To untap value from volunteering, it’s time to tap into your skills

This week’s blog was inspired by the fact that it’s Volunteers Week (until 7 June) and as someone who is an active volunteer and has been for a while – in addition to developing the strategy to bring in a skills-based, impact-focused approach to volunteering for BT back in the day - I wanted to share why I believe skills-based volunteering is where it’s at.

That was then

Before leaving BT in 2019, I was the company’s Charity and Community Director. In this role I was responsible for developing a new strategy to transform the company’s previously ad hoc approach to ‘giving back’ into a strategic approach aligned to the business’ core strategy, with clear, measurable objectives. In addition to undertaking a charitable giving audit and developing a strategic charity partnership and fundraising approach, my team also started to overhaul how volunteering was done and measured.?

BT had a great policy whereby people could ask for up to three days a year to volunteer, and their time was tracked and reported in our annual Impact Report. But the tracking system I inherited when I got the role was archaic, and we couldn’t measure the impact or value of our people’s volunteering time on the non-profits they were supporting or in local communities. The existing metric was an end of year count of logged volunteering time and each CEO of a line of business had an individual targets based on getting a certain percentage of their employees to volunteer per year. This led to some odd behaviours internally, with lots of mass, team-based volunteering squeezed into the last quarter of the financial year. People had no say in whether they wanted to do it or not!??This ‘mandateering’ as I termed it, was basically a tick-box exercise – a last-ditch attempt to boost the percentage at year-end so that the line of business would reach their target, with no thought given as to whether the charity found the exercise valuable or it delivered any lasting impact!

When me and my wonderful impact-focused team members got hold of BT’s volunteering programme and started to shake it up. We asked the Chairman, who was overall sponsor of volunteering and charitable giving within the business, if we could ditch the percentage target and bring in impact metrics instead. And we looked for innovative organisations to partner with who could help our people to use their volunteering days to undertake meaningful, skills-based volunteering for charities and community-based organisations across the UK. We wanted to emulate and try to help scale some brilliant examples of skills-based volunteering opportunities that colleagues in the Digital Impact and Sustainability team had been developing, which focused on digital inclusion (or rather digital?exclusion?and closing the UK’s digital skills gap).?

This is now

Whilst at BT I began my own volunteering journey as a trustee of Lord's Taverners . It’s a charity which combines cricket – a sport I love – with empowering young people who are currently marginalised in society and delivering a positive impact in their local communities. I recently became the charity’s vice chair, which I’m honoured (and a little daunted) to be.??I bring my 20+ years of communications, reputation-management, PR, brand, sponsorship, digital and inclusive communications experience, in addition to strategic thinking, being a connector and collaborator inside and outside the charity’s core team and bringing my own personal approach – based on my experience of life and work - to any problems or challenges.

In return I get to be part of a dynamic team which is helping this 75+-year-old charity transform so that it will achieve a greater impact, grow its programmes and empower even more young people. We’re helping the Lord’s Taverners be fit for the future, today. I get to grapple with issues and topics that aren’t always part of my day job. I have the opportunity to listen to other brilliant, strategically-minded people, to continue to learn and to develop as a person.

And at Untapped , we offer our inclusive communications, digital, marketing and strategy expertise and skills on a pro bono basis to charities and social enterprises who align with our guiding principles about building a fair and inclusive society. In fact,?a couple of weeks ago we ran an inclusive communications workshop in conjunction with Autism Forward Cio , a charity which provides funding for autistic adults to access specialised mentoring services to aid their access to employment. (You can read my blog about the workshop on Untapped’s LinkedIn page).

Charities, social enterprises and community groups really benefit when someone shares their skills – whether that’s their skills as a painter and decorator, a project manager, a social media expert, an employability coach etc etc etc. And individuals and employers also benefit. It really is a win win win situation. There are bound to be organisations out there which are crying out for the way you approach challenges and think outside the box or the way you can quickly rally your network to get things done.

What are you waiting for??