or sponsorship, from the business.
5. Maintain the relationship
Where you can, maintain the relationship so that you are investing your efforts in a quality relationship rather than one off opportunities. This can be done with all parties (both the business and the employees) in different ways from traditional letters of thank you, to invitations to visit your venue or attend a committee meeting.