"Stop the Funding: Social Sector is Fully Resourced." Until we see this headline across our newsfeeds, the corporate sector must continue to innovate on ways to build nonprofit capacity. Pro bono and skilled volunteering can connect the dots between the shortage of resources and the wealth of skills in the private sector. With 76% of nonprofits reporting an increase in demand for their services and over 50% unable to meet the demand, skilled volunteering programs offer a tremendous value to an organization’s infrastructure allowing for increased capacity and expanded programming. Taproot Foundation led a panel discussion with leading corporate
and nonprofit partners who shared real-life examples of succeeding at, stumbling with, and scaling skilled volunteer and pro bono programs! Attendees heard from experts and
walked away with tools supporting an increased engagement in pro bono and skilled volunteering.
3. #VMSummit16
Mark Fry
VP, Operations and
Customer Engagement
Nepris, Inc.
3
Elizabeth Schwan-Rosenwald
Chief External Relations Officer
Taproot Foundation
Heidi Williams,
Program Manager, Silver Lining and
Engagement
Appirio
Tim O'Brien
Executive Director
Open Books
6. #VMSummit16
LEVERAGE FOR IMPACT
PAGE 6
BOARD
SERVICE
PRO BONO
SERVICE
SKILLED
VOLUNTEERING
“HANDS-ON”
VOLUNTEERING
BOARD PLACEMENT
MARKETING
HR ASSISTANCE,
STRATEGIC
PLANNING
TUTORING,
LITERACY
PROGRAM
SOUP
KITCHEN
TYPE OF VOLUNTEERISM
SUSTAINABILITYOFIMPACTON
ORGANIZATION
NUMBEROFEMPLOYEES
ENGAGED
Low
High
High
Low
#VMSummit16
7. #VMSummit16
WHAT IS PRO BONO?
Pro bono is donated professional services
benefitting organizations working to improve
society.
Pro bono is short for pro bono publico, which
translates from Latin to mean "for the public
good."
8. #VMSummit16
The Taproot
Foundation drives
social change by
leading, mobilizing,
and engaging
professionals in pro
bono service.
ABOUT THE TAPROOT FOUNDATION
► Working in the US and abroad
from 5 offices: San Francisco Bay
Area, Los Angeles, Chicago, New
York, and Washington DC
► 13,700+ professionals delivering
1.4 million hours of pro bono
consulting valued at over $150
million since 2001
► Consulted to 60+ Fortune 500
and other companies to build and
advance employee pro bono
programs
#VMSummit16
9. #VMSummit16
WHAT WE DO
PAGE 9
PROGRAMS
CORPORATE
ADVISORY SERVICES
PRO BONO
LEADERSHIP
Taproot pairs nonprofits
with skilled volunteers
in areas like marketing,
strategy, HR, and IT.
Taproot advises and
supports companies in
developing high-impact
pro bono programs for
employees.
Taproot drives social
change with events and
research, in the US and
through a global
provider network.
#VMSummit16
10. #VMSummit16
THE NUMBERS
of nonprofits
want more
PRO BONO
5%
of
professionals
are
interested in
joining a
board if pro
bono and
in-kind were
their
expected
contribution
91
%
$150/h
r
Conservative average
value of pro bono
services:
3+
YEARS
.
of recent MBA grads would be willing to
forgo up to of their expected income to
work at a company with a better reputation for
CSR and engagement
92%
According to CECP’s annual survey, pro
bono and board service have been the
fastest growing CSR programs for
of the
millennial workforce
would prefer to work at
a company that
provides opportunities
to apply their skills to
benefit nonprofit
organizations
66%
97%
14%
Skills-based
volunteers are
more likely to have
a higher level of
employee morale
than non-volunteers
38%
32 million
LINKEDIN
members
indicated interest
in skilled
volunteering
13. #VMSummit16
Where We
Use
Volunteers
BOOK DONATIONS
We collect donated
books and identify
the best way to use
each one.
BOOK GRANTS
We give hand-picked books
to students, educators, and
nonprofit partners.
EACH YEAR, WE GIVE AWAY
125,000 BOOKS.
EARNED INCOME
We sell books in our
two award-winning
stores and online to
help fund our work
and programs.
BOOK SALES COVER
60% OF
OUR BUDGET.
PROGRAMS
We provide exciting, engaging,
and enriching literacy
programs to
K-12 students citywide.
EACH YEAR, WE WORK WITH
5,000 STUDENTS.
Donations
Generous
support from
literacy lovers
make it all
possible.
Volunteers
500+
Volunteers
help with
everything
www.open-books.org
#VMSummit16
15. #VMSummit16
How I Got
Moved Up the
Pyramid
www.open-books.org
Start small
and grow
relationship
Get to
know your
volunteer
Balance
opportunities with
“volun-telling”
Line up
skills and
desires
with needs
Rewards
don’t
need to
be huge
Don’t be
afraid to
ask
24. #VMSummit16
Kids who drop out do so
because they don’t see the
relevance of school.
- Gates Foundation Study, 2013
High tech jobs in the US will be
filled by US workers.
47%
Only 33%
THE PROBLEM
Everyone loves a checklist. Today this will be your checklist for what you should be able to walk away knowing how to do, the questions we know most of you have had to think about at one point or another when considering these kinds of programs.
BREE TO DISCUSS UP TO GENERAL SKILLS
JENNIFER BOARD SERVICE & PRO BONO PROFESSIONAL EXPERTISE
We’ve found the easiest way to think of this is that “skills-based volunteering” is an entire category of volunteering activities, covering a few ways that different types of a volunteer's skills can be used to help an organization or the community directly, ranging from tapping some general skills needed to help an organization directly deliver specific types of community programs, to providing professional expertise and professional services to support the organization itself.
The main distinction is that pro bono service is one very specific type of skills-based volunteering that focuses on using a volunteer’s core professional expertise.
o help make it easier to understand how everything fits together, the Taproot Foundation created this helpful diagram showing the full spectrum of common corporate community engagement activities. They’ve grouped them by the common types of nonprofits needs that need to be addressed and then the different ways companies help support them.
At the top is a very simplified categorization of nonprofits’ needs:
‘Making budget’ – having the funding they need to run the organization’s programs
“Extra hands” to deliver services and programs directly to the community
And “infrastructure and leadership” – having those critical components in place that are the backbone of any healthy institution
Then beneath that are the common buckets of support that companies tend to provide to address these needs:
Providing financial support
Providing volunteers to help actually deliver the nonprofits’ programs/services directly to the community –through traditional hands-on volunteering
And then we get into the broader category of types of skills-based volunteering activities, which covers a few ways that different types of a volunteer's skills can be used to help an organization, ranging from:
Tapping some general skills needed to help an organization directly deliver specific types of community programs. These can be skills a volunteer brings to the table or sometimes it’s knowledge that the nonprofit will provide. A very common example is Junior Achievement.
Providing employee board members to support the leadership of the organization
And providing professional expertise and professional services to support the organization itself. Despite popular belief, pro bono is definitely not just for lawyers! Nonprofits have need for just as many types of professional expertise as for-program companies do. From IT support to marketing to HR services - it’s not all about fundraising.
As we go through this presentation, Start thinking about which of these feel most familiar to you based on your company’s existing programs and your goals. Which of these do you already do? In which of these categories to you want to expand your offerings?
<<This slide and the one after should not be used in the same presentation because they explain the same concept. This slide is helpful when explaining how pro bono service leverages volunteers for more impact.>>
So in thinking about volunteerism, where does pro bono fit it?
Starting here at the base of the triangle…
The most traditional well known volunteering is what we call “hands on” or Extra Hands – that’s usually things like distributing food, cleaning up a park, or painting a school. These are incredible resources for nonprofits, however they need a lot of people-power to keep their operations humming and in general, have a very low sustainability of impact on the organization.
Moving to the next level, we come to Skilled Volunteering which uses skills to help with tutoring, judging a science fair, or supporting a literacy program. These skills, however, may not be the skills that professionals use in your every day work.
Then comes Pro Bono Service. This is when skilled volunteers or pro bono consultants complete projects that they might do in their day job for organizations that are tackling important social issues. Pro bono projects often produce deliverables or processes that a social change organization can use for years to come resulting in a very high sustainability of impact on the organization.
For example, website improvements, improving a database system or building a HR performance management system.
On the top here, is Board Service. While board service may not tap into skills someone uses in their day job, it does allow volunteers to use not just their skills, but also their networks and relationships to engage the community. The most successful boards engage a board with diverse skill sets to strengthen the organizations infrastructure.
Everyone loves a checklist. Today this will be your checklist for what you should be able to walk away knowing how to do, the questions we know most of you have had to think about at one point or another when considering these kinds of programs.
Jenn
Most organizations tackling social problems don’t have access to the resources that are available to most companies like marketing, strategy, HR, and IT….Taproot connects these organizations to skilled volunteers who provide their expertise pro bono.
Our mission is to drive social change by leading, mobilizing and engaging professional in pro bono service. To date, we’ve worked with more than 13,700 professionals across the country to delvier 1.4 million hours of pro bono consulting which is values at more than $150 million in pro bono consulting to the nonprofit community.
<<“What we do” slide for presentation slides. There’s less text, though the full language is written below>>
PROGRAMS: Taproot pairs nonprofits with skilled volunteers in areas like marketing, strategy, HR, and IT. From one-on-one consultations to team-based long-term projects, we offer in-person and virtual engagements.
CORPORATE ADVISORY SERVICES: Taproot advises and supports companies in developing customized, high-impact pro bono programs for their employees and communities.
PRO BONO LEADERSHIP: Taproot drives social change by enabling pro bono service in the US and through a global provider network. Taproot convenes leaders at signature events and facilitates field-building research.
JENN
Now let’s take a look at some of the compelling numbers for why a varied skills based volunteering program is so important
Now more than ever, nonprofit organizations are tasked with doing a lot with very little. One of the main ways this is most apparent is in the very limited investments organizations are able to make in their infrastructure and areas considered ‘overhead’, largely due to ceilings imposed by funders.
On average, nonprofits report being able to spend less than half of the amount that traditional service companies spend on building and maintaining a healthy infrastructure and operations. What might your company be like if you suddenly lost 50% of your ‘overhead’?
Skilled volunteering is critical for companies, too, providing major boosts to employee morale, development and retention that rival any other employee engagement activities.
Without access to these same resources, nonprofits often are not able to tap the needed professional services or build advanced internal systems – let alone secure enough staff bandwidth. And that’s where skilled volunteers can really help to fill those gaps. In fact, the value of skilled volunteer support has been reported to be up to 500% greater than traditional volunteer activities.
The nonprofit demand is certainly there - 92% of nonprofits reporting not having enough access to the pro bono resources they need and – so now it’s critical to grow the number of programs and ways that nonprofits can access these skilled volunteers.
And we know your employees want this
66% of the millennial workforce would prefer to work at a company that provides opportunities to apply their skills to benefit the community
97% of recent MBA grads would be willing to forgo up to 14% of their expected income to work a company with a better reputation for CSR and engagemtn
And skills based volunteers are 38% more likely to have a higher level of employee morale.
“MBA Graduates Want to Work for Caring and Ethical Employers”, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2004.
HP study
Taproot study
(biz value flashcards)
CECP giving in numbers
Online platform that helps connect industry and education to bring curriculum relevance and career exposure to students.