Skills-Based Volunteerism by the Corporate Sector for Nonprofit Organizations

Abstract

Americans are familiar with volunteerism and can easily find ways to volunteer on the weekends. However, volunteerism is often thought of as an activity for those who have time such as those in the student population or the retired population. This paper presents a form of volunteerism that is done mostly by the working population in the corporate sector. Skills-based volunteerism involves projects that require the professional skills an employee uses on the daily in the workplace. It is suggested that this allows for an individual to contribute maximum impact to the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit organizations face many organizational structure challenges due to the lack of financial and human resources. Therefore, there is a large demand for corporate volunteers who have the skills to address nonprofit organizations' capacity-building problems, such as marketing, technology, bookkeeping. Skills-based volunteering projects are often offered by corporate employers through their Corporate Social Responsibility Departments. Intermediary organizations use technology to help connect the nonprofit sector and corporate sector. This paper attempts to show that there are high demands for skilled volunteerism for nonprofit organizations and there is a large supply of that talent in the corporate sector. Skills-based volunteerism is highly effective and impactful for both the nonprofit organizations and the corporate volunteers. So how can we allow for more volunteer projects matched based on skills? And how can the government be appropriately involved? The suggestions made emphasizes the increasing of the federal government's exposure of skills-based volunteerism to the general public by indirect signaling. The importance of the role played by the intermediary organizations should be recognized and further supported.