Corporate Volunteering
Raise awareness of your business by being helpful
Corporate volunteering is an altruistic activity where a business and its employees provide services for no financial gain. Volunteering is also renowned for skill development, and is often intended to promote goodness or to improve human quality of life. The word volunteer was first recorded in 1755 and was derived from the noun volunteer, in C.1600, ‘one who offers himself for military service’, from the Middle French voluntaire.
According to the Corporation for National and Community Service in 2012 about 64.5 million Americans, or 26.5% of the adult population, gave 7.9 billion hours of volunteer service worth $175 billion.
The benefits for businesses in providing corporate volunteering include:
- Helps to develop staff skills and confidence.
- Builds teams by working with colleagues outside the office in undertaking a challenge.
- Bolsters your reputation within your local community.
- Increased employee retention and loyalty.
- Increased employee engagement. A new study by the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (2013) found that employees who participated in corporate volunteering were more engaged with their organisation than non-volunteers and scored significantly higher on most measures of job satisfaction.
- Produces positive business and social outcomes.
- Improved community perception and related marketing opportunities.
- Demonstrated corporate citizenship activities.
- Positive effect on productivity.
Benefits to the community include access to resources and skills they otherwise would not have, access to intellectual capital, and a low cost solution to addressing community issues and needs.
