2012 VolunteerMatch Corporate Volunteer Awards: A Look at Finalist UnitedHealth Group

On May 17, 2012, winners of the 2012 VolunteerMatch Corporate Volunteer Awards will be announced at our annual Volunteer Match Client Summit in San Francisco, CA.

In this series of posts, we’ll introduce you to the facts and folks behind the ten most effective employee volunteer programs in our family of corporate clients compared against our 2011 benchmarks.

VolunteerMatch congratulates UnitedHealth Group for its nomination for Employee Volunteer Program of the Year (Large Businesses).

UnitedHealth Group’s employee volunteer program, United Volunteers, launched in 2006. In 2011, its employee participation rate is 79 percent, up from 77 percent in the previous year. In addition, employees recorded over 381,000 volunteer hours in 2011, exceeding the goal of 250,000 by 53 percent and nearly doubling the amount of time spent in the previous year giving back through volunteerism.

UnitedHealth’s nonprofit partners include AARP Foundation, Alzheimer’s Association, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Red Cross, Evercare Hospice & Palliative Care, Feeding America, KaBOOM!, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Project Sunshine, Sesame Workshop, YMCA, and Youth Service America.

United Volunteers 2011 highlights include:

• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Business Civic Leadership Center awarded UnitedHealth Group with a prestigious 2011 Corporate Citizenship Award, in the category of Best Business Neighbor.
• UnitedHealth implemented several innovations in 2011, including, leveraging a “portfolio” approach to align volunteering with its strategic direction, piloting a successful “microvolunteering” web platform, and participating in a collaboration to launch and test the latest interactive “impact map” technology for showcasing its global volunteerism and giving.
• Particularly notable in 2011 was our “Do Good. Live Well.” program, which promotes UnitedHealth’s direct link between volunteerism, better personal health and well-being in the communities it serves. In 2011, over 2,000 UnitedHealth Group employees contributed 14,000 volunteer hours in support of major events around the country in which gardens and playgrounds were built, food and emergency supplies were donated, senior centers were beautified and more. In two years since it launched, “Do Good. Live Well.” has coordinated 30 major projects in 17 cities and 12 states, recruiting employees enterprise-wide.

We commend UnitedHealth Group for its service in its community and for facilitating an excellent volunteer program!

Stay tuned for more finalist profiles in the coming weeks, and announcement of the winners on May 17, 2012 during the 2012 VolunteerMatch Client Summit.