Corporate Volunteering
Corporate Volunteering
What is Corporate Volunteering?
Corporate volunteering (also known as employee volunteering) is where businesses support their employees to engage with community organisations as volunteers.
Sometimes this is where the business selects the community organisation they can engage with, and other times, it is where the employee selects the community organisation. The nature and duration of the engagement will vary depending on the level of involvement between the business and the community organisation.
History of Corporate Volunteering
Corporate Volunteering is a phenomenon that has increased in popularity and awareness since the 1990’s. However, corporate involvement with community organisations and causes has for decades in different shapes and forms that has ranged from:
- Cause related marketing
- Donations
- Sponsorship
- Pro Bono Services or Support
- Corporate Volunteering
Of all of the forms of corporate involvement available to businesses, employee or corporate volunteering can be complex to implement depending on the needs of all three parties involved; the business, the community organisation and the employees. Less directly, the government and wider community also benefit. See: Corporate Volunteering benefits
How Could Corporate Volunteering Work for You?
Corporate volunteering involves three different parties. Your needs, and how your corporate volunteering could work for you differs depending on what perspective you are coming from. See:
'Marketplace' is one such event that aims to broker relationships and establish connections between corporate organisations and community organisations.
Corporate Volunteering Fast Facts
- Over half of the community organisations engaging corporate volunteers found the experience extremely beneficial
- Over 70% of businesses already support community organisations financially via donations, sponsorship or through pro bono support
- Most businesses which support corporate volunteering make 1 day per year available to employees to volunteer
- Of the businesses which encourage corporate volunteering amongst their employees, over 50% identified the community organisation they would support, and the remainder enabled employees to choose
- Of the business which enabled employees to volunteer during work time, only 25% of their staff actively took up the opportunity
Resources
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Here are a few resources
that may be useful to help you consider how corporate volunteering might
work for you.
Corporate Volunteering news & resources
Case Studies
The ways in which businesses and community organisations
can engage are diverse, and often evolve as the relationship develops.
Here are just a few examples of how corporate volunteering is currently
working in the community. Corporate Volunteering
case studies