How to Capture a Company’s Interest in Your Volunteer Program

Have you heard the real-life parable about the CEO and the human-resource department’s wildly successful employee volunteer program? It has become lore for many of my colleagues, and here is the abridged version:

Company launches employee volunteer program.

Employees donate hundreds of hours out of the workday.

HR volunteer program manager reports back to CEO on huge total employee contribution.

CEO sees enormous work-time and financial losses and threatens to suspend program.

Program manager reframes report in terms of what the company is getting out of the experience: employee development, skill-building, teamwork, and intergenerational knowledge transfer.

CEO sees increased productivity, a higher retention rate, and significant savings.

For a volunteer program to appeal to a company, it must match volunteer opportunities with the company’s goals.

In my last Measuring Up post, I outlined a method for measuring the value volunteers bring to nonprofit organizations. In this post, we’ll zoom in on how to make your volunteer programs appealing to companies.

In “Making it Count: How to Measure the Impact of Volunteerism,” a Starbucks-commissioned paper published in 2011, our team explains to employers how to judge whether an employee volunteer program is worth it to the company: whether it helps it financially, improves the company’s image in the minds of consumers, brings benefits to the staff, and more.

Below are examples of questions employers should ask themselves and that you should cover in your conversations with corporate partners about designing volunteer programs.

1. Will the volunteer program make employees feel more engaged on the job?

• How satisfied are employees with their jobs now?
• What are their most common complaints?
• What is the retention rate?
• How much would it cost to recruit new employees?
• What do exit interviews say about why employees leave?

If employees’ day jobs are repetitive or tedious, choose volunteer opportunities that will stimulate and re-energize them whether they improve job skills or not. If employees are looking to attach a greater purpose to their work, find an opportunity for them to use their job skills in a new way.

2. Will employees learn new skills or improve their existing skills?

• What skills are required for each position?
• What is each employee’s current skill level?
• What gaps are most critical to close?
• Are the gaps in specific job-related skills or in “softer” skills, like communication and leadership?

If an employee would like to move up the ladder but is uneasy taking on more responsibility on the job, find that person a challenging volunteer position that is the equivalent of a step or a half step higher on the professional ladder: for example, a junior marketing manager who wants to develop account-management skills.

3. How can we increase interaction between junior and senior employees?

• What intergenerational knowledge transfer needs to take place for the business to improve?
• How is that knowledge being passed on now?
• Does the company have a formal mentoring program or a culture of mentoring?
• What are the barriers to interaction between workers of different generations?

While companies often focus on transferring institutional knowledge from longtime workers, the perspective is broadening about how junior and senior workers can each benefit from the other’s knowledge. In choosing volunteer opportunities with this goal in mind, ensure there is an opportunity for both generations to contribute.