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It’s hard to talk about corporate volunteerism without imagining painful stereotypes: standalone projects, third-party organizing services, hosting 200 employees for an ad hoc event, one-time events for skilled professionals, staged photo ops, reporting via the company’s digital CSR tool, hunting for grant dollars, other mutually performative behaviors, and so on and so forth.
This past August 2018, Starbucks, the coffee giant, and the non-profit organization Points of Light launched a six-month pilot program that allows Starbucks employees to get their full pay check while volunteering at selected non-profits for half the work week. Before long, the Internet and Volunteer Program Manager list serves were buzzing about a topic that routinely rears its head in volunteer management circles. Namely, do Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs create positive, beneficial experiences for volunteers, or is paying someone to volunteer simply absurd?
In this Voices, author Allyson Drinnon hears from people on both sides of this debate, ranging from a volunteer program manager to a corporate representative familiar with the concept. That Starbucks’ Salted Caramel Mocha Frappucinno® may never taste the same again.
More and more, companies want to engage their communities through employee volunteering programs. For most businesses, this means calling a nonprofit and scheduling an activity. The nonprofits that can readily design and host successful employee volunteering events will find themselves critical and necessary assets in what has quickly become a key business strategy. Understanding why employee volunteering is important to companies is key to creating a good partnership. In this article, author Chris Jarvis provides some insights into what companies want from employee volunteering programs, and how nonprofits can position themselves as an indispensable corporate partner.
When it comes to professional football in America, most people associate “special teams” with players who take the field for kick-offs, punt returns and kicking an extra point. But for the Miami Dolphins, an American football team based in Florida, “special teams” means so much more. The Miami Dolphins Special Teams, Driven by Chevy, is a new volunteer program that serves as one of the cornerstones of the Miami Dolphins Foundation. Although not the first volunteer initiative in professional sports, it is the first and only full-time volunteer program operated by a professional sports team. Started in 2009, the program is specifically designed to engage episodic volunteers in community service using the unique incentives and branding only available to a professional sports team. To date, the program has attracted 3,204 volunteers who have logged 43,835 hours of community service.
In this feature story for e-Volunteerism, Leslie Nixon, the Manager of Volunteer Programs for the Miami Dolphins, takes readers behind the scenes to show a business model of volunteerism from a decidedly unique perspective. Whether you’re a football fan or not, this story will give you a new way to think about volunteer opportunities.
In April 1973, the Saturday Review published a special business supplement, “Can the Businessman Meet Our Social Needs?” In this series of essays, noted business authority Peter F. Drucker and then New York City deputy mayor Edward K. Hamilton debated the pros and cons of this question. Though “corporate social responsibility” was a relatively new concept at the time, the issue of balancing responsibility among businesses, the nonprofit sector and government remains fresh 40 years later. This Voices article looks at the history of business philanthropy in the late 20th century, rediscovering examples of workplace volunteering that have faded from sight.
Points of View authors Susan J. Ellis and Steve McCurley attended the 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service – a fascinating, huge and baroque affair that every manager of volunteer programs ought to experience at least once. There is no other venue, especially in the United States, which exposes managers to such diversity of volunteer programs, and to both the weaknesses and strengths of our volunteering systems.
Those of us involved with volunteerism for a long time have always thought that the easiest way to ensure its future is to teach volunteering to children at a very early age. In fact, research shows that those who volunteer as children are much more likely to continue to volunteer as adults. In this Points of View, Steve McCurley and Susan Ellis, long-time proponents of involving children as volunteers, review methods (some good, some questionable) that organizations and individuals now use to encourage volunteer participation by children. They discuss the biggest barrier to volunteering by children – the reluctance of agencies to accept them. And then they turn the tables and ask the readers for their own points of view on this topic. Is volunteering a valuable experience to provide to young children? What do children gain from volunteering? What is the youngest age for children to volunteer? This interactive Points of View is designed to engage readers and get at the heart of this very important volunteer topic.