06 Jan How to Organize a Volunteer Day for Your Team

By Jackie Sue Griffin, MBA, MS

Many for-profit organizations participate in some form of corporate social responsibility. But volunteering as a team has more meaningful benefits than simply meeting your CSR quota and improving brand recognition. Spending a day of service together has positive effects ranging from improved cohesiveness and collaboration to increased engagement. And when employees are engaged, productivity and retention increase.

Planning a Day of Service

Volunteering as a team helps colleagues bond over a collective sense of achievement. So, let’s dig into the steps to planning a volunteer day that’s perfect for your team!

Choose a cause that aligns with your culture.

While your business may already support various charities, it’s still worthwhile to look around and consider other causes benefiting your community. Solicit opinions from employees on the causes that are meaningful to them; it’s easy to collect their input through a quick, digital survey. The more engaged and emotionally invested your team members are, the more likely they will sign up to volunteer. Build excitement by emphasizing the community benefits of their time and service.

Consider the size and skill set of your group.

Volunteer projects come in all sizes; you can make it one big event on a day when you can take the whole day away from the office, or you can send smaller teams to more time-limited projects. Your day of service may even involve employees’ families, including children.

From cleaning up community spaces and building homes to serving meals at a community kitchen, there are volunteer projects for all group sizes, ages and skills. Your team may even have talents and strengths that you can share, allowing you to take on mentor roles for those interested in a future within your industry.

Book a date as early as possible.

Most nonprofits and community groups operate year-round, allowing your team to participate anytime. However, your community may observe common corporate volunteer days, like MLK Day of Service. These opportunities tend to fill up quickly—so book early. Or choose a day or time a week before or after the event to claim for your team.

Booking early also gives you plenty of time for internal promotion of your activity—and the chance to build a lot of excitement and pleasant anticipation! Reminder emails and asking your employees to confirm their attendance also help make sure you show up with enough volunteers to complete the task you’ve promised to take on.

Create shareable content.

Documenting your volunteering efforts increases employee pride and trust. So be sure to share photos and videos across all your channels, including social media, emails, website and newsletters.

Sharing this kind of positive content helps your employees get excited for the next opportunity to volunteer—and can motivate non-participating team members to make sure they don’t miss future events!

Here at JSG & Associates, we support the passionate leaders who make nonprofits successful. For more information about us, visit our website.