Many employers instituted paid volunteering time for employees before COVID. Some invited workers to volunteer during business hours (effectively trading some productivity for community impact) while others paid stipends for volunteering after work. Models of volunteering grew to depend on clusters of volunteers from individual companies. Habitat for Humanity, for example, recruits teams from one employer at a time for its “builds” – in most places, though not here.
Post-COVID, employers report that activity in these programs has waned. Nationally, participation in corporate volunteerism declined from 31 percent before the pandemic to 24 percent now, primarily because of the addition of hybrid and remote work; but even in building based employment, like a bank, volunteerism has decreased.
What happens when work becomes hybrid or remote? Workers stop talking to each other in the halls about their volunteering, so it becomes far less visible. Perhaps the HR departments never institute a tracking system, or maybe these systems stopped being emphasized or celebrated. When fewer employees volunteer, they no longer send “clusters” to the sites where it is needed, and volunteer coordinators see individuals rather than businesses. The volunteering dimension becomes invisible; and with no payoff in internal reputation (for workers) or external reputation (for the employer), the decline accelerates.
A community volunteering platform like GivePulse can reverse that trend. Each business gets its own group on the platform, where employees and visitors can easily browse profiles and see who is volunteering how much and where, gaging individual and business impact. This holds true for on-site and remote work, as long as remote workers reside in the community. Volunteer coordinators can look at employer groups on the platform and see who has active volunteers, and invite clusters as well as individuals where there is a large need. Employees can celebrate active volunteering at work gatherings. Business associations and reporters can visit the platforms to see who should be celebrated.
It is possible that Resilient Greenfield’s introduction of a volunteer platform will have the greatest impact not from individual volunteers referring their friends (though we hope for that), but from the revival of employer-sponsored volunteering. This impact will be felt at the volunteer agencies, but also within each employer, where worker solidarity over community engagement can build.