Drive social change with what you do best and donate your time and professional skills to nonprofits in need of your expertise. Learn how at Taproot Foundation's free Pro Bono Week webinar.
If you’ve been following our content this year, you’ve likely heard us mention a concept called “The Knitting Factor,” which brings together three key conditions that enable skills-based engagements between the private and nonprofit sectors to create strengthened, sustainable solutions that don’t come undone when partners part ways. There are three key characteristics that make up The Knitting Factor, but for skills-based volunteering to become truly transformative, organizations need to find the “sticky” relationships that enable companies and nonprofits to drive progress on both mission and business-related goals.
At Common Impact, we’ve seen first-hand how leveraging skills-based volunteering to create intentional and thoughtful development opportunities for nonprofit staff can solve this challenge. Skilled volunteerism can be a great way to invest in talent, without having to seek the funding for it.
BOSTON, MA September 13, 2018 — Common Impact, a nonprofit recognized as a national leader in skills-based volunteerism, Social Venture Partners Boston, an organization focused on engaged philanthropy, and Impact 2030, a collaborative initiative that seeks to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through corporate volunteerism are launching a new model for citywide impact through a day of skilled service.
From massive natural disasters to complex and escalating conflicts, communities around the world experienced unprecedented incidences of crises requiring emergency response last year. The global cost for natural disasters in 2017 alone totaled $330 billion. In the wake of disasters, many companies mobilize to offer volunteers for on-the-ground rapid response activities and to provide financial assistance, often spending significant portions of their philanthropic budget on disaster relief. But, is there room for more to be done?
In June 2017, Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) reached out to Common Impact to engage the support of a skilled volunteer team in achieving an important but challenging organizational goal – one that many nonprofit organizations are similarly striving to attain. MEDA's mission is to strengthen low- and moderate-income Latino families by promoting economic equity and social justice through asset building and community development. To ensure their work would be truly impactful and align with core themes in racial justice, MEDA’s leadership aimed to create a workplace that was reflective of the community it served.
Around the world, employers are seeking highly-skilled workers to take on existing and emerging roles in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, also known as STEM. Workforce development and education, particularly as related to STEM, are two of the largest focus areas for corporate and foundation giving as well as two of the largest mission focuses for nonprofits, according to the CECP’s 2017 Giving in Numbers report. Yet, even given this great investment, gaps in STEM education still exist, leaving both employers and students without the critical thinking and analytical problem-solving skills sorely needed in our ever-changing global economy.
Common Impact defines skill sharing as a two-way talent exchange where both pro bono professionals and their nonprofit partners are learning from each other. In my experience sourcing and supporting skilled service projects for our corporate and nonprofit clients, it is when our partners recognize the knowledge and expertise that they each bring to the table and seek to proactively learn from one another that real long-term change takes place. The change we see is not just for the communities we support, but also for the volunteers and nonprofit leaders participating in these skills-based volunteer projects.
In this edition of the Advisory Services newsletter, we share examples of how pro bono can help communities around the globe prepare for natural disasters. We discuss how to engage even your busiest employees in pro bono service. And we look at a pro bono program model that began in the U.S. and has been replicated successfully abroad.
One of the most common concerns companies share when thinking about developing a pro bono program is that their employees are strapped for time. What they find, though, is that smart pro bono program design can go a long way to address this concern.
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