Kenn Allen, Senior Consultant to IAVE, kicked off the conference with a presentation on the four critical questions about the Future of Corporate Volunteering.
First: How will we respond to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals? On this point he offered that the SDGs are not about “those over there” but about “us here” – that is, they are applicable to all countries, all communities, all people. And that creates a new playing field for our involvement. It means that wherever we are – where we headquarter, where we manufacture, where we sell, where our employees live – there are potential ways that we can address the SDGs.
Second: What impact do we care about the most – on the community, our employees, the company – and how will we prove it is happening? Kenn suggested that the real issue is whether we are going to commit to finding valid, straightforward ways to measure the impact of volunteering on all of the stakeholders – companies, employees, community organizations with which we work, on the specific people we serve and on the community or society as a whole.
Third: Will we be inclusive or exclusive? Kenn suggests that the focus on skills-based volunteering could potentially define skills too narrowly. He asks why not extend the opportunity to volunteer to ALL employees? He advocates choosing inclusivity and increasing the value for community, employees and company.
Fourth: Will we invest in the development of volunteering? Kenn cited a recent study by IAVE on national volunteer organizations and the finding that only a small minority of national leadership organizations for volunteering have active, meaningful partnerships with business. The challenge he suggests is how do we convince those leadership organizations that they need to be reaching out to the business community and supporting its volunteer efforts? How do we convince the business community to recognize the potential benefit to them and to their communities of strong leadership organizations for volunteering? These connections will strengthen the development of volunteering.
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The session Corporate Volunteering in the Digital Age brought ideas and experiences about how technologies are transforming the way people collaborate and how companies are using their volunteers and knowledge to generate social impact.
Carmen Morenes Giles, presented a timeline of the evolution of technology adoption in history and presented strategies and concrete actions of the Foundation to bridge the digital gap, most of them counting on corporate volunteers contribution. In 2016, their volunteer program contributed 252 thousand service hours of 27 thousand volunteers, in 32 countries, directly impacting 262 thousand beneficiaries.
Jose Bendito presented his initiative of building corporate volunteer programs at the United Nations. He emphasized the need for better vetting and controls to manage such large -scale programs: international cooperation needs to have deep planning to build strong inter-sectoral partnerships at the local level. Jose also pointed to the necessity, sometimes overlooked, to bridge the digital gap on the ground to really involve citizens to overcome poverty and exclusion.
Belén Perales Martín presented practical actions that IBM is executing in the field, mainly in education, involving volunteers, teachers, and family members to digitally include children and young people. Their digital platform, On Demand Volunteers, develops a strong relationship with social institutions and groups, works on capacity building and matchmaking for their corporate volunteers. IBM has mobilized 280 thousand volunteers, who have contributed 20 million service hours in 120 countries.
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“The unemployment rate for youth in Europe is as high as 40% in some countries; actually the UE has launched a specific program called Youth Guarantee to tackle this problem. Corporate volunteers have an important role to play in mentoring, skills building, supporting and modeling entrepreneurship and providing insights and opportunities in their workplaces.
Corporate volunteer projects to reverse Youth Unemployment are becoming more and more professional and are related to mentoring projects. Those projects are local and have a direct impact on the community where the companies are based.
It is important to highlight that companies cannot focus on youth as a unique group of people. Unemployment does not affect youth with a university degree in the same way as it does school drop-outs. Corporate Volunteer projects have thus to be adapted to the group they are focusing on.
Companies and NGOs still have to improve their collaboration in measuring the impact of their actions, to define how to select the volunteers and how to build transversal projects.”
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The speakers analyzed collaboration in corporate volunteering programs from two perspectives- alliances between companies and between companies and NGOs.
Telefónica and Caixa’s “Profuturo project” was discussed. It is a project that began a year ago with children from vulnerable environments in Angola. The project seeks to help educate children using new technologies. Fundación Pinardi and Melia Hotels’ “First Professional Experience” project was also featured. This project began in 2013 and is based on the social inclusion of young people through employment.
The discussion centered around the difficulties and essential elements of the collaborations. In the case of the alliance between companies and an NGO, the main barriers were a mutual lack of awareness of how to choose the right partner. The speakers said it was difficult to explain internally why they were collaborating with an organization so different from their own. NGOs in particular have difficulty understanding corporate motivations. The key to achieve a real alliance is to build mutual trust and take time to get to know each other well.
In the case of multi-company projects, the main difficulties were to combine the different working styles of each company: management, processes, cultures. These challenges were magnified by the start-up nature of the “Pro Futuro”project.
The keys to a successful partnership are: support from senior managers; creation of mixed teams with employees from each company; incorporating a “get-to-know- you period in the timeline; open communication, and a measurement and evaluation process.
The discussion closed with an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone but if you want to get far, go in a team”.
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Antoine Colonna d’ Istria, Pro Bono Lab Ana Higuera, Fundación Fernando Pombo Paul Phillips, VSO International Marion Kiewik, Randstad Moderator: Jeff Hoffman, Jeff Hoffman & Associates
The dynamic session discussion: Skills Based and Pro Bono Volunteering covered the evolution of this work and the relevant best practices of today. The discussion was divided into three comments. For many, the first awareness of Pro Bono was through the legal profession. Lawyers donated their time to organizations and individuals in need. This remains the case today as Ana mentioned but has become both broader and deeper. One element that Pombo incorporates into their program is the use of law school students. They work alongside the lawyers and the clients being served. It is a strong learning experience for the students and it enables lawyers to focus on the primary points as the students handle the research. The Pro Bono Lab was set up as a way of connecting organizations that need help with the expertise that they need. They have helped make many matches over the years. Randstad has worked with VSO for the last 13 years creating a deep skills-based program for their employees. The volunteer assignments are from three to nine months in length. Marion participated in her own program going to Bangladesh where she helped NGOs with human resource programs.
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Cross border volunteering refers to programs that send teams of skilled volunteers across national borders. It requires a significant corporate and employee investment of time and resources. In these programs, normally employees devote days or weeks to participate in an international mission to provide their knowledge to solve different social challenges in developing countries.
Companies undertake these programs for different reasons and justify them with Return on Investment (ROI) calculations. Companies with supply chains engaged in developing countries sometimes use employee volunteering in activities that make their operations more inclusive and sustainable. Others use corporate volunteers to strengthen social programs. This builds stronger partnerships between local partners and the company and also builds the trust of the employees in CSR activities. Most companies recognize that these programs build the capacity and competencies of their employees, and also provide a unique learning opportunity.
Management processes should be clear and streamlined if programs aim to become larger. Local partners should participate in key elements of the process such as selection of volunteers, preparation and training, definition of the work plan (based on real needs), etc. Top management support is also essential.
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The session on Volunteering to Help Refugees concluded that corporate volunteering actions are important not only for making change on the ground, in providing direct assistance for refugees and the NGOs seeking to support them, but also in contributing to maintaining, and even increasing, positive attitudes towards refugees in society as a whole.
The potential for corporate volunteers providing capacity building actions to NGOs working to meet the needs of refugees, as well as offering direct assistance to refugees, was highlighted, as was the need for more awareness about this potential amongst companies and NGOs alike. The group acknowledged that simply adapting existing programs in order to meet the needs of refugees is not always enough and that in order to have the necessary and desired impact it is likely that tailor made actions need to be developed. It was also determined that cross-cultural aspects should not be underestimated or neglected and that this was also the case for language differences.
The management of expectations, both on the part of the volunteers and the refugees, was stressed, as was the need to deliver any actions through existing NGOs working with refugees. In this way it can be more likely that any assistance offered from corporate volunteers can truly meet identified needs, be complementary to existing support and services already being provided by other stakeholders, and the impact be maximized.
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During this session three different models of corporate volunteer programs partnerships were presented: partnerships with a Volunteer Center; partnership with the community and public sectors; and partnerships with NGOs.
The highlights of the session included the need to focus on the reasons for the partnership, manage expectations, listen to each other carefully, look for win-wins, evaluate results together and plan for the long term together. It was also determined to be important to matching community needs with local business, educate NGOs on how to approach and work with businesses, and involve companies in joint social projects. Participants talked about the importance of engaging a range of stakeholders including bloggers, celebrities and the media to bring attention to the projects.
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The SDGs cannot be achieved without people’s engagement at all stages, and without new partnerships and ways of collaborating. The effective implementation of the United Nation’s Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda, no matter how ambitious, will remain limited without well-facilitated corporate action. Corporate volunteering is a highly effective and valuable mechanism to strategically foster collaboration, complement the capacity of government institutions to deliver essential services, and make a lasting impact.
The panel was a unique opportunity to listen first-hand from sector leaders such as Medtronic, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company and Cisco on how they are using the SDGs as a framework to report initiatives and above all guide their employee volunteering program and philanthropic giving.
At the end of the session, the facilitator and panelists talked about the challenges and potential solutions to measure impact and success, and the power of storytelling as a mechanism to build more awareness to the SDGs and also encourage participation of other employee and broadly other companies of the sector.
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About the Speakers
Andrea Debbane talked about the challenge of engaging employees in disaster response volunteering. They now involve employees in every stage of the disaster – from preparedness, to immediate response and rescue, to reconstruction. In designing a program, employee volunteers asked the IFRC about their challenges and then worked on solutions.
Olaug Bergseth of the IFRC talked about the importance of communication in a disaster explaining the situation and the need on an on-going basis.
Francisco Moro of Telefonica and Manuel Hernandez, an Ericsson Response Volunteer, talked about the important of proper, professional training for volunteers. Ericsson uses simulations in their training. Francisco talked about athe difficult and importance of volunteer selection.
About the Speakers
About the Speakers
Novartis has developed a very strategic volunteer program that clearly aligns with not only their CSR strategy but their overall company goals. It is a metric driven program with strong identification with the brand. “We apply our expertise in science and innovation to society’s biggest health challenges. Responsibility is a core part of our business strategy. Reimagining medicine starts with providing space for our associates to do more of what feeds their passion. For many, volunteering is one such activity.” Jeff Hoffman discussed the trend toward alignment with CSR and in particular focused on the transactional versus the transformational aspects of volunteering in both “helping hands” and skills based volunteering. Both have their place and what matters is ensuring that the recipient organization is receiving value for the work done as well as the employee and employer. As employees seek more purpose in their job, flexibility is key. Companies are realizing that their societal investments have a positive impact on business. Employee volunteering is an increasingly important bridge between the company and the employees’ needs relative to the communities.
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