How Atlassian Designed a Skills-Based Volunteering Program That Digs Deep
Learn how Australia’s largest software company designed and launched Engage 4 Good, a skills-based volunteering program using Spark by Benevity that created big results for both the organizations it supported and Atlassian’s own people.
Creating community
Founded in 2002, Sydney, Australia–based Atlassian creates product management and documentation software — including Jira and Trello — that’s used by thousands of teams worldwide.
Atlassian’s own team has experienced tremendous growth. Over a three-year period, amid the pandemic, the company doubled its workforce, making it the largest software company in Australia, and one of Benevity’s biggest clients in the region.
With employees in over 27 countries and in a broad spectrum of roles, Atlassian needed a way to create community for their people and inspire them to live the company’s mission to “unleash the potential of every team.” One influential lever for employee engagement has always been the Atlassian Foundation.
Atlassian’s dedication to purpose started early, when company founders committed to Pledge 1%. Atlassian contributes 1% of employee time, company equity, products and annual profits to the Atlassian Foundation. The Foundation, in turn, provides funding and resources to support donations to education-focused causes, volunteering in local communities and donations of Atlassian products to nonprofits.
When Atlassian began using Benevity’s corporate social responsibility software in 2018, its employee engagement tool, Spark, enabled them to develop more robust giving and volunteering initiatives. And with Benevity Reporting, they had access to richer, more accurate reports for measuring their impact. Both solutions helped to grow their program, while identifying how they could evolve.
Success story
Human & Hope, a Cambodia-based female-owned company, is one of Engage 4 Good’s success stories. Atlassian volunteers helped the organization make improvements to their website, developing features that resulted in them selling more products in one month than they had in a whole year!
Evolving to an employee-led volunteer program and managing the program like a product
Given the pilot’s success and the incredible feedback from causes and volunteers alike, Black and her team knew they were on to something. Once the Engage 4 Good pilot had wrapped up, Black interviewed volunteers to understand their experience and pain points, discovering that project-volunteer matching and finding a suitable project were the biggest barriers. That’s when she and her team made the decision to manage the program more like a product.
“I asked myself what the program would look like if I viewed volunteers as customers, developed personas and designed volunteer journeys so that employees can best serve the purpose-driven organizations they work with. That really changed the lens,” she said.
By taking these steps, Black’s team has designed a more seamless and meaningful experience for Atlassian, its people and partner organizations.
So, what’s on the horizon for Engage 4 Good? Black’s team is now focused on growth, maturing the program and making it more employee-led.
“We want to scale the program as the company scales and get the program to run itself,” said Black. “We want to skill up our employees, so they feel confident to take on projects and start relationships with organizations that they’re passionate about. That’s the goal.”
Grow your volunteer program
Get the most recent volunteering trends, interesting insights and powerful recommendations for how your company can achieve success with these resources.
Learn from the best in purpose-driven business in our new Benevity Impact Labs report, The Best of the Best in Employee Engagement.
Encourage your people to get involved in their community with our Guide to Virtual Volunteering.
Packed with creative ideas, The Big Book of Goodness is your go-to resource for engaging your people.