Thursday 14 June 2012

The Volunteer Dating Game


Hi everyone, Jeff Rutt here. It takes a lot to make a nonprofit successful. It often starts with having the right mission and vision as well as a clear plan for how you will accomplish your goals.  Once you have a set plan in mind, it takes a lot of resources to make your goals a reality. Time, money, and talented people who are passionate about your cause are essential components to a well run nonprofit. The article below featured in Sustainable Business Forum discusses how valuable committed passionate volunteers can be to non profits. Specifically, the article talks about Gap Inc and their new program which encourages employees to find causes where they can best use their skills and passions to make a difference. Through their volunteer program, Gap Inc is leading the way in corporate social responsibility by being a model for smart volunteering. At HOPE we have seen firsthand the benefits that come from corporate social responsibility that makes sense, through our Homes for Hope program. Through Homes for Hope we have had the privilege of partnering with talented builders from around the country to make a difference in peoples lives around the world.  Homes for Hope takes the skills and passions of home builders and applies them in practical ways to further HOPE’s mission. If you’re not familiar with our Homes for Hope program, check it out by visiting our website http://www.homes4hope.org/ and consider ways that you can use your skills and passion to help a cause near you!

Many blessings, Jeff Rutt

The Volunteer Dating Game
In the world of those who volunteer to make a better world, some dream of settling down.  But not you.  Nosiree. You enjoy the variety of volunteering with many different organizations and causes.  Last month it was a cancer nonprofit, today it’s a dog rescue. You heard that a literacy organization is having an awesome fundraiser next month so that’s the next cause on tap, and maybe after that you’ll try on a sustainability charity for size - recycling could be cool.
Sure, your nonprofit relationships don’t seem to be progressing, but that’s fine. Volunteering with a wide range of causes is fun and keeps things interesting.
I mean, yeah, it would be nice to get a little deep sometimes, focus on one charity that gets to know the real you, y’know?  Where you could go beyond the basics, contribute your full self, maybe even graduate to something more long-term.  Make a difference, grow a little, find that one nonprofit that you’ll keep coming home to.
But for whatever reason, you haven’t taken the plunge, so volunteer mingling will have to suffice.
A Healthier Relationship
It doesn’t have to be this way.  Imagine a world where the energy, passion and skills of volunteers aligned perfectly with the needs and capacity of nonprofits. Where expectations were calibrated and trust was built over time.
That’s the world that Gap Inc. is working to create with its global teams of employee volunteers. Reflecting feedback from the community that some volunteer projects were fun for the volunteers, but not as valuable to the nonprofits as they could have been, Gap Inc. realized that if it was going to facilitate meaningful relationships between its employees and causes, it needed to get everyone “dating” with an eye towards long-term relationships between employee teams and nonprofit organizations. Gap Inc. thinks of this as the “date, then get married” approach to volunteering.
“We started our volunteer program around a more traditional skills-based framework,” noted Gail Gershon, Gap’s Executive Director of Community Leadership. “We’d ask our nonprofit partners what they needed and then try to match them with employee volunteers who had relevant skills. But this approach wasn’t sustainable.  What we heard from nonprofits and employees was that the more effective way to move toward skills-based volunteering would be for teams to develop long-term partnerships with nonprofits, to get to know their needs and help the nonprofit better understand the skills that the team of employees represented. Then, the skills could be applied to the volunteering more naturally and build over time, and the volunteers could work to fulfill a variety of needs faced by their nonprofit partner.” 
Further, Gail added, Gap Inc. wants to make sure that volunteer activity is valuable to the nonprofit, not just a pleasant diversion for the volunteer. “Sometimes volunteering is designed to be the best possible experience for the volunteer but not what is most critical to the nonprofit.”
Thus was shaped a worldview that smartly applies dating philosophies to volunteer programs. 
Toward this end, Gap Inc. encourages every team (which could be a store or an office location) to elect a person who will be their Community Leader.  That one person is then charged with finding an appropriate nonprofit partner that the entire team will support, ideally over an extended period of time so that the quality of the volunteering is most meaningful for both the volunteer and nonprofit.  And just like your mama told you, Gap Inc. teams are discouraged from marrying after their first date.  Instead, they’re encouraged to ask themselves: is this a fit? When should we go steady? When should we move in together? How can we really get to know each other before making that final commitment?
“The nonprofit needs to invest in the volunteers and train them. That requires precious time and resources from the nonprofit’s staff.  So if the nonprofit doesn’t know if you’re coming back, why should they waste their time?” said Gail. “We encourage our teams to get to a place where there’s mutual trust.”  When the trust and fit is there, that’s when employees can effectively leverage their skills, which can potentially make a longer term impact over time.
Wave of CSR's Future
Gap Inc. has plenty of company in their belief that skills-based volunteering is the wave of the corporate social responsibility future.  That’s why they’re one of more than 100 pledge companies for A Billion + Change, a national campaign to make skills-based volunteering the new normal in every workplace, which has already elicited a promise of more than $1.7 billion and at least 11.5 million hours of time and talent dedicated to building nonprofit capacity. Gap Inc. shared their wisdom about encouraging skills-based volunteering at this week’s Corporate Philanthropy Summit, a forum for best practices around corporate giving which A Billion + Change has helped organize.
For energized corporate volunteers and future changemakers, finding a nonprofit that best meets your passion is an outcome that translates into satisfaction and impact.  Who knows – Gap Inc. may even have some advice on the right wedding togs to wear when you and your nonprofit are ready to make things official.

Thanks again for reading, stay tuned for more articles and comments-Jeff Rutt

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