By now, most of us are all too aware that the shift to remote work, economic and political uncertainty, and evolving employee expectations have made it more challenging to deepen employee engagement. At the same time, team volunteering is a proven strategy to boost employee well-being, employee morale and retention, brand value, and community impact. But executing a successful team volunteering program isn’t easy. It requires a thoughtful approach and preparation.
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Check out these 5 top tips from Mary Dohrmann, Program Manager, Employee Impact at Twilio.org - a leading Builder member of the Pledge 1% movement. |  |
1. Encourage executives to demonstrate the behavior you want to see in other employees.
When employees see executives taking time to volunteer, it shows them that it’s ok for them to do that, too. Encourage your executives to champion a team volunteer event at their gatherings, reminding them the importance of leading by example and the impact that it can have on your company’s social impact goals. This will set your leaders up to be natural ambassadors of social impact across the organization.
2. Create proactive, nonprofit partnerships and start early.
Nonprofit partnerships are key to success in team volunteering. Create and foster nonprofit partnerships with turnkey volunteering opportunities in the cities where your employees gather. Remember that on and offsite meetings get planned months in advance, and volunteer events can often be the first thing to be left off of a tight agenda. Start planning with teams as early as you can to ensure you have time carved out of the agenda and have enough time to create a meaningful social impact opportunity in partnership with your nonprofit partners.
3. Have plug and play volunteer opportunities available.
Build a toolkit with meaningful, skills-based and other volunteering opportunities for teams looking to host a volunteer event during their gatherings. Partner with your people team to help promote that toolkit and, if relevant, to get it incorporated into other guides and resources. Include in your toolkit suggestions for making your volunteer opportunities more engaging. Can you offer 2x matching to the nonprofits that teams volunteer with? Can you create competition and offer giving credits? Incentives such as these can help drive energy and excitement around plug and play volunteering.
4. Build your internal brand and tell your story.
Continuously build cross-functional connections so that you’re aware of what team gatherings are happening and when. Awareness is key to finding the right moments to integrate social impact opportunities. And, once teams start to recognize your team as the ones that can help them create a social impact opportunity, they’ll start coming to you and referring others to you. Be sure you’re asking teams for photos and stories from their volunteer events so that you can share those with others to help generate excitement and new leads.
5. Be prepared to be hands on.
The most successful team volunteer events are the ones in which the organizer feels informed, supported, and prepared. If you don’t have the perfect plug and play opportunity ready for a team, help the lead with the search. If possible, offer to help create the event on your employee impact platform and help bulk upload volunteer hours. To stay organized as the volume of requests increases, have teams fill out an intake form and lean on those proactive partnerships you have in place.
Alicia_Schmidt
VP, Member Impact, Pledge 1%
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