Skills-Based Volunteering Giving Companies More Bang for Their CSR Buck
Many companies are finding the shift to sustained, skills-based volunteering from the traditional en masse trip to the local soup kitchen more rewarding for employees and more valuable for communities – locally and around the world. This “involve-a-teering” method focuses on letting employees help build more sustained capacity-building for organizations. You want to loan your marketing department out to the local art co-op to increase their presence in the national art scene – do it. Does your communications department want to help a local food bank develop a more dynamic social media presence – let them. And better yet, make it part of their salary and benefits.
One of the most innovative examples we heard came from pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, showing that this isn’t just something small organizations can do. GSK gives top performing employees the opportunity to participate in their PULSE program, where they can take six months to volunteer anywhere in the world or locally. The program will have placed nearly 200 volunteers in more than 33 countries by the end of the year.
