With Thanksgiving and the traditional start to the holiday season upon us this week, thoughts of a charitable nature may already be gaining strength at your company.
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For many organizations, that may mean more plans in the works for corporate giving and employee volunteering. Corporate giving, in fact, is on the upswing, increasing last year to $18.46 billion—a 3.9% increase from 2014, according to Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy.
But such goodwill doesn’t have to be only a once-a-year focus; in fact, there’s deepening evidence that investing in such worthy aims for the long term has significant business benefits as well.
In particular, volunteerism is advancing as a top win-win charitable strategy that’s swiftly becoming a major dimension of corporate social involvement. Numerous studies show the practice can lift employee satisfaction and engagement, sharpen skills, and boost teambuilding. According to the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) 2016 Employee Benefits Survey, 42% of 3,490 HR pros polled say their organizations now offer community-volunteer programs, and 21% offer their employees paid time off for volunteering.
Making the Business Case
Consider this: A 2015 study by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship (CCC) in Chestnut Hill, MA, explored how companies are currently investing in corporate giving and employee volunteering and how these community involvement efforts connect to overall business goals.
Key findings from the 236 companies studied show some bottom-line benefits:
- Community involvement contributes to key business goals, including improved reputation and the attraction and retention of employees.
- Nearly 90% of the companies that measure the connection between volunteer participation and employee engagement found a positive correlation between participation and engagement scores.
- Companies are increasingly tying their community involvement efforts to their business strategy, prioritizing charitable programs that make the most sense for what they do and that are most relevant to their leaders and employees.
Any employer-sponsored charitable volunteer program has to best suit the needs of the company’s mission, vision, and business goals, experts say. “Focus is important for both the causes a company supports and the company itself,” explains Katherine V. Smith, executive director of the CCC, a unit of Boston College’s Carroll School of Management.
Structuring Successful Volunteerism
When developing and enhancing your programs, design them with the following critical elements and current trends in mind:
Choose wisely. As the leader of your company, when it comes to volunteerism, you’re aiming to strike a balance among what the business wants, what the community around you needs and what your employees enjoy doing and have genuine interest in. It can be a challenge, but to gather answers, experts say to do two things. First, ask employees for feedback about the types of projects they would prefer and what charitable organizations are most important to them. Then, consider the causes that your customers and clients support and care about as well.
Example: PepsiCo, Inc., the food and beverage giant, prioritizes related causes that make the most sense for its brand philanthropy. Among them are healthy lifestyles; affordable nutrition; access to clean water; and sustainable agriculture.
Narrow your focus. As you consider nonprofits or other volunteer-driven organizations to work with, always ask two questions to target your efforts: Does this group make a big difference in this community, and will my company and employees be able to make a big difference here as well? The stronger the connection, the more likely your program will succeed. Plus, tailoring volunteerism to a few well-chosen priorities seems to produce better results: 73% of companies prefer to have deeper partnerships with a smaller number, according to data from America’s Charities 2015 Snapshot, an annual look at national workplace philanthropy trends.
In tomorrow’s Advisor, three more ways to craft a unique volunteer program.