The Promise of Skills-Based Volunteering
ver the past decade, businesses of all kinds have become much more socially aware and active. In 2015, more than 75 percent of large US corporations were engaged in corporate citizenship activities of one type or another.1 Those included traditional philanthropic activities such as corporate giving and volunteer programs, as well as new efforts such as impact investing and skills-based volunteerism.
Among the array of corporate citizenship programs, skills-based volunteerism is the most rapidly growing, with more than 50 percent of companies now channeling the talents of their employees to nonprofit organizations.2 The rise in popularity of these programs is largely because a strong business case can be made for skills-based volunteering programs, which have been shown to increase employee engagement and retention, while also measurably enhancing the skills and talents that employees bring back to their desks.3 The programs have the added benefit of being particularly popular with millennial employees, whom companies eagerly seek to recruit and retain. . .