Yesterday’s Leadership Daily Advisor explored the rise of meaningful corporate volunteerism as one path to bottom-line business benefits. Today we finish up with three more tips to help differentiate your volunteer efforts.
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Crafting a Unique Value
Determine level of involvement. Some companies give employees an allotted number of paid hours each year that they can dedicate to volunteerism. Burlington, Vermont-based ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s, for example, offers employees 40 hours of paid community service time throughout the year. The company also sets up single-day volunteer events through what it calls “Community Action Teams.”
At West Grove, Pennsylvania-based Dansko LLC, each of its 180 employees are given 20 hours per year in paid time off to volunteer, but the company also donates the equivalent of that employee’s salary directly to the organizations they help out. The footwear company describes it as going for “double the bang.”
Encourage the skills-based trend. Growing more popular is skills-based volunteering, in which companies volunteer by sharing their own expertise with people in the community. Example: The Boston Beer Company Inc., maker of the Samuel Adams brand, started a program that gives employees a chance to teach crucial business skills to low-income entrepreneurs in the food and beverage industry. In a kind of speed-coaching program, new businesses seek out peer advice from the company’s lawyers, sales managers, or packaging experts.
Think transformative, not just transactional. Single days of volunteer service are great ideas wherein employees can join as a team for a specific need, such as building a new playground. But after a year or two of repeating the “one and done” events, many of your employees might be looking for a more long-term impact. Transformative volunteering can bring a new level of value to your corporate philanthropy efforts, proponents say, by offering experiences and situations that workers don’t otherwise encounter in day-to-day life. These efforts become transformative for your employees, for instance, by expanding empathy or by giving a new appreciation for what they have. Mentoring children from underserved communities or helping people with disabilities learn new skills are just two examples.