National Volunteer Week: A launchpad for year-round impact
April 8, 2024
Corporate volunteerism is in the spotlight right now — and for good reason.
As predicted in our last State of Corporate Purpose report, volunteering has witnessed a remarkable revival post-pandemic. Volunteering has become more than a meaningful way to give back. It’s now a critical component in culture building and employee engagement.
With National Volunteer Week coming up, it’s a crucial time to look at your strategy and see how you can turn this moment into a sustained movement that benefits your people, company and communities.
Keep reading for data-backed research, examples and tactics you can use to understand this trend and then take action.
Why volunteerism is surging
When hybrid work rose to prominence in 2022 and 2023, it posed unique cultural challenges for companies, prompting them to seek creative ways to foster a sense of community. Volunteering emerged as the prime solution. By embracing volunteering, companies and their employees have found a powerful way to connect, learn and take values-driven action.
Benevity’s client community is a testament to this growth, witnessing a significant uptick in volunteering — 94% of companies with employee engagement programs are now running volunteering initiatives, up from 87% last year. Moreover, a staggering 41% year-over-year increase in volunteer hours logged highlights the growing commitment to community engagement.
A new perspective on National Volunteer Week
With a workforce that's becoming increasingly dispersed, yet eager to connect with their colleagues and give back to their communities, companies have an enormous opportunity to reevaluate their approach to National Volunteer Week.
By expanding your focus from a single week to a year-long initiative, you can open doors to continuous impact and engagement — and make your program even more inclusive for those who celebrate National Volunteer Week at different times around the world.
National Volunteering Weeks in 2024
Canada: April 14 - 20
US: April 21 - 27
Ireland: May 13 - 19
Australia: May 20 - 26
UK: June 1 - 8
New Zealand: June 16 - 22
How to drive volunteering participation year-round
Benevity Impact Labs' recent analysis of 473 companies spanning 18 countries and 12.9 million users sheds light on the scale of the volunteering phenomenon. The State of Corporate Volunteering report revealed that leading companies are successfully engaging their workforce through four types of volunteering opportunities, each contributing to a substantial increase in participation rates:
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Company-supported volunteer opportunities: With company-supported volunteer opportunities, the company is the architect — it has a vision to engage volunteers in planned activities and programs
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Team volunteering: With team volunteering, a group of employees take the initiative to support the same cause together through their company’s volunteering program.
- Employee-led volunteering: Employee-led volunteering comes from the ground up, when any employee creates an opportunity that is meaningful to them and mobilizes their peers and networks to join in.
- Company-wide volunteering events: Often referred to as an annual “period of service,” company-wide volunteering events can be held during a particular day, week or month, when employees are encouraged to volunteer.
When companies make these types of volunteer opportunities available, participation multiplies anywhere from 2.5x to 7.6x.
Tip: Typical National Volunteer Week initiatives fall under the company-wide volunteering events category. However, you can drive greater participation and engagement by incorporating the other three drivers of success into your campaign. People love choice and appreciate the autonomy to decide how and when they support the causes that matter to them.
How Motorola Solutions activates the 4 levers of volunteering success
Telecommunications company, Motorola Solutions, shared their strategy for growing a global volunteer program at Benevity’s corporate purpose event, Benevity Live!, in 2023.
Their Global Months of Service initiative, which is an eight-week volunteer-a-thon, features individual and team-based volunteer opportunities that can be carried out virtually or in-person, across the globe. Additionally, any employee can create volunteer opportunities supporting a cause close to their heart.
Their campaign helped surpass company records for the entire year, in which employees logged nearly 100,000 volunteer hours and created more than 500 volunteer events worldwide, generating $3.2 million in value for charitable organizations.
Did you know? To encourage some friendly competition, the team with the greatest level of volunteering engagement and volunteer hours logged got to direct a $40,000 grant to a nonprofit of their choice.
Make 2024 (and beyond) the year of the volunteer
There’s no doubt that 2023 was a landmark year for volunteering— and that the trend is set to continue throughout 2024 and beyond. Companies are increasingly recognizing the value of volunteering as a unifying force. In embracing this shift, companies not only contribute positively to their communities but also forge stronger, more connected workplaces.
