Making the most of company volunteers: Lessons from non-profits

Corporate employee volunteering is rapidly becoming an important tool in a company’s corporate social investment (CSI) toolkit. While employee volunteering programmes (EVPs) offer clear benefits to companies, they may frustrate non-profit organisations (NPOs) unless there is clear agreement regarding the value to NPOs and communities.

Employee volunteering programmes: an exchange of value

How can volunteers assist non-profit organisations?

Because NPOs typically work with limited resources, it is valuable to be able to draw on a pool of corporate citizens who enjoy giving back to their communities with the encouragement and support of their employers. These volunteers provide the skills and labour that can help NPOs to fulfil their mandates.

Being able to draw on a ready supply of such recruits is vital, since NPOs often find it difficult to attract and retain volunteers with the time and ability to commit to a cause.

This is where EVPs fill a much-needed gap – and a single volunteering opportunity can pave the way for long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships between companies and NPOs. There should ideally be an exchange of value, whether volunteers are helping to fundraise, offering their skills or time, making donations, or pursuing other opportunities to work together with NPOs.

Trialogue spoke to three NPOs to find out their views on corporate EVPs, which business models work best for them and how to ensure they can optimise the volunteering experience.

Should an EVP be part of your core business model?

NPOs need to think about ways in which EVPs can best serve their organisations and enhance their impact.

An EVP may become part of your core business model, particularly if you’re meeting an ongoing need and you want to formalise a partnership with companies.

For NPO and public benefit organisation Citizen Leader Lab, it has made sense to run its flagship programme, Partners for Possibility, as part of its core business. The programme taps into the expertise available within business and provides a vehicle for a mutually beneficial partnership that adds value both to business leaders and schools. Funding for the programme is often sourced from EVPs, although companies can also decide to utilise their CSI or learning and development budgets.

The cost of the programme covers the fixed costs that are required to run the programme – for example, a set budget for a permanent monitoring and evaluation team – as well as variable costs for specific activities, such as hiring a venue to run a workshop, for example.

The award-winning programme leverages corporate skills and resources ongoingly, and Komala Pillay, CEO of Citizen Leader Lab, says this is an innovative approach to increase access to skills, knowledge and experience in under-served communities. NPOs are consistently challenged to provide impact in the most cost-efficient manner possible, and this novel approach achieves just that.

Partners for Possibility has been able to deliver impact in the education space for more than a decade precisely because companies have invested in the programme, both financially and through skilled business leaders supporting school principals at low-fee or no-fee schools in all nine provinces of South Africa.

“We support business leaders that join our programme to be partners rather than mentors,” says Pillay. “They are not education experts, but they do bring a particular mindset that allows principals to reimagine what school leadership might look like.”

Pillay says Partners for Possibility is a particularly successful initiative because it helps to build lasting relationships and because both parties, the school principal and the business leader, benefit from the experience. FirstRand Group’s foray into Partners for Possibility has shown that, in more than 75% of cases, partnerships are maintained after the 12-month programme formally comes to an end.

Should you charge a company for volunteering efforts?

Should companies be charged a fee for the opportunity to collaborate with NPOs, for example on Mandela Day, when it makes sense to outsource assistance with big events?

Rise Against Hunger (RAH) Africa provides a platform for ongoing volunteering, and CEO Brian Nell says corporate employees frequently assist them with packing meals. RAH charges for these meal-packing events, with the cost of any overheads built into the price of a meal.

“We charge R3.10 for a meal, which includes the cost of ingredients, logistics and so on,” he explains. “We obviously take advantage of economies of scale to provide around 6.5 million meals a year.”

Another initiative is having donors ‘adopt’ early childhood development (ECD) centres and getting involved in ongoing activities such as blanket and stationery drives, renovating classrooms or planting gardens. “The volunteers get to know the principals and teachers, and make a connection with the children,” he says.

RAH’s international campaign, ‘It starts with a meal’, which has been running for a year, creates a space for companies to move from donating a meal to sustaining a community garden over the long term or assisting the school with accounting skills, for example. “You do damage if you go into an area to visit an ECD and they never see you again. In this way, trust is broken,” he says.

“It’s not about dropping off a meal once a month but about forging a partnership with communities. For that reason, it’s important to find the right implementing partner,” says Nell, adding that ongoing support accelerates the rate at which ECDs become registration-ready.

He cites the case of Sun International, which created a food garden at an ECD in Alexandra and has made several visits during the year to champion the cause of the garden.

EVPs are vital to maintaining the connection between corporates, volunteers and communities but companies should understand the value they can contribute beyond events such as Mandela Day, asserts Nell.

“One of our four pathways to ending hunger is growing our movement. We have a great opportunity to engage 60 000 volunteers in a year – but it’s worth reminding people that more than three million people go to bed hungry every day,” he says. “We appreciate it when volunteers are involved all year round and we encourage them to share our social media posts, which keeps the momentum going.”

EVPs for donor cultivation

While once-off initiatives can be helpful to an NPO, there’s little doubt that an ongoing partnership is preferable, says Deidre Adams, senior manager at FoodForward SA. One of the challenges FoodForward SA has experienced is converting interest in what FoodForward SA does to long-term partnerships that can help to sustain not only the NPO but communities in need.

“We would love to sustain the engagement beyond Mandela Day,” she says, adding that there is sometimes a ‘disconnect’ between how companies view volunteering and how employees experience it.

FoodForward SA has become ‘more proactive’ in its outreach, using corporate EVPs as part of its donor cultivation and stewardship programmes.

“As part of our stewarding, we may invite a donor to participate in a team-building exercise, where employees can come see how our food banking model works and help sort, pack and distribute the food to beneficiary organisations,” says Adams.

However, FoodForward SA doesn’t charge companies for this team building, largely because volunteers would not be able to offer their labour due to strict regulations regarding food safety. In such cases NPOs need to think carefully about which activities may promote further engagement and which may simply be seen as fact-finding ‘outings’ that enrich companies but don’t always profit NPOs or communities.

At the same time, Adams says raising awareness is always important.

“We provide monthly food provisions to around 2 700 vetted beneficiary organisations, including NGOs working with HIV/Aids and TB patients, alongside skills programmes that help at-risk youth to acquire new skills, improving their employability prospects. Those youth wouldn’t stay in the programmes if there were no nutritious meals available,” Adams points out, adding that financial assistance can play a key role to keep these programmes on track.

Pro bono work – who pays?

Marketing strategist Angie Winschel argues that a dilemma arises when pro bono hours compete with ‘billable’ hours and NPOs need to prioritise work that “keeps the lights on and pays the team”. She rightly points out that NPOs have business goals and the complex work they do has intrinsic value.

“They deserve partners who will put in the time, dig in and understand their unique model and aspirations,” she notes. This means investing in order to move the NPO forward in the work that they do, and not leave them in much the same place they were in before they were offered ‘a helping hand’. Partners for Possibility is a good example of this, since pro bono work forms part of the value proposition of the EVP and helps the NPO achieve its goals.

Sustainable volunteering

The advantage of entering into long-term partnerships with corporate donors is being able to set boundaries and establish clear expectations around the roles and responsibilities of each partner. This improves outcomes for communities since there is a sense of continuity and predictability.

While ad hoc initiatives can be helpful, they don’t promote sustainability – a much-needed outcome for both NPOs and communities alike.

However, companies need to be aware that investing in a programme doesn’t mean running it. Pillay says it’s not uncommon for corporate volunteers to try to ‘fix’ problems in schools without having a clear understanding of school ecosystems.

“A leader may recommend a computer lab for a school without understanding the security challenges, lack of IT know-how or the fact that children may simply not benefit if they are hungry and can’t concentrate in class,” says Pillay. “Proposing flawed solutions on the back of preconceived ideas isn’t helpful.”

Although pro bono support is vital for schools, it works best when all parties agree on how best to deal with the unique challenges schools are facing and take time to establish partnerships.

Source: The original version of this article was published in the Trialogue Business in Society Handbook 2023 (26th edition).