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For the last four years Center member CA, Inc. has sponsored CA Together in Action (CTA), a month-long program to support non-profit organizations around the world. Launched in 2006 as a two-week event, the program expanded to a month to allow as many employees as possible to participate. 
Report shows how delivery can match expectations for employee volunteering
By Susan Thomas
Business leaders have set their corporate citizenship hopes on employee volunteering as a result of the economic downturn. Nonprofits desperately need more skills-based volunteers. Employees seek more employer-sponsored volunteering. Everybody, it seems, wants more and more effective employee volunteering. How can you deliver on these high expectations?
A new Boston College Center report sponsored by Bank of America answers the call for evidence-based guidance on generating high-impact employee volunteering. “Mapping Success in Employee Volunteering: The Drivers of Effectiveness for Employee Volunteering and Giving Programs and Fortune 500 Performance” presents two benchmarks to guide community involvement professionals on achieving high impact through employee volunteering:
- An absolute benchmark corresponding to the “ideal” program: The Drivers of Effectiveness for Employee Volunteering and Giving Programs are composed of the six practices that, according to research, generate community and company impact.
- A relative benchmark corresponding to peer programs: A survey of more than 200 Fortune 500 companies reports collective compliance with the drivers and identifies best practices from high-performing companies such as Aetna, Deloitte, Disney, Eli Lilly, IBM, Kraft, Lockheed Martin, Marriott, McKesson, Symantec, The Estée Lauder Companies and many others.
The report, authored by Center faculty member Bea Boccalandro, finds that the potential of employee volunteers to transform our social and corporate sectors remains largely untapped. Fortune 500 respondent compliance on the drivers, for example, is only 26 percent. The typical employee volunteer program, then, appears to be only a quarter as effective as it could be.
However, said Boccalandro, she is inspired by the constructive response to what could have been taken as sobering news in an already sobering era. “Community involvement managers are so professional that they welcomed the findings – even the parts that did not reflect positively on them.”
According to Boccalandro, as soon as the report became public at the Boston College Center’s conference in San Francisco last March, “My email and voicemail filled with messages from companies around the world on what the drivers taught them about their employee volunteer programs, and how they were putting the new knowledge to use.”
One community involvement manager proudly showed Boccalandro the dozens of sticky notes fanning out of her report, saying “oranges are ‘aha’s,’ greens are next steps, and yellow are food for thought.”
“With responses like this,” says Boccalandro, “the future of employee volunteering indeed looks bright.”
Thanks to the generosity of Bank of America, “Mapping Success in Employee Volunteering” is free to all.
» Download Mapping Success in Employee Volunteering (pdf; free registration and/or login required)
