by Sylvia Lindman

Last year, four teams of employees from Twin Cities-based ADC painted four houses as part of Metro Paint-a-thon. The annual event is organized by the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches to help people who are elderly or disabled and can't do the work themselves. The goodwill was contagious. "One of our team leaders noticed that a woman was living there alone and her steps were broken, so he fixed the front steps and put a handrail on the back," says Laura Jaeger, community relations specialist at ADC Foundation. "We took a team picture with the homeowner, and she went in and did her hair and got dressed up for it. She was so excited."

ADC's story illustrates why companies value volunteerism. Community service is a triple win: helping people in the community while giving employees a chance to shine and benefiting the company in numerous ways.

	Rosemarie Kelly, community involvement manager for Cargill, says her company is constantly looking for ways to help leverage its grants to nonprofits by providing employee volunteer assistance. “We don’t want to just give you money, we also want to lend our talent,” she says.

According to the Points of Light Foundation, 52 percent of corporations responding to a recent national survey include a commitment to community service as part of their corporate mission statements. In Minnesota, one measure of the corporate community's interest in volunteerism is the Corporate Volunteerism Council - Twin Cities (CVC), which has 57 corporate members. Established in 1980, CVC is one of 200 such organizations nationwide that help companies find volunteer opportunities, provide training and encourage collaboration and networking. "We have large organizations and small," says Kris Kewitsch, current CVC president and volunteer program manager at U.S. Bancorp.

Helping Employees Find Their Passion

Companies in Minnesota are exploring a growing number of methods to support, encourage, coordinate and facilitate the volunteer efforts of their employees. Corporations with thousands of employees may staff an office of volunteerism, while smaller companies often rely on employee volunteers to rally their colleagues. Officially or unofficially, many businesses permit volunteering on company time, as long as an employee's paid work gets done.

Some companies sponsor their own volunteer activities, with paint-a-thons being a popular project. As a one-day activity, it's a manageable commitment for employee volunteers, with the satisfaction of a job well done at the end of the day. As a bonus, some employees bring family members to help out.

Other company-sponsored volunteer projects range from providing teams for Habitat for Humanity to mentoring students to food and clothing drives. Some projects take little of an employee's time while others require a substantial commitment. "We look for episodic and ongoing opportunities," Kewitsch says.

Companies also support volunteerism by helping link their employees to other volunteer opportunities in the community. For example, the company may evaluate requests from nonprofit organizations and post those that fit the company's mission on a bulletin board or in a broadcast e-mail. It's up to interested employees to make the arrangements.

Some companies direct employees to organizations such as the United Way or Volunteer Resource Center (VRC) to find opportunities that match their interests, available time and preferred location. General Mills recently added a link to VRC's Web site on its company Intranet. "We're here to help people identify volunteer activities, but we encourage them to seek out things that fit their own passions," says Bill Dittmore, associate director of community affairs and volunteerism at General Mills' Minneapolis headquarters.

Even companies with limited — or even nonexistent — staffing for volunteerism still find ways to maximize their employees' community service efforts. "We tap into national programs that have a volunteer component," says Jeanne Kavanaugh, manager of the Pentair Foundation, such as Habitat for Humanity International and the Senior Citizens Education and Research Council.

Another way companies support volunteerism is by making a financial contribution to a nonprofit organization as a "match" for an employee's volunteer time — a program commonly called "Dollars for Doers." Based on an employee's application for the funds, ADC Foundation will give $500 to any qualified 501(c)(3) organization at which an employee has volunteered 40 or more hours during a year.

Some companies, including Cargill and American Express, have even more ambitious programs. The Cargill Cares Volunteer Award program is a way to recognize an employee or retiree who volunteers for organizations that fall outside Cargill's giving guidelines. Employees or retirees may nominate their peers or themselves for this recognition. The recipient's organization receives $1,000 from Cargill in the name of the volunteer. American Express' Global Volunteer Action Fund operates on similar principles, with individual employee volunteers eligible to apply for $1,000 awards and two or more employees eligible to apply for up to $2,500 team grants.

Leveraging Grant Dollars

Companies say they see many benefits — some measurable some less tangible — of their investments in employee volunteerism. For many companies, volunteerism is an important tool to help leverage the impact of their charitable giving. Directing both grant dollars and employees' time and talent to the same causes can sometimes produce results far greater than either could do on their own. "We feel we might have more of an impact if we focus our efforts," says Kewitsch, "so we try to align our volunteer activities closely with our giving guidelines."

American Express, for example, provides financial support to the Minneapolis-based Jeremiah Program, which promotes economic independence by assisting single mothers with education and work skills. On top of its grants to the organization, American Express' financial advisors have helped the women learn to manage their money, executives have served on the board of directors, and employee volunteers have taken mothers and their children on outings to, for example, the Children's Theatre — another American Express grantee.

"If we have a good partnership with a nonprofit, we ask what else we can do to make it a better relationship," says Mark Hiemenz, manager, community relations and philanthropy at American Express, which has a 150-year-old tradition of corporate volunteerism. "The key is not to grow in numbers but to measure what you do, what difference you are really making."

Cargill provides employee volunteers to a dozen programs that it supports through its grants. To strengthen its commitment to the education of children at risk in school, for example, the company has launched a new Cargill Scholars grantmaking initiative that has a strong volunteer component. The Cargill Foundation has designated $5 million over the next five years for Cargill Scholars, which will provide 50 Minneapolis-area students with personal and financial assistance for academic and social development as they move from the fourth through ninth grades. Each student will have a Cargill employee mentor throughout the program. Cargill employees are involved in all aspects of the program — reviewing the applications, interviewing children and then assigning Cargill employees to be mentors.

"When I talk to organizations [seeking grants], I say we don't want to just give you money, we also want to lend our talent," says Rosemarie Kelly, Cargill's community involvement manager. "I ask how they can use Cargill employees to help fulfill their mission."

Along with helping a company maximize its charitable giving, volunteerism can help a company increase its commitment to the community even in lean economic times when it might not be able to increase its grants. While charitable dollars often rise and fall with a company's profits, volunteer programs tend to be more stable.

A Recruiting Edge

The cost of a corporate volunteer program is more than offset by the gains in employee satisfaction, volunteer managers say. Company volunteer opportunities make employees proud and committed to their employer. "One employee said it was an opportunity for them to make a tangible difference," explains Kavanaugh of Pentair's Habitat building project. "Every time they drove by the house, they could say it was the house they had built. They had a real sense of ownership."

"We're seeing a trend that young people want to get involved in the community," adds Dittmore of General Mills. "Our volunteer program makes it easier for us to engage those people."

Companies are also finding that a solid volunteerism program can be an important employee recruiting tool. Fifty-eight percent of companies in the Points of Light study say they use their employee volunteer program in recruiting and retaining employees.

Many recruits — especially those who have done community service in high school or college — see a volunteer program as a sign of a well-rounded company — one that values its employees along with the community. "I got a call recently from a man on the East Coast who was researching companies he'd like to work for and he wanted to hear about our volunteer program," ADC's Jaeger reports. It wasn't the only factor in his job search, she adds, but "he wanted to work for a company that has a strong volunteer program."

"More and more employees look to work for companies they respect," Kelly says, "companies that have integrity and believe in the community."

Corporate volunteer managers list many other benefits that their companies reap from their volunteerism programs, including:

- Teamwork. Habitat for Humanity — a favorite cause among many large companies — is a case in point. The nature of the work — crews pool their labor to build or renovate a house for a low-income family — fosters team spirit and allows people to get to know their colleagues outside the workplace. General Mills, with 3,000 employees in the Twin Cities, has sponsored Habitat building crews totaling about 400 retirees and employees every summer for 10 years. Usually 10 to 20 people, often from the same department or work group, sign up for each full-day crew.

In 1999 and 2000, 700 Pentair employees around the country built 10 Habitat homes in eight cities, including three homes in the Twin Cities. The company is planning its first international Habitat project in 2002 in Mexico, where a Pentair operating unit is located. The building projects bring people together, says Kavanaugh. "Often we don't even connect with the employees in our own building. This gave us an opportunity to interface with everyone."

- Leadership. Volunteer opportunities encourage employees to take the lead. "I'm the only staff at American Express in the Twin Cities focused on the volunteer program, so we need to have employees run it," says Hiemenz. His comment is typical of other corporate volunteer managers.

"For more than 20 years we've made a grant to the Special Olympics Minnesota for its spring sports classic," says U.S. Bancorp's Kewitsch. "That event has upwards of 500 employees volunteering. They plan for six months out of the year and put on the entire event."

- New skills. Volunteer opportunities challenge employees to learn new skills that may help them in their careers. "Through our volunteer programs, employees use or gain skills they're not necessarily using on the job -- but that they can use to step up to another level," Cargill's Kelly says.

Cargill — one of many companies with an e-mentoring program involving weekly e-mails between employees and students in a local school — sees the program as a way to help employees stretch their talents. In Cargill's e-mentoring program, 360 Cargill employees are matched with students from Olson Middle School in Minneapolis. "It takes technological skills to set up the public distribution lists and troubleshoot the technical issues," Kelly says. "We have two people working on that and learning as they do it. We have people who've never had to do public speaking [on the job], and now they do that. We have people who aren't project managers but through volunteering learn to manage a project from beginning to end."

Keys to Success

Effective corporate volunteer programs have several things in common, volunteer managers say. The most important is buy-in from senior management. "Any time there's senior-level support, any volunteer program will be that much more successful," Kewitsch says.

Kelly at Cargill agrees. Cargill's president, Greg Page, is involved with Big Brothers as both board member and mentor. "He is my champion," Kelly says. "Employees see him doing this and know that if he can do it, anybody can." Middle managers sometimes need more convincing, and Kelly says peer-to-peer persuasion works best. "We work on one person at a time," she says. "We win one over and there's a domino effect. We have them participate so they see the value of volunteering. Then, when an employee comes to them [for permission to take time to volunteer], they understand."

In addition, good volunteer programs emphasize:

- Communication: Volunteer managers strive to provide frequent communication about volunteer opportunities in a variety of formats: broadcast e-mails, flyers, newsletter articles, bulletin boards, even volunteer fairs, where employees can meet people from the nonprofit organizations that need volunteers. They collect and publicize stories about how volunteering has made a difference. "That one individual story is what people are going to relate to," Hiemenz says.

- Convenience: Successful programs make it easy for employees to volunteer. They provide one-time opportunities, such as a paint-a-thon, as well as ongoing ones, such as Meals on Wheels. In all cases, it's critical that events be well-organized, that people know how to sign up and whom to contact with questions. Even something as simple as giving directions to the activity helps increase the number who show up. Training helps, too.

American Express' Meals on Wheels program, a partnership with Community Emergency Services, is designed to make volunteering a smooth and efficient process for employees. Each year about 250 employees pair up to deliver meals for about two hours one day a month. An employee volunteer maintains a spreadsheet with the routes, names of the volunteers and a list of back-up volunteers. "We usually have a well of people ready to go," Hiemenz says. "It's a model program because it makes it easy for people to volunteer on an ongoing basis."

Convenience is a big reason e-mentoring programs attract volunteers. "They can do it without leaving their desks and can do it at virtually any time," Dittmore says.

Also, opportunities where employees can bring their families are a convenience. "Then people don't feel they are taking time away from their families [by volunteering]," Dittmore says. "It's also sending a message to children of the value of being involved in the community."

- Employee involvement: If you're sponsoring a volunteer activity, make sure it's one that employees care about. Sometimes — as was the case with Cargill's e-mentoring program — employees start volunteering on their own, then ask the company for support. But it's also valuable to ask employees' opinions periodically, through a survey, interviews or focus group. Successful programs offer a variety of activities to reflect employees' different interests.

Most companies with extensive volunteerism programs use employee volunteer councils to represent employees' interests and select activities for company participation. "When it puts a face on the program, it's a lot more effective," Jaeger says. "They encourage people to get involved, answer questions and take suggestions. People feel more represented."

- Recognition: The best volunteer programs acknowledge the contributions of their employees. They may, for example, send thank-you notes to participants signed by the CEO. Or they may go all-out with an annual recognition ceremony. In any case, it's important that employees not be taken for granted. "At American Express we believe that recognition is key to a successful volunteer program," Hiemenz says. "It's important to know that your efforts are appreciated."

On the Rise

Many volunteer managers agree that company volunteer programs are likely to continue growing in the future. They point out that volunteerism offers unique, compelling benefits to a company, its employees and its community alike — adding up to a bottom line that's too appealing to ignore.

More Information

Workplace Mentoring Guide
www.minnesotagiving.org/options/corpvol.htm
The Minnesota Toolkit for Giving offers a free ten-step guide for developing an effective workplace mentoring program -- bringing youth to the company on a regular basis to meet with staff and engage in various youth-building activities.  

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