Scaling Corporate Volunteering in a fast-moving World

Corporate Volunteering programmes (CV) have become an important part of any progressive company’s corporate citizenship/CSR approach. As companies become more global, they often seek ways for their corporate volunteering efforts to match their international presence and interests in society.

Even when volunteering programmes become part of the corporate culture and have good engagement in some parts of the business, companies can find that there are groups of employees or parts of the world where the approach is not working as well as it could and that the local context and perspectives of those employees needs to be taken into account. Taking anything global has its challenges, and many companies struggle to align business objectives, community need, employee interest and global reach.

Emerging World has worked with several clients looking to scale their programmes. Whether expanding the geographical coverage, increasing numbers or groups of employees, working with more partners or supporting more beneficiaries, there are a number of issues that need to be considered for scaling. We’re happy to share the framework that we have developed for scaling of corporate volunteer programmes:

Some of the most effective corporate volunteering programmes provide opportunities for employees to apply their workplace skills, expertise and experience to deliver greater impact in a company’s community investments and partnerships internationally – this involves taking individuals and teams across borders. We call these types of immersive experiences CISL (Corporate International Service Learning), in the US, skills-based volunteering is often known as pro bono.

This week, Emerging World’s Client Development Director, Amanda Bowman will be spending time in New York with the global leaders of the pro bono movement to discuss and share best practices. The meeting Includes a diverse group of start-ups and mature organisations, involves intermediary organisations, companies with pro bono programmes, foundations that are supporting pro bono, and various other specialists in the field. If you’re there, we hope you get a chance to meet Amanda.