Your company offers 4 paid volunteer days per year. One day per quarter where your employees can get out in the community to explore their interests and passions while giving back to those in need.
After one full year of offering paid volunteer days, you have found that only 23% of your employees are partaking in these volunteer opportunities. Although these employees have improved their well-being and cultivated a sense of belonging from volunteering, you want to maximize volunteer participation across your organization so more employees can reap these benefits.
With research showing that 80% of employees believe group volunteering strengthens their relationships with colleagues, the idea of company-wide volunteering comes to mind. A day where your organization decides on a volunteer activity to collectively participate in (and excel at).
Organizing a company-volunteer day isn’t an onerous task. Rather, a few simple logistics will need to be ironed out beforehand to ensure widespread participation and maximum success. Let’s explore what a company volunteer day looks like:
1) Choose a volunteer activity and cause
Although not mandatory, running a volunteer day in tandem with a local nonprofit or charity shows your unwavering support. Although there might be hundreds of local causes, choose a nonprofit or charity that is “topically” related to your volunteer activity.
For example, if you decide to gather your employees to pick up trash alongside a beach as your volunteer activity, host the volunteer day on behalf of a cause in the environmental space. Alongside choosing a morning to spread out your employees and clean up the litter, a donation box can be present at the volunteer day, with all proceeds going back to that environmental-based cause.
2) Select a time and location
Choose a specific day, time frame, and location for your company volunteer day. Sticking to the example above, a trash pickup along a trail would be best to complete for a few hours in the morning. This way, employees who have yet to participate in a volunteer day won’t be overwhelmed by the amount of time allotted.
3) Post the volunteer day internally
Once the logistics are finalized, posting all of this information on an internal platform not only helps to inform employees of upcoming activities, but it can be used to track employee signups for your volunteer day.
Kambeo’s internal volunteer platform enables organizations to create a dedicated page to host their volunteer day and track attendance. As pictured below, the date, time, and location of the volunteer day are effectively communicated. In addition, separate tabs can be created for each volunteer position. These tabs make it easy to divide up volunteer duties and then have employees apply for a volunteer position based on their specific interests. Regardless of which volunteer position an employee applies to, total attendance for the volunteer day will be tracked on the backend of the platform.
4) Keep employees notified
Send 1-2 email reminders leading up to the volunteer day to get your registered employees excited while giving those employees who haven’t yet signed up some extra encouragement and motivation to do so.
In the body of the email, include the details of the volunteer day and educate employees on a few of the benefits that can be derived from volunteering, such as:
- Personal growth: A volunteer day provides employees with the opportunity to further develop certain hard skills, such as time management, organization, and communication.
- Improved mental and physical health: When employees take a day away from the repetition that comes with their regular work tasks, and instead give their time to others, they are rewarded with improved physical health and a decrease in depression.
- Impact on others: On the receiving end of a volunteer day are the people, animals, or places in need that are strengthened due to your organization’s volunteer efforts. Whether animals are walked at a humane society, litter is picked up in communal spaces, or isolated seniors are provided care—these volunteer efforts are all essential.
5) Track volunteer impact
Without tracking your volunteer impact quantitively, your organization won’t be able to see the results and patterns in your volunteer efforts—rendering these efforts ineffective. Below are a few volunteer metrics any company can track using Kambeo’s social impact platform:
- Number of volunteers- track how many employees have volunteered on behalf of your organization.
- Volunteer hours- monitor how many volunteer hours your employees have contributed month-over-month.
- Additionally, track ‘total volunteer hours’, which represents the cumulative volunteer hours your employees have contributed. *Once an employee logs their volunteer hours on the platform, this will be added to ‘total volunteer hours’.
- Additionally, track ‘total volunteer hours’, which represents the cumulative volunteer hours your employees have contributed. *Once an employee logs their volunteer hours on the platform, this will be added to ‘total volunteer hours’.
- Number of causes supported- track the number of charities or nonprofits supported through your company’s volunteer efforts.
6) Share impact & reward participation
After tracking how many employees attended the volunteer day, celebrate these accomplishments! Share videos and photos from the volunteer day with the rest of your organization or offer each participant a gift card to your local coffee shop as a small token of appreciation.
When using a social impact platform, such as Kambeo, organizations can upload a photo (or series of photos) onto a live activity feed. Once the respective photo(s) are posted, users of Kambeo including internal staff, external employees, and community changemakers that follow your page will be able to see all the good your team is accomplishing.
Turn your next company-wide event into a company volunteer day. Choose a volunteer activity and location, gather your employees, and set out to help change the world together. To help host your next volunteer day and track your organization’s impact, Kambeo’s volunteer platform provides assistance every step of the way.
