One of my proudest work memories is not of a regular day on the job but of a service project I participated in. An hour or so into painting classroom walls, my supervisor pulled me aside.
“You draw, right?” she asked.
I said yes, and before I knew it, I was sketching the school mascot on the gym floor. Four years later, I still treasure the amount of responsibility I was given that day.
Volunteering can be a life-changing experience and an important chance for employees to build new skills. Plus, it’s a great way for your company to get involved in the communities where it does business. Not only can this activism demonstrably help community members and causes, but it can help the company’s social impact goals and potentially even its bottom line.
The data support the need for civic engagement and volunteerism in the workplace. According to Points of Light’s
on civic engagement, two-thirds of Americans believe companies should be involved in social issues. And more than half the public and 67% of small business owners agreed that
should take a stand on social issues. Consumers expect companies to act directly rather than asking customers to take action, and they will gauge the selflessness of a company’s efforts by the way it treats its employees.
But how do companies encourage employees to volunteer their time? The key is to build a culture of giving. Demonstrate that civic engagement and social good are priorities for your company. Here are five excellent approaches that will further engage your staff in volunteer work.
Not everyone can afford to volunteer off the clock, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to give back to their community. Including paid time off for volunteering – or the option to volunteer on company time – in your company’s benefit packages is a great way to show your staff that you care about them and the community.
According to the
– a recognition of the 50 most community-minded companies – also offered paid time off to volunteer. It’s clear: the more socially conscious companies tend to support their employees more in their social engagement efforts.
2. Communicate about volunteer opportunities.
If your employees aren’t volunteering, it may be because they don’t know where to start. Communication is the first step. Let your staff know if you offer paid time off for volunteering, and be sure to advertise upcoming service projects.
But think beyond bulletin boards and emails because different people consume information in different ways. Make announcements during meetings. Post opportunities on social media. Show videos of past service projects to get employees excited. Make signing up easy, and discuss carpooling or other transportation options that alleviate the burden of driving.
See how Daily Point of Light Awardee Danielle Williams helps match Bank of America employees for mentorship and support.
3. Assign leadership roles.
Volunteering is a great way to build skills and take on more responsibility. Plus, extra responsibility gives employees a sense of pride and ownership over their work.
Nominating a volunteer coordinator is a good place to start, but there are also ways to give volunteers leadership roles. Determine your employees’ strengths and draw from those skills for leadership opportunities. Here are just a few examples:
Ash draws cartoons in her spare time, so you invite them to create coloring pages for the after-school program with which your company partners.
Sebastian’s kids have food allergies, so you ask him to make a list of allergy-friendly suggestions for the company food drive.
Fatimah spent several years as a camp counselor, so you make her a team leader at your annual beach cleanup.
With a little creativity, almost anything can become a leadership opportunity
“Pressure and expectation for companies to be socially responsible has never been higher. Points of Light’s research offers some insights into those expectations and can help business leaders identify where to start as they align employee engagement and retention with CSR and talent development programs.”
— Katie Stearns, chief global corporate solutions officer at Points of Light
4. Offer a variety of options.
If all your company’s volunteer efforts focus on physical labor like painting or gardening, some workers are sure to be unable to take part. From reading with kids to coding websites, there’s a volunteer option for everyone. Employees can even partake in skills-based volunteering, using their accounting or translation skills to help a nonprofit organization or specific cause.
As you put together volunteer opportunities, it’s also important to consider employees’ different schedules. When planning volunteer events, include a balanced mix of daytime, evening and weekend events. And consider volunteer projects that can be completed in a day or over the course of several months. This approach can help your employees feel accomplished and motivated.
Check out
to search hundreds of thousands of in-person and virtual volunteer opportunities around the globe.
5. Record and reward good deeds.
Don’t let your staff’s hard work go unrecognized. Tracking and rewarding volunteer hours is a great way to make volunteers feel appreciated and encourage other employees to join in.
Financial compensation is an obvious reward if your company has the means. Taking volunteerism into account when awarding raises, promotions and bonus pay will really demonstrate your company’s commitment to the community. You can also reward top volunteers by making a donation in their names to the nonprofits of their choice.
“We all know that what is celebrated is replicated, which is exactly why recognizing and celebrating your volunteers is key to inspiring other employees to get involved. A volunteer recognition strategy is a path to communicating impact, boosting participation, shining a spotlight on causes, and reinforcing your company’s commitment to community.”
— Katie Stearns, chief global corporate solutions officer at Points of Light
Personal thanks: Handwritten thank-you cards or personalized emails with photos taken of them while volunteering can boost volunteer morale.
Public recognition: Designate a Volunteer of the Month spotlight or highlight your top volunteers’ accomplishments in the company newsletter or social media.
Special meals or outings: Host a special banquet, picnic or activity night for employees who volunteer.
Volunteer appreciation day: Dedicate a day to honoring the volunteers at your company. Set aside time to publicly award certificates or plaques to your top volunteers.
Encouraging employees to volunteer may take some concerted effort, but the benefits to your company, staff and community are well worth it. Once you establish a culture of giving at your company, volunteering will become second nature to your employees, and your collective impact will support your community’s ability to flourish.
This post was originally written in 2016 by
Sarah Landrum, founder of
Punched Clocks
, a site dedicated to sharing advice on navigating the work world, and has been updated by Points of Light to include new research and resources.
Empower Employees to Exercise their Purchase Power
At Points of Light, we believe that the most powerful driver of positive change is the individual. One person’s actions, no matter how small, can have an impact and change a life. And, together, our collective actions become a force that transforms the world.
We believe that we are at the dawn of a new era, one we are calling the “
.” When future generations look back on this time, they will see an era of sustained, meaningful civic engagement, fueled by a global community of people ready and willing to do good.
However, doing good comes in many forms. Today’s engaged person may express their desire to do good through the purchases they make, what they share on social media, where and how they choose to work, and which nonprofit organizations to support as a volunteer or donor.
Those different forms of doing good – an individual’s civic “superpowers” or the ways they positively engage in their community – are not left behind when they show up at work. In fact, a person’s employer may offer them the first opportunity to exercise their superpowers through a company’s social impact programs. As a corporate social responsibility leader, you play an integral role in empowering employees to realize and tap into their civic superpowers.
CIVIC SUPERPOWER: PURCHASE POWER
Purchase power represents an individual’s ability and influence when they make decisions around spending or consumption of goods or services. These purchasing decisions may reflect their values or advance a social cause or issue. Buyers may deliberately purchase or avoid purchasing a product or service based on a company’s policies, social causes, size and scale, environmental footprint and more.
As a social impact professional working for a brand that might sell goods or services – either B2B or B2C – you understand the correlation between corporate profits and corporate social responsibility. It continues to be proven that companies that do good also do well.
The consumers making socially responsible purchasing decisions are your neighbors and your fellow employees, and it’s imperative to educate them on the concept and provide them with opportunities to learn, act and grow. But, as leaders focused on just a few of the traditional forms of doing good like volunteering and donating over the last half century, how do we begin educating employees on the rest?
We’ve developed a few idea starters to help you enable fellow employees to understand the responsibility behind their purchasing choices and how they can make informed decisions, which in turn can have a positive impact on their neighborhood, on their community and the world.
Drive awareness and discussion to Empower Employees:
Read all about it! Points of Light published “Civic Life Today,” a digital magazine with a series of nine issues, each highlighting an individual’s civic superpowers and how they can activate them in their own life. We encourage you to review the issue on Purchase Power to better understand the concept and nuances related to purchase power and share it with colleagues.
Develop a Lunch & Learn webinar series around an individual’s civic superpowers that leads to learning and dialogue. Help employees connect their behaviors and purchasing choices to the bigger issues of climate action, diversity and equity, and economic empowerment. Begin by providing a basic primer for all of the ways an individual might engage in civic life. Then, transition to a segment or full webinar on purchase power. Discuss important topics like conscious consumerism, understanding the lifecycle of your purchase, and limiting purchasing through upcycling and recycling, or even bartering. Connect each webinar in the series to a grantee or a volunteer opportunity that reinforces these concepts. Remember the Points of Light team is also here to help, so reach out to us to see how we can partner.
Publish an interview with senior leaders from your procurement team to illustrate how the company approaches purchasing decisions. The formal habits of the company can give employees a framework for their own actions and demonstrate how decisions can play out at a macro level.
Spotlight the vendors, suppliers and business partners that your company has chosen to work with and how their values align with your corporate values through a blog or video series.
Invite an owner of a minority-owned business to share their story (at a virtual event, via company blog, etc.). Use this opportunity to remind employees why supporting small and minority-owned businesses is critical to the success of local communities.
Partner with your employee resource groups or affinity networks who may be hosting “courageous conversations” around issues of social justice, equity and inclusion. Encourage them to incorporate purchase power, privilege and equal access to wealth creation into their discussions. In the same vein, partner with your “green team” or sustainability champions to offer similar conversations on being eco-friendly.
Create a short video explaining the role of purchase power in communities and how employees can take action. Add this to leadership training or the volunteering/corporate citizenship or “empathy/purpose” curriculum in your company’s learning management system.
Send monthly communications or publish a series in your employee newsletter about becoming cause-driven consumers – especially as we march toward end-of-year holidays. These messages can align with themes throughout the year and provide resources for getting started. Remind employees that one of the most powerful things people can do at any income level is to be intentional about their purchases.
Provide resources:
Create guides that encourage informed purchasing decisions. These guides can be shared in alignment with events or campaigns throughout the year. For example, you can develop a guide that highlights companies or nonprofits that sell products or services that support your company’s impact areas, which could accompany announcements around your holiday giving activities. Another could highlight small or minority-owned businesses, which would be great assets to distribute during Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Veterans Day, or Small Business Saturday. Use corporate social media to promote local businesses that tie-in to that theme. Lastly, an Earth Day guide could focus on ways to shop for recycled, upcycled or donated goods, include local shopping choices with smaller footprints, and provide ways to find locations to donate or recycle.
Set up an employee-generated list on a shared server so employees from around the world can contribute to showcasing small, local or minority-owned businesses that align with your company’s values. When employees nominate a business, enter them into a raffle for prizes that emphasize exercising their purchase power responsibly. Remind employees to look for certification symbols while shopping like the Fairtrade mark or Forest Stewardship Council label.
Consider providing microloan lending platforms as another way to engage employees – or possibly customers – in your company’s social impact strategy. Investing in social entrepreneurs and small businesses around the world provides a pathway to their economic success.
Develop an informal employee “swap board” for those with personal goods or services they want to trade or recycle. Enlist a passionate environmental champion to lead this effort.
Showcase organizational values in action:
Highlight employee volunteer opportunities that support nonprofits that offer purchases with purpose, those that support the economic empowerment of minorities or those that provide small business consulting. Consider hosting a day of service that focuses solely on these things. Use Earth Day to promote environmental projects but also as a reminder to make informed purchasing decisions.
Build a skills-based mentoring program or offer community empowerment courses to help social entrepreneurs and small businesses – particularly those that are minority-owned or led – succeed. Concentrate on areas such as marketing, finance, supplier diversity or operations. Use the skills of your workforce to create the courses and encourage them to volunteer. Go a step further and offer micro loans or grants to participants.
Similarly, partner with a nonprofit that provides volunteer-led financial management training and consumer counseling to community members so they can become more financially literate and better optimize their purchase power.
The work doesn’t end here. While empowering employees to be smart consumers, it’s also imperative that your company walks the talk. How does your company determine who they are buying from for big and small purchases? Are vendors and business partners diverse, led by minorities and giving back to the communities where they operate? Are they following sound business and labor practices? Do their values align with your company’s values?
You may not be responsible for many corporate purchasing activities, but as a leader who understands and believes in social change, this might be an opportune time to influence other business leaders.
First, start with what you have control over. Where are you sourcing your volunteer t-shirts, supplies or lunches and snacks for group projects and in-person events? Are your recognition items and other branded tchotchkes purchased with sustainability in mind, or from companies who employ those that are differently abled or members of marginalized communities? Can you promote any of these vendors with aligned values through social media? Imagine the effect that would have on a much smaller business.
Then, think of your closest internal partners. When HR needs to roll out new programs and are thinking of sourcing items, remind them of the purchase power the company wields. If your company has partnerships with companies that provide employees with discounts to their goods and services, are those vendors socially responsible? Start the conversation with the team in charge. Most importantly, create case studies on successes to share with your business partners and fellow CSR leaders that demonstrate it can be done.
As you begin to weave an individual’s civic superpowers into your company’s social impact strategies, you are strengthening the social fabric of communities around the world. Your access to and leadership of hundreds of potential changemakers, possibly hundreds of thousands, gives us hope for a better tomorrow.
Support Your Company’s NGO Partners by Investing in Volunteer Engagement
As the world closes out the first half of the year, leaders in corporate social responsibility may begin thinking about how to maximize the remainder of their company’s social impact budget. More than likely, their thoughts turn to determining how to use it in support of their employee volunteer engagement goals.
At Points of Light, we encourage these leaders to think of the many ways they rely on their grantees and nonprofit partners to provide meaningful, relevant and impactful employee volunteer programs to support their company’s social impact strategy. There is no better way to ensure that those community organizations have the right resources and infrastructure in place to create these service opportunities than by investing in volunteer engagement.
Consider the amount of effort, assets and staff time that goes into having volunteer opportunities at the ready. While many companies employ volunteer leaders who help plan and manage projects for their colleagues, there are often unseen costs to the nonprofit partner. When corporate volunteers go hand-in-hand with budget to support their work, so much more can be achieved. Funds can be used for volunteer management training, expanding the ways volunteers support an organization’s mission or even recruitment materials to welcome in community volunteers.
The Funders Guide to Investing in Volunteer Engagement, a 2017 ground-breaking resource from The Leighty Foundation, gives grantmakers and nonprofit organizations common data and common language to jointly create innovative strategies to better utilize critical volunteer energy for the good of our communities. A strategic investment in building organizational capacity to engage volunteers can leave an impact that far outlasts a one-off corporate volunteer project.
We invite everyone involved in corporate social impact and employee volunteering to read The Funders Guide for more compelling reasons to include these types of investments in grantmaking plans for the rest of this year and beyond. To access more research around this topic, check out the 2022 report, “Investing in Strategic Volunteer Engagement: A Qualitative Study” which explores the dichotomy between the need for more volunteers and adequate funding to engage and manage them.
Our thanks to The Leighty Foundation for continuing to champion and bring to light the importance of effective volunteer engagement in the nonprofit sector.
Designing an International Employee Volunteer Program: 8 Essential Tips for CSR Leaders
Establishing an effective international employee volunteer program (EVP) is a valuable endeavor for corporate social impact leaders. With three decades of insights from working with diverse businesses, we’ve gathered several essential tips to help you navigate the complexities of building a global program. Let’s explore these recommendations, which will enable your company to engage employees around the world in making a positive impact.
Alignment and Adaptability: Decide whether to fully align your program globally under one strategy, focus area or goals or allow for total customization, considering the unique needs and cultural nuances of each country. Either way, strive for a balance between a unified mission and local adaptations. Avoid imposing American values and recognize that what works in one country may not be effective in another.
Budgets and Resources: Think through how you might implement budgets, tracking systems, and reporting tools to empower local teams but also stay knowledgeable about what’s happening should you be leading this work from the U.S. This approach enables efficient program management and encourages ownership at the grassroots level. Provide comprehensive information and training on volunteer recruitment and retention along with project management basics. Stay connected and involved by equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills and tools.
Cultural Sensitivity and Legal Knowledge: Be sensitive to individual cultures and familiarize yourself with the laws governing volunteering in each country. Respect and understand cultural differences to ensure the program’s success and compliance with local regulations. You’ll find that employees in some countries are reticent to share information about their volunteer work or prefer to volunteer independent of their employer. Check out our blog that describes some of those cultural nuances.
Executive Buy-In: Secure executive leadership buy-in and visible endorsement of the global program. When leaders demonstrate their support, employees are more likely to participate and understand that community engagement aligns with company values and is a top priority – for the business, for employees and for the communities where your company operates.
Start Small for Big Wins: Consider starting off with a pilot program in a country that shows strong potential for success. Consider factors such as language similarities, existing business relations and partnerships, organizational structures, and a history of employee volunteerism. Set realistic goals to build momentum.
Leadership and Communication: Rely on local knowledge and leadership to foster a sense of ownership and engagement. Establish a global communication structure to ensure consistent messaging and facilitate knowledge sharing among participants worldwide.
Motivation and Empowerment: Structure the EVP to motivate and empower local employees to take charge of their programs and partnerships. Implement multi-faceted recognition strategies, including awards and matching programs that can help your company tell its story of global social impact.
External Resources and Partnerships: Seek assistance from knowledgeable resources, organizations, and individuals who understand local cultures and laws. Collaborate with community leaders and select NGOs compatible with your company’s values, social impact mission, and strategic goals.
By following these essential tips, CSR leaders can create a successful international employee volunteer program that respects cultural differences, fosters local ownership, and empowers employees worldwide. Balancing global alignment with flexibility, cultural sensitivity, and effective leadership will help your organization make a meaningful difference in communities around the globe.
Start your company’s journey toward a global movement of positive change today by
(CSC) gathered in Chicago last month before the official kickoff of the Points of Light Conference. The conversations were lively with folx reconnecting with peers and making new connections.
Although we stay connected via virtual meetings year-round, some of the best learning and inspiration comes from our in-person events. When we gather,
always flow from our guest speakers and peer conversations. I was scribbling fast notes to keep up with the great thoughts shared by our dynamic speakers, many of whom – like me – are Chicagoans and all of whom are doing good in the world, whether that is through academia, social entrepreneurship, filmmaking, storytelling or business.
More than 100 of us packed the room to hear from Dr. Nicholas Pearce, clinical professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and founder and CEO of
; and a panel moderated by Marianna Ruiz, executive vice president and executive creative director at Edelman, featuring Brenda Robinson, head of film finance and inclusion strategies at HiddenLight Productions, Diane Quon, producer at Quonco Productions, Mark Mitten, founding and managing partner of Mitten Media, and Nate Clark, global director of corporate social responsibility at John Deere and president of the John Deere Foundation.
Here are just a few of the top takeaways from our time together:
Pursue Purpose as a Pathway
Staying connected to your purpose, particularly as a CSR professional, is a daily pursuit. We must “connect soul to role,” said Dr. Pearce, and really do the work we are built for as individuals. And even when you have connected soul to role, rest is essential. It’s not a reward we earn after working until exhaustion; we have to work from and out of rest, not for it. On the days when your work feels like an uphill climb, when a program isn’t having the impact you hoped or the business integration you know matters isn’t materializing, that’s when you most need to reconnect to purpose.
Learn and Lead Locally
Real and sustainable change happens at the hyperlocal level, but only if we start by listening and learning from the community. As CSR and employee volunteer programs go to scale or become global, the voices of the local nonprofits and neighborhood leaders can get lost, leading to systemic inequities going unaddressed. Jahmal Cole shared some powerful reminders about why the grassroots connection is key and encouraged all of us to conduct community asset maps before seeking to partner or program in a geography.
Stories on the Screen = Social Impact
Films can make us think or act differently, and that’s especially true for documentary projects that introduce us to new places, people, and realities. As panelist Brenda Robinson said, “The first thing we [filmmakers] look at is how to you change minds and hearts with art.” CSC member John Deere is one company that has leveraged filmmaking for social impact (learn about America’s volunteer fire service in
), but even if your company never makes a documentary, there are some transferable storytelling lessons all of us can learn from. One that’s stuck with me: storytelling is about listening and learning, and that’s the foundation for high-impact social action, and it can come in many forms, like your internal corporate newsletter, a panel conversation, a first-person share from a colleague or nonprofit partner, or even a social media post.
New Corporate Service Council Chair, Anita Whitehead, president and chair of the KPMG US Foundation in conversation with Dr. Nicholas Pearce, clinical professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and founder and CEO of The Vocati Group.
In our time together, we also announced our next Corporate Service Council chair: Anita Whitehead, president and chair of the KPMG US Foundation. Since the CSC started in 2005, our chair companies have played a critical role in leading the council and ensuring that we continue bringing together top brands, purpose-driven leaders and subject matter experts.
I’m looking forward to gathering with all the forward-thinking and purpose-driven CSC members at our next events to keep the conversation going. And if you want to be in the room where all this inspiration and learning happens,
Bridging Divides: The Role of Business and Civic Engagement in Addressing Polarization
In a world characterized by increasing polarization, businesses and business leaders find themselves at the center of a brewing storm. Action might come with backlash and silence could signal complicity. What can corporate citizenship practitioners do to mitigate the negative effects of polarization inside and outside their company and help others find common ground? The Business Summit at the 2023 Points of Light Conference explored this theme and the crosswinds that corporate citizenship leaders are navigating daily.
68% of Business Summit attendees believe that polarization has impacted their workplace.
Points of Light’s Chief Global Corporate Solutions Officer Katie Stearns kicked off the session with a focus on the business case for engagement. Although the question of whether companies should voice opinions on societal issues remains contentious, research indicates that, around the world, stakeholders expect them to take a stand. Depending on the issue, roughly 70 to 90% of respondents in the
said they “expect CEOs to take a public stand on issues” such as climate change, discrimination, and the wealth gap. The same goes for smaller businesses. Points of Light’s recent
reports that the general public has high expectations of how small businesses get involved in social issues. For instance, half the public and two-thirds of small business owners ranked speaking out as “pretty important or essential.”
A
report highlights that 88% of CSR leaders believe companies should be courageous and take a stand, even if it means alienating some people. With this much buy-in, it becomes a business imperative to determine a course of action and who better than social impact professionals to champion this work? Stearns doubled down on this point by highlighting the power corporate citizenship leaders have to positively shape the discourse and dealings inside their company, which ultimately trickle out into society.
“You have influence. Not just at the table with senior leaders when they’re deciding how to engage on an issue publicly, but also internally as interpreters and agents of your company’s core values, civic engagement strategies, and culture of service,” said Points of Light’s Chief Global Corporate Solutions Officer katie stearns.
CSR leaders can navigate economic and social pressures successfully by being prepared and joining the bridging movement as a safe space to invest in democracy and civility. Bruce Bond, co-founder and CEO of a bridging organization called
, shared that, although media might emphasize our polarity, many studies reveal that Americans are closely aligned on major social issues. He also introduced their
as one of the models that companies can use to empower employees to have respectful conversations in the workplace and emphasized one of its most appreciated tenets to take winning off the table.
Then, Bruce welcomed three business leaders to the stage to share how their companies are navigating polarization in the workplace. The panel included Pamela Everhart, senior vice president, regional public affairs and community relations at Fidelity Investments; Nick Nottoli, director, reputation management and insights at Allstate; and Clarita Santos, executive director of corporate and civic partnerships at Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC).
The panelists agreed that the pervasive challenge of polarization requires companies to implement strategies that create civility and build empathy within organizations. Consistency in both corporate action and application of values is vital for gaining and maintaining stakeholders’ trust.
Here are some approaches that the panelists shared:
Authenticity is Essential: Senior leaders must recognize the importance of engagement and move beyond the sidelines. Demonstrating authentic reasons for taking a stand can help companies gather allies and build collective courage. Case in point, Nottoli described the societal engagement framework that provides Allstate leaders with a decision-making tree on whether the company takes on an issue. Criteria for taking a stand include: an issue that aligns with company values, impacts stakeholders, is relevant to Allstate’s business, and on which the company can meaningfully affect change.
Proximity Matters: Contact theory suggests that simply being around others can promote tolerance, acceptance and allyship. Activities such as volunteering together, offering listening and learning sessions, providing nonpartisan voter education, and creating space for open dialogue can help employees connect beyond political differences while also developing a deeper understanding of their community and the issues affecting it. To build civility, each panelist emphasized the importance of putting relationships ahead of any task. In fact, Santos mentioned that the CEO of HCSC is often quoted as saying, “it’s okay to disagree but not be disagreeable.” Social connection built through supportive and inclusive relationships strengthens an individual’s wellbeing and also the resiliency of communities.
“If my corporate social responsibility team is thinking alike on an issue, then we’re not thinking,” said Pam Everhart, senior vice president, regional public affairs and community relations at Fidelity Investments
Culture is Key: Since most of us spend half our waking lives at work, mutual respect built inside workplaces can have positive consequences for society. Employees are more likely to stay and thrive in an environment where they feel respected, heard, valued, and connected to a larger purpose. That culture should also be inquisitive and ready to explore an issue from all sides as no one person shares the same lived experience. Everhart encouraged the audience to question their own echo chambers and build “challenge networks.“ She said, “If my corporate social responsibility team is thinking alike on an issue, then we’re not thinking.” Truly, workplaces need to embrace having better arguments to enable the discovery of better solutions. As ambassadors of organizational values, every CSR practitioner has the power to influence and champion an inclusive culture.
To conclude the Business Summit, Founder and Managing Partner of
and Co-Founder of NYCNext Maryam Banikarim took the stage to share a story of a recent project she dubbed, The Longest Table. Put simply, during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, she and her New York City neighbors hosted an outdoor meal where more than 500 community members came together – even those who might not normally break bread together. This simple act of community building is now being replicated around the world. She ended her keynote with two significant learnings from the project that resonated with attendees: it takes just a few to build a movement and that there is no better time for “we, not me.”
In today’s polarized world, businesses have a significant role to play in helping society find common ground. Although challenges persist, there are strategies that can promote empathy and mitigate the negative impacts of polarization. By embracing these strategies, companies can foster a sense of purpose, enhance employee wellbeing, and contribute to a more cohesive and inclusive society. As CSR leaders can demonstrate, community engagement breeds belonging and service truly unites.
5 Questions to Jumpstart Your Employee Volunteer Strategy and Program Design
Big corporations as well as small and midsized businesses all want to know whether there’s a perfect time to start providing employees with opportunities to create social impact. Thankfully, when it comes to employee volunteer strategy and program design, there is only one answer: Now.
While there’s a lot more planning that needs to go on before launching a corporate social responsibility strategy, many those who ask this question have a ‘perfect’ timeline in mind, such as business age or development stage, when it fits the budget or leadership interests, or conversely, they have no idea when or how to engage the right nonprofit partner. In truth, if you’re asking this question, there’s likely no reason to wait.
Corporate community engagement can take many forms, from workplace giving programs to providing volunteer time off (VTO), which allows employees to volunteer during regular work hours, to organizing group service experiences for your employees. Even giving employees time off to vote is community engagement.
It’s important to know that no matter what kinds of community engagement your business decides to undertake, they all provide myriad benefits, so the sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll be able to capture the value for your company, your employees and the communities where they live and work.
Corporate social responsibility programs that engage employees provide benefits far beyond a healthy return on investment. We’ve made a list below of who gains significant value and how, regardless of the program type.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_HFYfS2cE8
For companies:
Makes the company more attractive to job seekers
Builds authentic brand value and values locally, regionally, and globally
Provides financial returns
Strengthens workforce skill sets
Increases employee engagement, productivity, and retention
Helps identify emerging leaders
For employees:
Allows employees to feel more fulfilled personally and professionally
Helps employees listen and learn about community challenges and opportunities
Provides team-building opportunities
Provides resume builders and new skill development
Allows employees to feel more connected to their employer while living out organizational values
Forming partnerships with nonprofits also benefits the organization itself by providing much needed human capital resources from hands-on volunteers to board members, as well as advocates for the community issues they’re working to solve. When companies engage employees in creating positive change, all stakeholders reap rewards.
While you should certainly start as soon as possible, there are some important questions to answer before you develop your community engagement strategy and launch initiatives.
What type of programs work for your company?
As we mentioned before, this can take many forms, from a company-wide donation campaign to hands-on, off-site work. Make sure you design programs that meet community needs first and appeal to most employees. However, you’ll want to create them with enough flexibility to include anyone with potential limitations.
Why are you doing it?
While we’ve provided numerous benefits the company and employees can enjoy above, it’s important to identify why your company wants to undertake engaging employees in community—and that ‘why’ should ideally align with business objectives, culture and values. This clarity will ensure that your company maximizes its most powerful resource, your people, and achieves meaningful impact for all.
How will you measure success?
To properly assess the progress and success of your strategy, you’ll need to know what KPIs to track so efforts and achievements can be communicated to partners, stakeholders, leaders, and employees alike. Listening to and partnering with communities and the NGOs your corporate social responsibility programs support can help you to truly understand the positive impact you are creating. For an excellent primer on inputs, outputs and outcomes—the data you’ll want to collect and share—read through
by True Impact, a leader in social impact measurement.
How will you convince senior leaders?
While community engagement programs are highly beneficial, you also need to be able to communicate the ‘why’ as well as the ‘who, what, when, where, and how’ to executives and stakeholders, or it may never come to fruition. Think of this as another incredibly important business strategy with objectives, tactics, metrics and an annual timeline to back it up. They might also be interested in data from third-party sources that proves the return on investment and, if so, check out ACCP’s
Whether you offer ways for employees to make individual or group contributions, ensure you understand what actions and issues are meaningful to them. An employee survey can help you uncover themes and ideas. Context can also create meaning. So, offer opportunities to learn about community issues before volunteer projects and time to reflect and resources to stay engaged afterward. Most importantly, ensure the work is meaningful to the community or your nonprofit partner.
Now that you’ve got the basics of what you need to consider, it’s time to get started. If you need more information, we’ve got plenty of valuable resources
Disaster Corporate Aid Tracker: Stay Informed on Corporate Response to Recent Disasters
Use this tool from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation to stay up to date on the corporate response to recent disasters.
Disasters often leave record-breaking devastation in their wake. And while you can’t foresee how severely they may disrupt communities, your company can be prepared with a plan to support recovery efforts.
Your preparation might include exploring the ways companies have supported relief efforts from similar disasters. Short of searching through countless press releases, is there an easier approach to find out the ways in which industry peers and competitors have responded once a disaster occurs and damages are assessed?
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Disaster Corporate Aid Tracker has been a tried-and-true tool to keep the corporate citizenship sector tuned-in. As companies respond and pledge to help devastated communities recover, the tracker is updated with their commitments.
If you’re curious to know how other companies are responding to current and past disasters, use the Disaster Corporate Aid Tracker to stay informed and strategic.
Corporate Disaster Relief and Response
As business and CSR leaders cautiously await the start of the Atlantic hurricane season (June 1 – Nov 30), Points of Light has created a list of tips to help shore up your corporate disaster relief and response plans.
Here are some basic principles of corporate disaster relief to consider:
Provide employees with ways to take action throughout the disaster lifecycle by sharing this guide. Click image to download.
Ensure all employees in the affected areas are safe and accounted for, which might be a function of your HR department. If you don’t have a system in place (i.e., a hotline for employees to call or a phone tree for leaders to reach out, etc.), think about creating one to be prepared for the next natural disaster.
It’s instinctual to want to help others, so get in front of employees’ requests to be deployed. Know that spontaneous, unaffiliated volunteers can become burdensome, so devise plans to be ready with organized and strategic support, once the impacted areas have been deemed safe and ready for volunteers.
Find opportunities through one of our volunteer centers that are on the ground and often leading volunteer logistics.
Once impacted areas are ready for volunteer support, check in with your company’s risk management team to provide them with the chance to vet potential opportunities.
Think through the skills your employees have to offer the organizations responding to disasters. Skills-based volunteering from companies can play a significant role in response and recovery, not to mention building community resiliency. Check out Common Impact’s report, Disaster Response: From Relief to Resiliency, to find out how.
While employees might be driven to organize collection drives, palletized in-kind donations work best. Can your company work through an organization like Good 360 to provide much-needed supplies in bulk?
Launch a workplace giving campaign specific to the disaster and tailored to your top relief partners. Remind employees that cash contributions during a disaster go much farther than donated items.
Ensure impacted employees are aware of your company’s employee assistance/hardship fund and how to take advantage, while reminding the rest of your workforce how they can contribute.
Reach out to your nonprofit partners to find out how they have been impacted and how they are responding. Find resources to help you design a grant-making strategy through the Center for Disaster Philanthropy.
Keep up with your industry peers and their commitments by visiting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Disaster Corporate Aid Tracker.
As you and your team respond to natural disasters, remember to stay safe and well. And tell us if Points of Light and our
can help you as we brace for the next likely disaster and the rest of the year.
How Employee Volunteer Councils Can Foster Volunteer Program Success
A formal leadership or governance structure for your employee volunteer program can extend the reach of your staff, provide development opportunities for employees and sustain the momentum of continually increasing community impact. Most effective employee volunteer programs use some type of leadership structure – either committees or individual champions – to support the management and operations of the program at a regional or local level and to scale their program’s initiatives throughout their company’s footprint.
No matter which structure is right for your program and corporate culture, successful implementation is critical to generating enthusiasm and buy-in from your employees, connecting with senior leadership and serving as a foundation to drive the long-term success of your evolving volunteer program.
We’ve compiled many reasons why developing and implementing a champion or council structure is beneficial, which you’ll find in our
on employee volunteer champions and councils. But what does a council structure look like in composition and responsibilities? Read on for those details!
Employee Volunteer Council Composition
Typically, employee volunteer councils vary in size based on the employee count in a particular location or market and vary on their style or organizational makeup based on what fits within the operations and culture of the company. Volunteer committees can represent specific teams, departments, physical locations, Employee Resource Groups, orientation waves and alumni/retirees. They can even be composed of spouses of executives.
Each employee volunteer council typically includes:
A cross-section of employees with different functions, management levels and tenure.
Volunteer event organizers, senior managers and/or representatives from key departments.
Large employee volunteer councils may have an executive board or steering committee that helps to decide on details for meeting agendas and events for the year, and also communicates with senior leadership. These boards are usually made up of committee co-chairs, secretaries, treasurers and communications leads. Larger councils may have an executive advisor or sponsor that sits on the executive board and helps in the decision-making process. These senior leaders are a great resource to promote activities and to advocate for additional resources.
Someone has to lead the charge to get it organized, though—whether that is through self-assembly, a call to action or the identification and selection of committee members by HR or senior leaders. The company’s social impact team typically provides the training, resources, templates and forms, and overall support. Each committee should have a charter that explains how to get the committee started, its connection to the national or global social impact team and strategy, and its responsibilities.
Volunteer Committee’s Responsibilities
Let’s take a look at what might be included in a committee’s charter by outlining the potential responsibilities of a volunteer committee and its members. Again, these will vary by company size and culture along with the goals that the social impact strategy hopes to achieve each year.
A volunteer committee may:
Champion corporate citizenship as core to the company’s mission, values and business – infusing citizenship into the DNA of the business at all levels and across the company’s employee network.
Serve as a conduit for employee feedback on the direction of the company’s CSR strategy and employee volunteer program. Represent employee voice by surveying employees to determine their interests in volunteering and other community engagement activities.
Set goals each year, which reflect employees’ interests and support business objectives.
Recommend and acquire resources for the volunteer program.
Support the development and implementation of policies, procedures and the evolution of the employee volunteer program.
Identify opportunities and challenges that may affect implementation or support of the program as it relates to their respective division/business unit and employees and make appropriate decisions to keep goals on track.
Support employee volunteer leaders or committees in other offices.
Recruit others to help lead and manage activities throughout the year.
Communicate with employees regularly to share successes, recognize achievements and motivate them to get involved.
Identify nonprofit organizations for potential collaborations.
Provide input and recommendations to the social impact team.
An employee serving on the committee may be asked to:
Serve a time-limited term.
Attend planning meetings.
Participate in managing activities throughout their term.
Celebrate the success of volunteer projects with employees and the community.
Share with others their enthusiasm for and satisfaction from volunteering.
Establishing a formal leadership or governance structure for an employee engagement program is crucial for volunteer program success and long-term impact. Whether through committees or individual champions, this structure extends the program’s reach, fosters employee development and sustains momentum in community engagement. By developing and implementing a champion or council structure, companies can maximize the impact of their social impact work and create a culture of social responsibility.
