Pro Bono Week: Pro Bono Service Builds New Communities Through Knowledge Sharing

When the American Bar Association kicked off its national celebration of pro bono service for the legal community, they likely didn’t anticipate that their celebration would soon stretch beyond the legal field into HR, finance, strategy, marketing, design, IT, and a diversity of other professions and outgrow national borders. As Pro Bono Week 2015, a global celebration of ALL pro bono service, comes to a close, we’ve seen not only an increase in services delivered – spanning 39 separate countries! –  but a significant  expansion in the resources that better prepare and support skilled-volunteers and nonprofits in aligning and kicking off pro bono projects. This week of knowledge-sharing has built stronger communities and is resulting in more and more social change organizations adopting pro bono service as a “go to” resource.

From San Francisco to Slovakia, people and organizations came together during Pro Bono Week to share the latest insights, learnings, and challenges in pro bono service.

• The Russian Managers Association discussed corporate volunteering in an era of a turbulent economy in Moscow, Russia while the Pontis Foundation shared results from a study on pro bono interest and engagement among corporate employees at a conference in Bratislava, Slovakia.
• Deloitte and the Taproot Foundation engaged companies in a conversation entitled, Activate Pro Bono Service: What’s next for corporate engagement?
• A live twitter chat hosted by PYXERA Global and A Billion + Change, discussed how pro bono is quickly becoming an approach for companies to address the Global Goals.
• In Clichy, France, Pro Bono Lab led a Pro Bono Happening #PBW15 discussion for skilled volunteers about the growing pro bono movement and what it represents internationally. And, the Social Entrepreneurs Agency of Portugal convened the first ever, Conference about Pro Bono in Lisbon, sharing case studies and best practices in service delivery. 
• ConAgra Foods Foundation, in partnership with Taproot hosted a webinar on how to use your professional skills—in marketing, web development, business strategy, HR, IT, and so many others—to fight hunger that showcased a new resource site the Hunger Volunteer Connection. Through this collaboration, Points of Light and the Taproot Foundation also developed the pro bono readiness tool to quickly tell nonprofit organizations if skilled volunteers are the right solution for their project need.  
• Nonprofits and companies in San Francisco who are new to pro bono gathered to access a wealth of pro bono resources and joined pop-up discussions on topics like what does “tech talent” mean for the nonprofit sector, at a Pro Bono Resource Fair hosted by the Foundation Center and Taproot.

The development of innovations and new learnings are critical in building a movement. Learn more about pro bono service and how it’s transforming civic engagement with the creation of new communities by visiting the Taproot Foundation. www.taprootfoundation.org

Pro Bono Week is made possible through the generous contributions of Deloitte as well as ConAgra Foods Foundation, Prudential, and Walmart. 

About Pro Bono Week: Pro Bono Week (#PBW15) is a global campaign that celebrates and activates pro bono service across all professions that use their talents to make a difference. Inspired by the American Bar Association's National Celebration of Pro Bono, Taproot works with partners around the globe to focus attention on the pro bono movement each year in October. This year, Pro Bono Week is October 25-31.

About Taproot Foundation: Taproot Foundation, a national nonprofit, connects nonprofits and social change organizations with skilled volunteers through pro bono service. 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 3,700 social change organizations providing 1.5 million hours of work worth over $147 million in value. Taproot is located in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. and is leading a network of global pro bono providers in over 23 countries around the world. www.taprootfoundation.org