Keeping the Spirit of Volunteerism Strong

With Global Volunteer Month winding down, we’ve been reflecting on the incredible impact volunteers make, not just in April, but all year round and especially throughout the pandemic. Whether they served in person or virtually, formally or informally, providing their professional expertise or hands-on support, volunteers’ contributions have been nothing short of outstanding.

We know the work isn’t over, though. The nearing post-pandemic future won’t mean a return to the way things were, especially for those who COVID-19 hit hardest. Justice and equity are still far off. Volunteers will continue to play a vital role in ensuring communities and the organizations that serve them can rebound and be even stronger than before. Skills-based volunteering is a key part of this transition period, connecting people from different sectors to share their ideas and solutions, build organizational capacity, support crisis resiliency efforts, and fight for equity and justice.

In these last days of Global Volunteer Month, we celebrate all that volunteers have done and we look forward to what they will accomplish next. Here are some of our favorite interviews, articles, and resources to fuel you for what’s ahead.

Thank you, volunteers!

Volunteer Spotlights

Throughout the month, we celebrated some of the hundreds of talented skills-based volunteers we are fortunate to work with every year. Melissa Myers from Berkshire Bank talked about what it meant to her to support racial equity through Skills for Cities 2020 and Victoria Lai from Verizon shared about her transformative skilled volunteering projects with Hopeworks and at this month’s Skills for Cities Midwest where she served as a team lead.

Pro Bono Perspectives Podcast

Hear from a diverse set of voices in the volunteerism space, hailing from the private, public, and social sectors.

• How California Rallied Volunteers during the Pandemic ft. Dave Smith, Director, Californians for All
• The State of Service & Civic Engagement in NYC ft. Anusha Venkataraman, Chief Service Officer, NYC Service
• Diversity, Equity, and the Future of Volunteering ft. Jerome Tennille, Manager of Social Impact & Volunteerism, Marriott
• Building Back Better in 2021 ft. Mei Cobb, Senior Director of Volunteer & Employee Engagement, United Way Worldwide
• Serving Our Communities in Times of Crisis ft. Natalye Paquin, President & CEO, Points of Light

Articles & Resources

Learn more about how your organization can use skills-based volunteering to promote DEI and strengthen communities in the post-pandemic future.

• Skills-Based Volunteering: Putting Passion into Action (p. 16) by Common Impact CEO Danielle Holly
• A Changing Landscape for Corporate Volunteerism Post-Pandemic by Common Impact Chief Program Officer Elizabeth Schwan-Rosenwald
• COVID-19 Nonprofit Impact Report: A Guide for Providing Philanthropic and Skilled Volunteer Support
• Making Good Happen at Work 2: A Guide to Building an Employee Service and Giving Program
• Webinar - Introduction to Insights & Impact: Measuring the Social Impact of Volunteerism

Get involved

Are you looking for corporate skills-based volunteer opportunities for the rest of 2021? We recently launched Volunteers for Small Business Recovery, a pilot program to support small businesses in some of the NYC neighborhoods that have been hit hardest by COVID-19. The program matches corporate volunteers with small business owners for one-hour consultations to generate solutions to the entrepreneurs’ strategy and operations challenges. We hope to expand to other locations. We will also be holding our next Skills for Cities day of flash consulting in support of racial justice and BIPOC-led nonprofits in late October during Pro Bono Week.

If your company would like to partner with us on either of these opportunities or learn about other skills-based volunteering programs we offer, please get in touch!