We need to talk about corporate volunteering.
Not the glossy, camera-ready version.
Not the annual “day of service.”
Not the language we’ve lovingly used for decades — language that, if we’re honest, no longer matches reality.
I’m talking about the reality of employee volunteering. The one our data from The State of Corporate Volunteering 2026 report reveals with clarity and a little discomfort.
Despite record participation and surging corporate investment, it’s unclear if volunteering is delivering what we actually need. Participation is up, but hours per volunteer are at a seven-year low. Employees want purpose, but they’re tapping into bite-sized acts. Companies want engagement and community impact, but nonprofits need funding and reliable, skilled volunteers to help build their capacity and get AI-ready. Many C-suite executives want proof of value, and we don’t always have it.
We’re growing, but are we aligning?
We’re doing more, but are we doing what matters most?
We’re celebrating participation, but do we know what the outcomes are?
After talking to leaders across corporations and nonprofits, I can confidently say that the answer is no.
And if many of us were to share our inside voice, we’d admit that while we are celebrating our wins, we are also quietly asking ourselves whether our volunteering strategies are suited to the world we’re living in now. Our intuition is telling us it’s not enough.
That’s the dissonance. And it’s time we confront it.
Employee volunteering isn’t sacred. It’s a system. And systems evolve.
For too long, we’ve treated corporate volunteering primarily as a moral good that gets loosely connected to business outcomes like employee engagement, culture and belonging.
The language we use reinforces this. “Volunteer Time Off” (VTO) implies volunteering is time away from meaningful work, instead of time invested in something that delivers returns to the business. What if we treated VTO as a core component of our work by reframing it as "Skills Development Time," for example?
And what if we started acting like what we know is true — that volunteering is:
- A skill-building investment
- A training ground for empathy, adaptability and leadership
- A mechanism for trust, connection and community among distributed teams
- A way for people to grow personally while strengthening the business
- Time to innovate new solutions that generate business and social value
If these things are true — and we believe they are — then the biggest barrier to unlocking volunteering’s potential isn’t money, time or interest. It’s our unwillingness to evolve our models. It’s our fear of uncharted territory. It’s a lack of capacity to think differently. And frankly, it’s our outdated language.
Language shapes behaviour. Behaviour shapes culture. Culture shapes community.
Corporate volunteering doesn’t need to be protected. It needs to be unleashed.
The world is changing. Corporate volunteering needs to catch up.
The reality is that good volunteering requires more than what companies are dedicating to it now. Yes, there is investment. But there is also a growing amount of work and expectations being put on small, centralized CSR teams. Teams that are struggling to scale and tailor their programs to their employees and the nonprofits they want to support. Volunteering requires time, money and better technology, deployed in ways that serve the end goal.
Employees are navigating massive changes in life and work within a volatile economy, high cost of living, geopolitical disruptions and the rapid pace of AI transformation — all of which are affecting job certainty, mental health and wellbeing. The confluence of these changes is leading to competing priorities, higher rates of social isolation and loneliness, and very real financial pressure.
Meanwhile, nonprofits are under extraordinary strain, pushed beyond capacity by rising community needs and shrinking resources, exacerbated in the U.S. by an onslaught of regulatory and political changes that are demanding more investment in legal, marketing and branding. They need deeper support — not just more volunteers.
Despite all of this, we have enormous ambition for volunteering. It is expected to deliver:
- Employee engagement
- Community impact
- Culture and connection
- Skills development
- Wellbeing
- Business resilience
It’s an enormous burden to place on a strained system. This is an inflection point. And it’s also an invitation.
We need experiments, not elegance. Evidence, not assumptions.
If we want to successfully design the next era of workforce volunteering, we need to stop theorizing and start experimenting — openly, humbly and collaboratively.
That’s why in 2026, Benevity is committing to a year of experimentation to build real evidence around what works. Not feel-good stories. But real programs, with real data, tested hypotheses and shared learnings. And transparently, these insights are needed for us to help build the best practices and technology that delivers on the needs of tomorrow, while we solve for the pains of running corporate volunteering programs today.
Our suggested approach rests on three principles:
International Volunteer Year — a moment made for reinvention
2026 is the United Nation's International Volunteer Year — a time to celebrate volunteers. It arrives at a time when corporate volunteering is both more essential and more strained than ever. We are being reminded to pay attention.
Employees are searching for meaning, purpose and connection.
Companies are doubling down on volunteering.
It’s time to embrace corporate volunteering as a business investment like any other. As an imperative and a strategic capability. As a lever for creativity, innovation, leadership development and resilience.
Now’s our chance to re-invent it. A global moment to shift from intention to innovation.
The invitation — let’s reimagine corporate volunteering
This moment calls for leadership. It calls for courage. And it calls for companies to move beyond what we already know toward a new era of experimentation, collaboration and shared learning.
For as long as I have been in this space, we have focused on driving participation. The good news is that average participation rates have increased 30% over the past six years. This proves that what we focus on is where we succeed. So what is our future definition of success?
The volunteering of today is not — and will not be — the volunteering of tomorrow.
To fully unlock the promise of corporate volunteering, we must co-create new models that meet the needs of all stakeholders:
- Nonprofits who require deeper, skilled and reliable support
- Employees seeking purpose, flexibility and connection
- Corporations striving to build resilient businesses with connected cultures
- Communities navigating increasing complexity and need
No single organization can solve this alone. Meaningful change requires cross-sector partnership and collective innovation.
If you believe volunteering is one of the most powerful engines for human and organizational transformation, join us.
If you think the old models are no longer enough, help us build new ones.
If you want to co-design the future of corporate volunteering — one that is unequivocally a driver of business value and social impact — reach out.
Email us at impactlabs@benevity.com.
Share your commitments and experimentation ideas.
And if you disagree with this provocation? Even better.
Tell us why. Add your voice. Help us shape what comes next.
Because the future of volunteering won’t emerge on its own. We have to create it together.
