Learning Series | Continued Support After the Volunteer Event

Summary: We spend some time talking about how companies can continue to support nonprofits after a single volunteer event. It's crucial to build longer-term relationships with nonprofits to increase overall employee engagement and corporate social responsibility efforts.

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Transcript:

Andy - WeHero: All right, Ben excited to have you back for the we hero learning series here today. We're gonna talk about the more holistic support of nonprofits before and after a singular volunteer events. You know, we talk a lot about aligning your events with your corporate mission and what your company wants to do on the impact side. And today we to talk about what does that actually look like? You know, if you're a company that comes to us for one event, how do you keep supporting? And so maybe I'll turn it over to you and kind of say, as you see customers coming to us, where does this need really come out for these customers?

Ben - WeHero: Yeah, I think one way we think of the hundreds of volunteer events that we do and all of thousands more that continue you happening for these companies. We really view volunteer as a point of activation. When we do a volunteer experience, you know, yes, there's being impact made there, but there's so much that can be done before and after. So that point of activation, where we bring people into a volunteer experience, they get educated about the cause they get educated about the non profit and then they are hands on making an impact. That's a huge stepping stone to get people excited about a cause area. We have people that first, you know, sometimes have never even understood that there was an actual challenge in a cause area. We have a program called period power. And people did not know that there was period disparity here in the us and people, all of a sudden just become aware of that.

Ben - WeHero: Through this experience. The big question then comes, we do this volunteer experience. We bring all these people together. We're educated about the cause. Now what, and I think the goal of the call today is to really give people some advice on how you can continue making an impact after the volunteer experience, as well as before and what that can look like. You know, we hero has some services to make that easy. We have some ideas to make that easy on your own. I think it's just for us to talk to that. And I'm happy to dive into each one of those Andy, and then get your take on what companies can do.

Andy - WeHero: Well, that's, that's structure this for the companies that end up here. You know, that's take two approaches, that's say you're a small company and you do a volunteer event. You can only do one thing after the event. What would you do? And we'll do dive into a more complex company that wants to do a bunch of initiatives after a volunteer event. What would you do if you could only do one volunteer one initiative after the event?

Ben - WeHero: Great question. I think it very much depends on the cause. So if it's an environmental cause an environmental volunteer experience, like a reforestation event, I think the thing that I would wanna do is an in-person tree planting experience after that volunteer event, right? Like just take it to the next level. And we work with a nonprofit partner called one tree planted that plans these all over the country. Whereas for a different volunteer where I'm like working with meals on wheels, for example, supporting seniors, maybe an action that I'm taking is writing letters every single week, just making a routine part of my schedule. And so I think it really depends. And so I I'm just totally destroying your question of like, here's the one thing that comes to mind right off the gay as a priority. But curious, I'm gonna throw the question right back at you. Like you go through one of these volunteer experiences or a small company does like, what's the one thing you think a company can do immediate.

Andy - WeHero: I'm also gonna have a little bit of a cop out answer here. I think what you need to do is you need to capture the engagement of the employees after the events and magnify that in whatever way you think is appropriate and it's different for every company. You know, some companies, you know, they can do a crowdfunding campaign, they can do a donation after the event, once everyone's passionate about it and you can go share the story. So you can go that route or you can say, Hey, my employees wanna keep giving set up biweekly, simple volunteering initiatives with a subset of the group and say, Hey, if you have time, come write letters for meals on wheels, we'll write letters to the elderly. And so I think those are kind of whatever I would do would be centered around increasing the engagement that comes from that event. And, and you, you know, you and I, we, we spend so much time thinking about creative solutions for companies. There's so much fun things to do here. Whether it's using an app to track walking distance and donating based on your walking distance instead of driving so many different things. But I think the main goal would be to capture the engagement and the excitement that people have. So your company can do more good for that. Cause as well as, you know, keep your enga employees extremely engaged.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. And to that point, and maybe I'm jumping the gun going into some ideas that companies can do route the gate, but your point around, we have this, how do you continue amplifying that engagement? I think one of the best things this, these employee groups can do is just share the message, right. And you know, we had a volunteer event supporting the greater Chicago food depository. It's a food bank in Chicago and employees volunteering asking what can we do after this experience? And he was pushing so hard, just like, please share with your friends and family about the cause about the current challenges in the us around food insecurity and what can actually be done. So much of it is just sharing the word. And we have people do that all the time. We see so many companies that are going on, LinkedIn talking about the experience they had talking about the impact being made and as a result, more people and more companies like taking to the ranks to make an impact makes a huge difference. And just again, jumping to a step that companies employees can take right out the gate to just make a bigger difference.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, totally. I think you know, I love talking about that with people, you know, we can bring a hundred people together, home to your family, your friends, and share with two people. Even if half those people take action. You, you know, the education component is so important here. And so that's the simplest easiest cost free effort, free way to magnify the impact after an event. I think, you know, if we pivot to larger companies and the potentials that they can have are companies with more resources, you know, there's a really interesting interconnection between, you know, standard time based volunteer events and then skills based and how the two can interact interconnect. You know, before event, after or events in ongoing arrangements would be really curious, you know, companies that do both of those well and interconnect them. Why do you think they do it? And what do you think makes those programs successful?

Ben - WeHero: I think why they do it is so often employees do one of these experiences and become emotionally connected to the costs, which is so amazing that, and again, back to of that point of activation, then it comes to how can we increase the impact and keep staying involved. And so skills based is an amazing opportunity. You do this one hour event of volunteering and then you go, how do, can I make, keep making impact doing a skills based project, or you're actually working to understand some of the gaps and challenges that that organization has and using your talents of your team to go in and solve some of those challenges, it maximizes impact. Also gives you the opportunity to further engage with the organization and what comes out of that, just continuous engagement over and over again, we see so many companies to your point, Andy, they do volunteer event.

Ben - WeHero: Then they move into skills based. And then we see companies start making grants to the nonprofit. And all of a sudden this blossoming relationship occurs where the employees are connected with the cause. The cause is now connected with the company and the company's supporting and maximizing impact in every way, shape or form. And those blossoming relationships, just one of the most beautiful things like we, you could ever see or expect coming out of a volunteer experience. So long way to answer to your question, but I would love your take too. Just your skills base is such a new thing. Any ideas of examples of that, that you've seen. And just what companies can think about when they're taking that leap from a curated volunteer event to like we're gonna do skills based now.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, I think it, it is a new thing, but I think some companies do this remarkably well. And you know, if I can just quickly jump in there on something you said before I, before I dive into that, you brought up kind of keeping employees engaged in this. And, and you know, if I become an advocate for employees, I think employees need to have the choice of these things. And so what do the employees care about that aligns with your mission? And then how do you reward employees for being engaged? You know, you can reward them with the time based volunteer events. You know, some companies do fundraisers, whichever employees raise the most money, then get to go do skills based for a day a month because they're so passionate about that, proven that, and that really creates engagement involvement and really aligns the employee with what your company's goals are.

Andy - WeHero: And I always am a big fan of adding competition to anything. And so I think that's a really good approach. You asked me about skills based and how companies interconnect that and involve them. I think there's a few ways I've seen really successful is it is you have a skills based project that kind of, let's say it's a three month project. You're spending a few hours a week on it. You have that start and about halfway through, you have a, a volunteer event for a much larger group of people. And that group of people actually leads the volunteer event and talks about the work that they're doing for the nonprofit. And I think that's awesome because it turns the company's individuals to spokespeople of the nonprofit and it gets people to better understand and the engagement level of the company and what they're doing.

Andy - WeHero: And so I think that's one really awesome tool that can be used. The other that I love is the executive involvement in skills space, executive time is so valuable and so precious, but if you can successfully have the or leadership team, you, you know, prove to the employees that the company cares about this by solving problems for the nonprofit, that just creates a great bond between, you know, mass employees and the leadership team and what they're doing. And I've seen a few companies do that remarkably well, and it gets more buy-in from the entire company. Long-Winded, those are two scenarios that I think work really well.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. Just an example to double tap on the importance of executive participation. We had an employee base that was doing a volunteer event and unexpectedly there, executive the CEO joined. It was one of our events called wine while we're building water filters. One of these water filters that an employee built gave 10 people clean water for 10 years, the CEO jumped on about five minutes into the event. And he saw all the employees like just amazed and so excited that he took the time to be there an hour out of his incredibly busy day to be there and go. This is really important for us as a company to do. And I'm gonna be here for this and just engaged and asking questions. And just to double tap on the importance of like having executives be a part of these social campaigns and these social initiatives that a company just makes a massive difference. I mean, those employees were just so excited and engaged because the CEO showed up just amazing to see that transformation.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. What, what you just said, I think is so important about executive involvement, but, but what else you said is you, you were like a social campaign. And I think the more, you know, if we were to take one holistic view and I'll speak for you and let me know if you disagree, the, what you need to do to be successful in this is take an event and turn it into a campaign. And you need that campaign campaign to align with your company's impact vision. All of those three things need to be aligned. And if you can make that company vision match, what the employees wanna do, that's where you're really gonna see I don't wanna say flywheel effects, but flywheel effects for your impact campaign. That's really gonna benefit your employee base retention, but also the business. And so I would say that's where we've seen things going. And I think that trend will only continue.

Ben - WeHero: I totally agree. So, Nope, you don't have to worry about me disagreeing with do on that.

Andy - WeHero: This is, what's great about that. We hear our learning series, you know, we get to do a little brain think from Ben and I's brain tends to work very similar. So, so we have similar views on

Ben - WeHero: Things sync together. Yeah. other things that people can do, like other ideas for ways that people can, you know, follow up after an event and keep making impact,

Andy - WeHero: Just want more examples

Ben - WeHero: Asking you, and then I can jump in and throw in a few more as well.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. I think the education component is really big afterwards. And so whatever your employees can do, can you provide them education materials to talk to the rest of their team about this? And I almost like it companies to budget for multiple events. So you have one event of a core group, and then they go educate that. And then you have a second event that all these people hear about what their employees did and they want their colleagues did, and they wanna do that as well. And so you can always just multiply that. I think there needs to be some giving component, whether that's, you know, the app that we talked about, whether it it's using our Chrome extension, whether it's just a crowdfunding campaign, whether it's on your CSR platform, some giving component. And then I like to also do some competition as well, just to kind of mark the beginning and the end of the campaign. And finally, I know I'm just flirting out a lot of things. I would say you need to think about how you market that campaign, especially if you're at a larger company and that needs to market that internally or externally. And how you talk about impact at the end of the campaign. That's what's that, that in my view is very important.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. To touch on some of, some of the things that you just mentioned, like giving employees the tools to spread the word some ideas for folks that are hosting volunteer events or doing volunteer events. Some of the things that we hero does that you can take and run with is providing those resources. A good example is for we hero's reforestation experience. We always send a thank you email that thank you, email details, a couple things. The impact of the experience for me is disease. So like the impact of the time B we provide tools first off to get in touch with one tree planted and also resources to do like in-person planting experience, but also like another tool called the global forest watch, which is a way that people can actually see what's happening with their tree canopy in their local county.

Ben - WeHero: And I think that's just an of providing people with tools to continue immersing and educating themselves in really cool, unique ways. As well as being able to spread the word and, and share about the good that they're actually doing. And to that point, I always tell people like during the volunteer events is like, if you really enjoyed, like this experience, follow the nonprofit, like these nonprofits, we work with the best nonprofits in the world, but for anybody that's doing these volunteer events, like follow the nonprofit, their stories are incredible. If you subscribe to their email, you don't get blasted for donation. Oftentimes they're just giving you content, educating you about the cause and updates about what they're doing. And that's just a great way to stay involved and educate yourself and keep sharing the word of what's going on.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, no, could couldn't agree more. And like we always say, if you are doing an event with us, if you're planning your own event, whatever it may be, give us a call. We're happy to share our ideas of what we've seen that can turn your event into more of a, you know, holistic experience for your employees as well as just for your whole entire company. And so feel free to reach out to us. And we are always happy to discuss and share ideas and help out in any way we can.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. Thanks everybody. Keep the impact going. That's the theme here.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. Keep the impact going and max and well, Ben, thank you again for, and we will be back here soon.

Ben - WeHero: Thanks everybody.