Employee volunteering is essential to a company’s success because it builds employee camaraderie, creates a positive workplace, while also increasing or establishing loyalty. The following infographic illustrates the results of a study conducted by Deloitte. This inforgraphic was originally posted on on invup. com on March 20, 2012.
By Marcia Bullard
Recently I was at a business retreat where, coincidentally, one of the topics was about the Millennial generation and the impact Millennials will have on the American workplace.
Post graduation you are going to have jobs and some money to spend, so the demographers and marketers are starting to slice you and dice you.
I learned a few interesting things about you guys – such as: 40% of you sitting out there have at least one tattoo. And if you have tattoos, 70% of you claim we won’t be able to see them when you are dressed for work!
But there were a few more serious facts, too: You are the most diverse generation in U.S. history, politically tolerant and proficient with technology. The most meaningful research to me are the studies that show you graduates are off the charts in terms of your sense of social responsibility.
This strikes home with me because it matches up with some thoughts I’d like to share with you as you start out on your careers.
I’ve been thinking about careers a lot lately. I’ve worked for 36 years in the media business, and I just took an early retirement so I can turn my management skills to a second career in the nonprofit sector.
You have probably spent the past month applying for jobs, writing business plans and answering the question: “What are you going to do?”
I have spent the past month going through 36 years of stuff in my office – there is a lot of ‘stuff’ — and asking my own questions: What did I do? Did my career make a difference?
I never could have imagined the career that I’ve had. My mother thinks it’s kind of glamorous.
I grew up as one of 6 kids in a middle class family in Illinois.
I put myself through college, and got a job as a newspaper reporter.
I covered murders and floods and elections.
I did investigative stories that exposed wrongdoing.
I was asked to come to Washington to be a founding editor of the first-ever national newspaper in the U.S. And then I got to run a business, USA WEEKEND Magazine, which now reaches 50 million people every week.
Along the way, I got to do some pretty cool things.
I traveled all over the country.
I sat in the Oval Office and interviewed President Clinton.
I talked politics and charity with Paul Newman over lunch in his New York apartment.
I got kissed by Bon Jovi.
But the most meaningful event of my career started on Leap Day in 1992 when we ran some articles in the magazine asking our readers to spend their extra 24 hours doing something good for their neighbors.
Well – 70,000 people did volunteer projects on that one Leap Day.
I was stunned.
We published many of their stories. Then we heard from hundreds more readers, who asked us keep doing this.
We were smart enough to listen to our customers. And now, 18 years later, Make A Difference Day is the nation’s largest day of volunteering.
More than 3 million people turn out every October now to volunteer.
That experience changed me, and it changed our magazine.
Last month we published our annual Make A Difference Awards issue.
Out of the blue, I got an e-mail, and here is what it says:
“I am 17, a cancer survivor and the co-founder of a nonprofit foundation. I was not supposed to be these things . . . but I am. I was diagnosed with a rare cancer when I was 6. I don’t remember much about the treatment but I remember being scared, I remember the isolation. I knew when I survived that I could not forget the kids that were still in treatment, and I learned about [your] wonderful day of service called Make A Difference Day. I wondered if a little kid like me could really make any kind of difference to anyone, and I learned quickly that I could. I touched the lives of hundreds of hospitalized kids that first year with my service project.”
Nick gave out goody bags in a children’s cancer ward that year – and we wrote about him in the magazine.
“The [Make A Difference Day] Award changed me. It showed me that . . . other people thought what I was doing was important. [It is] the reason I started [my foundation]. I am thankful every day for being here to make a difference.”
Well, if I could keep just one thing from my 36-year career, I would keep that letter.
What I learned from that experience is this:
In every job and in every business, we can find ways to connect in positive ways with the communities we serve, and to make a difference. In the best cases, doing good can even help drive the business.
I admire your generation because you are creating this kind of change in our society right now.
You already have an ethic of community service.
If the demographers and marketers are right that you are the most socially responsible generation yet – and I sure hope they are – I urge you to carry that ethic with you and use it to change American business for the better.
As you start working – whether you are an employee or running your own business – help your workplaces to be good citizens to the community.
More and more companies today are creating offices of Corporate Social Responsibility, forming partnerships with nonprofits, and doing community outreach.
You can be a leader for your company in this area, whether it’s a big company or a small one.
I’ll offer one last piece of advice that will be good for your career, as well as good for your soul.
No matter what kind of job you have, find a nonprofit organization that you like, and volunteer to serve on its board.
You will get all kinds of benefits from this.
You will learn about another business with a different set of problems and different customers, you will meet other business leaders serving on that board, and you will learn a lot from them.
That will make you better at what you do in your day job.
It is also a way that you – as a business expert — can give back.
The pressures on nonprofits are increasingly great.
They need people like you, people with financial skills, technology skills, marketing skills – and social values.
You are starting out on a great journey.
I hope that when you look back – say, in about 36 years or so – that you will be able to say:
Good luck!
Inspired? “Like” !
Join Marcia Bullard at the National Conference on Volunteering & Service. She’ll be moderating the Social Media for Social Good Forum at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 29th!
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riginally written by Michelle Nunn, CEO of Points of Light Institute, as an op-ed for the Atlanta Journal Constitution and republished here with their permission.
Most of the last year’s business headlines have featured financial bailouts, ethical lapses, Ponzi schemes, executive bonuses and a general erosion of confidence in corporate America.
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Yet at the same time, corporations have shown extraordinary innovation in how they are leveraging their unique assets to generate positive change in communities.
Increasingly, corporations are seeing not only the philanthropic value of giving back, but also the business value of integrating their community investment into their business practices.
A new generation of employees is demanding that their workplaces include meaningful programs that allow them to contribute their skills and passions to nonprofits.
Businesses are competing to attract these talented newcomers to the work force by offering employees meaningful ways to use their skills and talents for social good —at the beginning, middle and end of their careers.
Last year, HandsOn New Orleans and PricewaterhouseCoopers brought 150 college students, partners and high-performing staff to volunteer, side by side, in rebuilding projects in New Orleans. The PwC offered this to high prospect recruits as both an incentive and a way to orient potential new employees to their organizational culture. Through the project work, the PwC staff learned a lot about how these students might succeed as employees, and the recruits learned about the company, its values and the transformative experience of service.
Hewlett-Packard, through a pilot program by Civic Ventures, is exploring how to create a scalable process to transition experienced employees into nonprofits that could use their expertise and enthusiasm.
In this program, retired or soon-to-be retired corporate employees are recruited to do “social purpose internships” with top-notch nonprofits in need of marketing, financial, management, technical and other skills.
Hewlett-Packard finds that the internships create greater retiree participation in the company’s philanthropic causes and community programs.
In turn, the healthier the community becomes, the healthier the company will be.
We also know that consumers are more likely to support businesses that they believe are socially responsible. And corporations are increasingly invested in tackling such community and national challenges as the high school dropout rate and environmental degradation.
They know that these issues, if unresolved, will affect their own capacity and success over time. Corporations are going beyond financial contributions and are using their unique and core assets to make a difference.
We are now seeing corporations develop new initiatives that involve their customers in volunteer and philanthropic mobilization that can create new scale and impact.
On Jan. 1, Disney and HandsOn Network launched “Give A Day. Get A Day.” The premise was simple: An individual completing an eligible volunteer project received free, one-day admission to a Disney theme park in Florida or California. HandsOn Network, the largest volunteer network in the U.S., provided the opportunities and the verification of participation.
There was no precedent for this partnership, and nobody had any idea what the response would be.
Within less than 12 weeks, 1 million people had completed or committed to a service project. Many of the program’s volunteers were serving for the first time. They flooded nonprofits like HandsOn Jacksonville, which engaged twice the number of volunteers in the first three months of the year than in the entire previous year.
Another example of a corporation using its unique assets to extend its philanthropic and customer reach was the Starbucks’ “I’m In” campaign, which offered customers a free, tall, brewed coffee drink if they pledged at least five hours of volunteer time. It raised 1.2 million committed hours in less than five days.
EBay has partnered with Points of Light’s MissionFish to enable its customers to contribute a part or all of their purchase or sale to charities. Since 2003, this effort has generated $167 million for 22,000 nonprofits.
The level of trust in corporate America is at an all-time low. According to a 2009 poll by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, a majority of Americans gives corporate America a D or F for honesty and ethical conduct.
Yet businesses play a vital role, and, as these few examples demonstrate, they can play an increasingly important role in community problem solving.
Powerful change is possible when corporate America engages its skills, creative thinking and customer relationships, and finds nonprofit partners with shared goals and synergy.
At a time of economic dislocation and declining trust in many of our institutions, there are hopeful signs of creative new alignments, higher yield and possibilities for impact.
Let’s hope that the headlines increasingly tell us the story of how businesses are realigning to a new set of expectations from their customers, employees, and creating a double bottom line of business and social good.
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