Exploring the New Frontier of Pro Bono Service

Pro bono service can transform nonprofit organizations. For over 15 years, Taproot Foundation has mobilized professional expertise to help nonprofit organizations increase their effectiveness and reach. Once confined to legal service, pro bono service across all areas of expertise is utilized by nonprofits anywhere, anytime. Commonly, 95% of nonprofits report that pro bono service improved their organization's effectiveness in cost or resource savings, efficiency, and quality of operations or services.

So, what’s the next frontier?

Using pro bono service to address our most pressing global challenges, to purposefully develop our nonprofit and for-profit leaders, and to flexibly respond to the ever-changing needs of nonprofit organizations. 

What exactly does this new frontier look like? It means using pro bono service to:

• Tackle critical issue-specific social challenges: Solving our global challenges will require all of our resources, including our human capital. By unlocking our talent, we can drive unprecedented collaboration and make tangible progress against what may feel like overwhelming challenges. Taproot is contributing to ending hunger and food insecurity by leveraging a person’s highest level skills to tackle one of the world’s largest problems.
   
• Cultivate the core competencies and capabilities of our nonprofit and corporate leaders: The way we work is changing, and our talent needs new skills to thrive. Pro bono service can prepare nonprofit and for-profit leaders for the complexities of tomorrow’s world and work. Taproot is empowering nonprofit and corporate leaders to practice the essential leadership skills needed in our future workplaces and world by engaging in pro bono service.
   
• Best address the timely organizations needs of our social change partners: Nonprofits are constantly responding to shifting social and political landscapes. Pro bono allows them to secure critically needed expertise to address key infrastructure challenges that get in the way of programmatic success or growth. Taproot is empowering nonprofits to more strategically understand, adopt, and use technology and tech talent to solve critical social issues, while simultaneously supporting tech professionals to better leverage their skills for good.

Taproot Foundation is pioneering this new approach, and we invite you—our colleagues and content experts in the private, public, and civic sectors—to join us.

Interested in how you can contribute to this new direction?
Join us on February 8 or 9 delve into this new frontier of pro bono service. Contribute your insights as experts across the private, public, and civic sector to unpack pressing organizational challenges and leadership gaps facing the social sector; learn how we can better engage pro bono talent and service to develop our leaders; and co-design new ways forward that maximize the benefits of pro bono engagements. 
 

New Ways Forward: Cultivating leaders through pro bono service
Wednesday, February 8, 10 AM PT / 12 PM CT / 1 PM ET | Register here

The way we work is changing, and our talent needs new skills to thrive. Pro bono service builds the core competencies that are needed in our leaders. Join us to uncover how pro bono service prepares nonprofit and for-profit leaders for the complexities of tomorrow’s world and work. Contribute your insights as we co-design how we can drive more nonprofit and corporate organizations to adopt this innovative (and cost-saving) approach to developing their talent.
 

New Ways Forward: Engaging tech talent through pro bono service
Thursday, February 9, 10 AM PT / 12 PM CT / 1 PM ET | Register here

How great would it be if nonprofits could fully leverage the power and agility of tech to tackle social issues? Pro bono service is a flexible and feasible way for nonprofits to get the technical expertise they need, but not all nonprofits are able to access tech talent. If you work at a nonprofit, have tech expertise, or believe in the power of pro bono service—we need your brains! Come join this structured town hall to imagine and co-design with us a future where we can meet nonprofit tech challenges with pro bono service solutions.
 

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Taproot Foundation, a national nonprofit, connects nonprofits and social change organizations with passionate, skilled volunteers who share their expertise pro bono. Taproot is creating a world where organizations dedicated to social change have full access—through pro bono service—to the marketing, strategy, HR, and IT resources they need to be most effective. Since 2001, Taproot’s skilled volunteers have served 4,600 social change organizations providing 1.5 million hours of work worth over $160 million in value. Taproot is located in New York City, San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. and is leading a network of global pro bono providers in over 30 countries around the world. www.taprootfoundation.org