She's been to Sri Lanka and South Africa as a participant in Accenture Development Partnerships, a program that sends employees to work on nonprofit projects in developing countries.
As more employees see volunteer work as a way to learn new skills or move their careers forward, volunteering has become a sort of corporate benefit.
For an annual fee between $5,000 and $50,000, companies can give their employees access to a VolunteerMatch list of 55,300 nonprofits seeking help. Nonprofits join for free.
Field said one major attraction for companies is the chance to align their employee volunteer programs with the objective of their business.
Volunteer programs are tied efforts to retain two major employee groups, younger workers looking for work-life balance and ready-to-retire older workers who want to serve their communities,
Bramhall, 29 agreed the Development Partnerships program is a retention tool for Accenture.
Workers who are part of Gen Y say they want a job that lets them also exercise their personal values and beliefs, according to a study by Deloitte & Touche USA LLC. The study shows 62 percent of Gen Y respondents between the ages of 18 and 26 want to work for companies that give them a chance to use their skills to help a nonprofit.
Lupe Garcia, associate general counsel in the legal department at Gap, Inc. said her supervisors have recognized the fundraising and communication skills she developed in her volunteer work have increased her skills
Employees at Gap can spend up to five hours of paid time each month on a volunteer activity. If they spend 15 hours of their own time volunteering, Gap will give $150 to the organization, as well as matching any employee donations.
"An important driver in wanting to do this was really a desire to do something with my skills that had a broader impact, that had a deeply social impact," Coghlan said.
owing that non-profit supporters around the world have been adopting the use of social networking in their daily lives we set out to figure out if the use of social networks had any impact on personal or peer-to-peer fundraising. The results we’re pretty amazing
e found that participants who use social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube communicate with their networks more regularly and send more messages. This resulted in increased fundraising results by up to 40%.
Twitter as a Multiplier
Twitter users set higher fundraising goals and raised more money. In fact, Twitter users increased their personal fundraising goals by at least three times more and raised nearly 10 times more online than their peers who did not use Twitter.
Overall, participants that adopted integrated social media tools increased their fundraising by as much as 40 percent compared to their peers who weren’t using the available online tools.
An overwhelming number of marketers consider social media to be integral to their strategies this year, and 70% plan to increase their social media budget by more than 10% this year
found that the primary social media goal is to increase Facebook “Likes.”
social networking would take 11.9% of their overall budget this year compared with 13% for TV
A 2009 study by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education reported that 84 percent of professionals from a variety of industries said that they do not measure ROI within social media. This, tallied with my own experience, suggests there is a widespread desire to jump into social networking without all—or even some—of the answers. But not making the attempt to explore metrics is not an option for businesses with long-term vision and goals. ROI does not mean "Return on Ignorance."
The barrier to entry in social networks is much lower than in most other communications and branding channels. In many cases, establishing a presence in these networks is free. But remember the saying, "nothing in life is free?" The same holds true in social media. Your time has a price tag, and resources don't materialize without costs. At the same time, the imperative of social media is real.