June 23, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
While applauding President Obama’s effort to get more Americans to volunteer, Rachael Chong says more needs to be done to get professionals to donate their skills in accounting, computers, marketing, and other white-collar jobs.
Ms. Chong is the chief executive and founder of CatchaFire, an Internet effort to promote pro-bono services. On The Huffington Post, she said charity and business leaders need to do a better job connecting.
“The cultural gap between the nonprofit and for-profit worlds is vast,” she writes. “We need a scalable solution that helps nonprofit managers and for-profit professionals communicate effectively so that both parties get the most out of their volunteer experiences together.”
She continues: “When we’ve accomplished this, not only will service be part of the fabric of American lives, but nonprofit and for-profit professionals will be finally speaking the same language.”
Aaron Hurst, founder of the Taproot Foundation, a New York organization that works with professionals nationwide to volunteer their skills, echoes Ms. Chong’s argument in an opinion article in The Chronicle.
“While much of the focus has been on getting volunteers to provide direct services, such as to prepare meals, paint schools, and clean up rivers, that is not the type of volunteer help that nonprofit leaders say they need the most,” he writes.
Also, read The Chronicle’s coverage of the president’s volunteer push, which was officially announced on Monday.
