Learning Series | Skills-Based Programming

Summary: We share some background on skills-based volunteer and how it's becoming more popular within the broader corporate social responsibility space.

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Transcript:

Andy - WeHero: Ben, thanks. For joining us for, this is our second conversation we've had about these topics, right?

Ben - WeHero: Number two at two of many to come.

Andy - WeHero: Exactly exactly. Well today we've got an exciting topic. I would say this is probably one of the hottest topics in the CSR world. So excited to get your take on it. The topic is skills based volunteering and what that means for the industry. So maybe we'll just start, you know, a lot of people may be familiar with skills based volunteering. Some people may not be, do you just wanna give a quick overview on what is skills based volunteering and maybe your opinion on why there's so much hype around it right now?

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. oh yeah. Great. And then I'm gonna have you double click on anything I missed here, but so traditional volunteering, we can think of it as just a donation of your time to a nonprofit organization or a cost. It doesn't require you to have a specific skillset too often. It's just that dedication of time. An example of this is going to a local food bank and just volunteering your time to support there. Skills based volunteering is different in the sense that we're taking core skill sets that you or your team or your employee base has at a company and applying that strategically to nonprofit gaps, problems, and opportunities that they have. So a good example of this is taking a bank. For example, financial literacy is a really good cause that they can support, or you're taking professionals that are experienced and seasoned in banking and educating in banking fundamentals.

Ben - WeHero: They can again go to underserved student populations, those coming out of incarceration folks coming out of homeless situations and support them, getting them back on their feet with financial literacy, how to properly handle your finances. And that's an example of taking a core skillset that your company or a team has and applying it to a gap or challeng or a cause. And I could really use that. One of the reasons why I think this is so popular right now is one the impact phenomenal. Like when we take core skill sets that a team and a company has the amount of impact that can be made in a very short amount of time. It's pretty amazing. Some of these problems that are being tackled by companies in a skill space, volunteering format it's saving these nonprofits tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars for staff that they can't afford to hire.

Ben - WeHero: I think another reason why skill space is hot right now is we're all stuck at home. And so when you look at a lot of tech companies, you look a lot of companies that like, we have a, a strong desire to volunteer, but we can't get out to the food banks. Like we used to, we can't get out and clean the, you know, parks like we used to, like, we need to be at home. That's like our company mandate right now. And so for them to be able to still volunteer and make a large amount of impact from behind the computer screen, tackling really big problems that these nonprofit organizations have. I think it's been a big driver into just awareness around skills, space, volunteering, and why so many companies are interested. Curious if there's anything you could provide, Andy, that just clears up what skills space is. And also curious to your thoughts in regards to why it's just so hot right now.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, I think I think you gave a great overview of, of what it is. I mean, there's so many different AMS and structures to it that maybe we'll get into that a little bit later. I think, you know, to me, the reason that this is so important right now in essential is exactly you, like you said, you know, not everyone can get out there and do hands on work. And I think the industry, the overall corporate citizenship industry is starting to realize it's actually higher impact to put your employees who have a really spent and leverage that to support a nonprofit. And, and I think, you know, it's easy to imagine nonprofits being a resource constrained environment and that's true, but I think the, the way that we see skills based volunteering, it's not really head count savings. It's actually value add, you know, and we can talk to you the example around the logistics need, but if you bring in specialized people have built logistic systems for some of the biggest distribution companies in the world, they can just help through advice and guidance to a nonprofit trying to distribute to let's say food banks.

Andy - WeHero: And so I think there's a lot of examples where, you know, the impact per hour time for an employee is just gonna be, I would even say a hundred times or a thousand times more beneficial to the nonprofit. And so I think I used the word hype before, but I actually think this is probably the future in a lot of ways. You wanna align people to the highest value of their time for these nonprofits and ultimately connecting the, the impact. So, so hype was a bad word. I think there's, there's real meat behind this. And I'm excited to see it gain a lot of traction.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. It's really exciting right now. And the nonprofits like Andy, you and I are on the phone with nonprofits all the time. We're on the phone with a nonprofit yesterday. That's just like really excited about that opportunity to have trained professionals come and solve really focused problem for them.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. You know, question we get from companies occasionally that you know, I've, I've heard your thoughts. And if I think it'd be helpful to share is, you know, companies coming to us saying, you know, I don't know anything about skills based, are we a good fit for it? How would you advise a company whether they should be focusing on skills base or if they should just stick to basic time based volunteering?

Ben - WeHero: I think the easy answer is that any company is a good fit for skills space. It's just identifying the skills area as well as matching you up with a nonprofit, right? And that's the hardest part of the puzzle is like, what are the skills that you have to offer? What's the value that you have to offer and let's find that right. Nonprofit where they can truly benefit from the skills that your team members have and that matching game, if you will, that matchmaking effect like that takes the most amount of time in is challenging. And so to your question, Andy around, is this a fit for my company? Or should I be thinking about just time based volunteering time based volunteering, one of the benefits is that it's easy. It's a really easy program to set up. It's really easy to do time based instead, a program or people are donating time to just solve any kind of a cause whatsoever.

Ben - WeHero: It is, I will say definitely much more complicated to do skill space the right way and to make sure that a you're not wasting your employees time, but B you're not wasting the nonprofits time. The last thing we want is to try to have an employee base work with a nonprofit fit on a skills space program only to find that that match wasn't done the right way, and then it's not making impact, but we find more and more companies today to your point, Andy, that, you know, they're more excited about skills space. They're starting to see that opportunity and they're willing to invest the time and the resources to do it the right way. Because they can see the benefit that has on just employee morale. The employees are really excited to be working on something that they think they're actually making an impact towards. And the nonprofits are equally excited solving core problems for the nonprofit. And so curious to your thoughts to your questions there, but just what I'm seeing and some things to think about if I'm a company trying to make that decision again, I think any kind, but he can do skills space, just do wanna invest the time to do it the right way.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think every company has a unique skill, otherwise they wouldn't be in business and there are hundreds of thousands of nonprofits around the world that, that can use that skill. And, and to, to the greater good, I think to your point, it is kind of the next level of volunteering. And with that, there's an increased level of time commitment and thought that needs to go behind it because it's more specialized. And obviously, you know, we obviously do that for a lot of companies. There's other services that do that. And I would say, you know, us as well as the other services that provide skills based volunteering we make it easier and we take, I would say the, the vast majority of the workload, but there's still an increased amount of time that's needed for a company just to continue making sure this is a success first time based volunteering. And so I think if you are extremely time constrained, it may not be the best fit. Even if you hire a partner to really run the program for you.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. And the last thing I'll add too, I think there's companies out there, you know, it's easy to say, everybody's everybody has skills they can offer, but I think it's, it's really tough for some companies to identify what that skillset is. For example, I might be a tire company, I sell tires. What can I do if I sell tires to benefit or nonprofit organization? And one of the things I'll add that's really exciting is that you can tap into skills that are outside the core functions of your company that your employees have. And so for example, we're surveying a company right now and, and understanding quickly that these employees, they have a vast variety of skill sets outside of their day to day work. And all of a sudden they can take those hobbies and interests that they have outside of their day to day in the office and apply them towards a nonprofit. That's really exciting. It's also a great opportunity for employees to get to know each other a little better and what they're really good at. And so just some ideas for folks to think about when they're looking at what skills do we have to offer.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. A hundred percent. It not only augments that individual's experience because they're learning, facing new problems and growing, but they're also building a deeper skillset to support their company. And so I think there is a little bit of mutual benefit to pushing individuals in this way. Yeah. So the most common question we get asked Ben around skills based is how much time do the employees need to give. And that's probably the most commonly asked question and probably has the widest range answers. Do you wanna give a quick overview of the different programs we've run? The, the things that we've seen, just how wide it varies from a time based commitment.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. Cuz I think you're spot on, we get that question a lot because it's daunting, right? Oh, skills, space volunteer program. Like how much, how many months of time or weeks of time do I need to give up for my employees to do this? And so there's different timelines for volunteer programs like this. I would say you have your long term skills space is volunteering. You know, Andy and I are working on a program right now. That's a three week program. Like these employees are gonna work with these nonprofit organizations for three weeks. That's an amazing gift from a company to be able to dedicate three weeks of time. But there's a lot of companies that are in situations where we can really only dedicate a day or two at a week at most. We can only dedicate, you know, we're willing to dedicate two hours a week and we're willing to do that over six months.

Ben - WeHero: And so I think any amount of time is really valuable. Like, and your time is, you know, incredibly valuable as a resource for your company and your employees. It's then back to that matchmaking principle of like, okay, this amount of time and you have this skill set let's fund a nonprofit that can work with at and benefit from that dedication of time and resources. And so we've done again, those long term programs, we've done hackathons for good where it's a full one day event to solve just a really rapid response pro problem that nonprofit's currently having. It's the perfect fit for this company to solve. And so it, a lot of different timelines and I think what's really important to make these successful for your company is building them from the ground up. We need to understand what you have available for resources and time. And then also identifying that nonprofit partner. There's no plug and place solution here. And I, my opinion that works really well and building these from the ground up is what's making them really successful. We love to hear your thoughts on this.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I always I always love getting that question cause there's so many great examples you can use, you know, on the shortest end, we've helped executive teams where they're doing kind of a consulting case study where a nonprofit comes in, gives them a download on the biggest strategic issues they're facing over 45 minutes to an hour. The executives pepper them with questions. They spend that evening at home, reflecting on it, sharing thoughts and guidance. And then they come back the next morning for an hour session to give their feedback to the, the, the exact team of the nonprofit. And so that takes two hours of working time, obviously time in the evening. So maybe three to four hours total. And, and so it may not seem like a large impact, but imagine getting business advice from, from the largest, you know, corporations, executive teams for these nonprofits and just how, how impactful that can be all the way to, you know, there's some incredible I companies out there that give employees one day a week for up to six months and, and that's obviously a massive resource commitment and, and only can be done by big companies.

Andy - WeHero: But the impact that that individual can have is just so massive. I think probably the sweet spot for most companies is somewhere in the middle where it's maybe it's two days in a row or maybe it's a week a week, a day, a week, every month or something like that. There's a lot of different ways to play it. And I think the right thing, as you said, is finding that match between the nonprofit need the individual skills as well as the time commitment. And, and that's kinda the puzzle that we're always playing and trying to make these programs successful.

Ben - WeHero: Yep. It's a dance. It's always a dance.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, exactly. You know, if you were sitting, let's say, you know, someone from a CSR team comes to us or the head of HR comes to us wanting to do this. They weren't gonna choose us to help run their program. What is the one tip you would give them to try to launch this successfully?

Ben - WeHero: I think it's making sure you're thinking about your are goals. I think a lot of companies get really excited and it's, it's wonderful that they're excited to set a skills based program, but I think it comes back to what are the social impact goals that your company has and are we rowing the boat in the same direction? So often we see companies that are launching volunteer programs here, giving programs here, and they're going all over the place when, if they just lined and, and rode that both the same direction, you know, my analogy take here to leave it, but you know, that's, what's gonna maximize impact. And so I always ask companies, what are your goals behind launching a program like this and how does it align to your social impact goals for the entire company? Something really important to think about.

Ben - WeHero: And I ask companies to take away if they're not working with us. The other big piece is really think about the amount of resources, both employee capital and time that you wanna invest in a program like this, cuz that truly impacts that equation for return on investments. And that return is the amount of impact we can make for a nonprofit organization. And so and I, I would say one other goal that, you know, we talked a little bit about this, but there's social impact goals. Like the actual impact we're providing for the nonprofit organization, but the goals both go directions. What do you want your employees to get out of this? Is it new skillsets? Is it, you know, higher employee morale? Is it to assist you in recruiting brand sentiment? What is it that you want to get out of this as well? Think about that, cuz that's important. And nonprofits so often are willing to work with you to help, you know, build that skillset, train employees on something new. And I think those are just things that people oftentimes miss. And it's really important to think about to make sure, you know, you, as the professional launching this program, it's gonna be successful and our job is to make sure that it is as successful as possible for you curious to your thoughts on that.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, the exact same thoughts. I mean you need to make it aligned to your overall mission. And I think if you don't don't have a mission yet, it's a great way to start a mission and then make sure that aligns to your business purpose, your business case then you really need to make sure it meets the nonprofits goals, your individual goals, as well as the individual growth goals. So I think everything you said, I think is a great summary of how to kick off one of these programs. Cause it can be a little daunting if you're sitting in the seat and responsible for, for creating it.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah.

Andy - WeHero: Now a little bit of a, a harder question for you. You know, I think one thing people may look glance over here is the need for financial support for a nonprofit, when doing a skills based program. Do you maybe want to just shed a little context around that and the relationship between nonprofits and companies and how this works?

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. And so, and is talking about, it's a really good point. Some nonprofits may expect a donation for doing a skills space program with them. Why, you know, a lot of people go like, you know, I'm in dedicated employee resources, do this. Why do I have to do a financial contribution on top of that? One thing you have to think about is that nonprofits have to dedicate time to make sure that these projects are being executed correctly. And so it's something we want to think about to make sure that the nonprofits being compensated for that time. And it also helps guarantee that impacts gonna be made is something I want to add. Our goal when we do a skill space project, is that yes, we're gonna make impact, but sometimes that's not always the case. And so if we can compensate the nonprofit in an equal fashion, that's a really nice, generous thing to do.

Ben - WeHero: And it really helps the nonprofit out. One thing that we do look for when we're working with companies is nonprofit relations. They already have, you know, so these nonprofits they've done grants to have done volunteer experiences with. And that's really helpful cuz sometimes we work with organizations that they don't want a financial contribution they've already been supported by your company in such a powerful way that they're willing to continue working with you. They have that trust and they just wanna make sure that they're maintaining that relationship with your employees, with your brand. That's really powerful to them. I think it's also really important to look at the project itself, you know, for a hackathon for good, those are shorter term projects. We're solving smaller problems if you will, in many cases as a result. So sometimes the financial contribution's nice, we're doing long term programs.

Ben - WeHero: Oftentimes the value we're providing is really high. So maybe the, you know, financial contribution needs to change a little bit again, it's that, that science and that formula of figuring out what's the right mix of everything from the employees you're bringing on to do the skills space program, the relationships you have with that nonprofit the actual impact you plan on making that all dictates what a donation's going to look like. But to answer Andy's original question, that's why nonprofits are looking for something like that and why you should think about that when you're budgeting for social programs and doing those skills based programs. Andy curious if you have any additional

Andy - WeHero: Points for that. Yeah. The one thing I would, I would highlight is, you know, this is just a reinforcing mechanism for ensuring that skills based is aligned with your social impact strategy. If you have a well defined strategy and you're supporting, you know, nonprofits, the correct nonprofits that fit into that, you know, whether that's financially or with time based volunteering, it's great to align your skills based, volunteering with those same nonprofits. You have a deeper relationship with them. They understand your long term focus, how it fits in your business use case. And so I would just reinforce that it's really important to use those relationships for skills based. Otherwise, you know, it's hard to start a new relationship this way.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. To Andy's point like the longer you have a relationship with the nonprofit, the more impact it can make and, and the faster you can make impact you know, nonprofits that have been working with companies for years, that's amazing. They have so much trust. They've been getting so much support and you're just compiling that impact over and over again in this multiplier effect, if you will. And when you take a look back, you know, five years later and go look at what we did for this nonprofit organization and look where they are now compared to when we started working with them, that's really powerful and something really cool to take a look at.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. All right. You know, I'm gonna ask this cuz this is a core value of us, of our business impact, you know, it's really easy to measure hack from a time based volunteering, you know, Hey, we provided this many people with food today. We planted this many trees. How do we think about measuring impact for skills based and how should a company, let's say they're running this on their own. How would you advise them to measure impact?

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. to Annie's point like with the traditional model, you typically are measuring impact at the end, right. You know, we donated this many water filters, we built this many backpacks. That's a really easy way to measure that kind of impact with skills based. I think the big difference is we're measuring impact throughout the project. And when we're designing out the projects with nonprofit and the companies that the employees are gonna tackle, we're already thinking at that stage, what is the impact that this could have on the nonprofit organization? So in that design phase, when we're working with the nonprofit, we already have an idea of if this is done correctly, what can this do for the nonprofit organization? And so we're already looking at it that early on in a skills space program. And then it's following that through all the way through the execution and then checking in weeks to months later to see how that problem that we solved or how that new build or opportunity that we tackled for non-profit organiz, how it's actually performing out in their actual world.

Ben - WeHero: And that's, it takes time and it takes a really close relationship with members of the nonprofit organization to garner that data. Also think having partners not to plug we here, but having partners that can, you know, help you garner that data and work closely with the nonprofits is really helpful to get to that end result for oftentimes a company, which is an impact report to understand was the actual impact that we made. So again, it's very different than measuring impact for traditional volunteering. It's done over the course of the entire project and it starts as early as designing out the projects. Curious, Sandy, if you have anything you want to add there.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, I would agree. I would just say it's a lot harder and it takes more time to calculate the impact. We can very easily calculate volunteer time, hourly value of that volunteer time, which is so important to put into some of the larger CSR software platforms that, that so many of our customers use. But you know, when it comes to the end of the year, you know, the correct impact report, there is a bit qualitative feedback. With these impact reports that I think is important for a company to recognize you're not gonna get perfect data out. You know, we had a team of five working, you know, with a food bank that led to 15,000 more people getting fed this year, oftentimes because the impact lasts for years and years. And so we can estimate that using educate your guess is, but it's not as simple as time based volunteering or financial giving for that matter either.

Ben - WeHero: Yep. A hundred percent agree.

Andy - WeHero: All right. Last question. Wanna make it a little fun you know, a lot about skills based volunteering, you also know a lot about your own personal skills. If you could dream up in skills based project for yourself, what would it be and which nonprofit would you work with and how would you support them?

Ben - WeHero: Oh man, the question's gonna come back your way. So get ready.

Andy - WeHero: I wasn't ready for that. Ben. I wasn't ready for that

Ben - WeHero: On the hot seat I'm gonna, I would love to design out my, my skillset a little more, but on a hot seat, I would say I would love to help a, a brand redefine themself and almost like redo their website so that they could guard a bigger audience, help communicate their message of what they're actually trying to accomplish. Something that I just really enjoy and really build out a product strategy for, for them, if you will. I think that's something that I would love to do to help. I love right now companies that are focused on sustainability. And so, you know, one tree planted heifer international. I think these are wonderful organizations that I'm really passionate about and would love to support them with something like that. So in the hot seat, that's what, I'm, that's my answer right now. So you gotta answer

Andy - WeHero: Now. Yeah. Well, knowing you and working with you for years, I can say you do have a very unique skillset of bringing websites, products to life. Obviously, if you've been to the we hero website that is Ben's handy working, which is rare to see one of the, co-founders still doing the website. But that's cuz you you're so good at it enjoying it. And so it's awesome to see that and I, you could definitely help just a ton of nonprofits. So, so I'm not surprised by your answer,

Ben - WeHero: My insight into the day to day. Just

Andy - WeHero: So, so my answer, he is for those that know a bit about my background, I think I, I kind of look at things from an operational financial lens and I think there are so many nonprofits out there that are subscale, who don't have the resources for kind of the right financial tracking and impact tracking and really into hire back office to get the necessary donations, to bring them to scale. Right. It's a little bit of a chicken in the ag, you know, how do you get the, you know, the first lump of money needed to hire the right people to continue fundraising. And so I, I don't know a specific nonprofit that I'd work with, but I think I'd love to help nonprofits kind get that set up in the back to help them launch and be ready for scale which would be fun. And I think it it'd be great. It's almost like consulting for some of these nonprofits and giving them the kinda the, the, the boring Excel work that's needed to really be successful. So that would be my my dream skills based project. Probably.

Ben - WeHero: Do you have a theme like education, financial literacy, health, food insecurity, water insecurity, curious like where you would go?

Andy - WeHero: It's a great question. I, I don't, I mean, I could talk ends and ends about, you know, my favorite areas. And we got into that a little bit during our last conversation, I would say you know, separate from helping these nonprofits. I do have a lot of experience in the financial space. And so doing, I used to volunteer directly with you know, first generation investors who wanted to get into the investing world and help them prepare resumes, where to interview and all of those things. And I think separately, that's just something that I think is a group rate cause and an area that I probably should go back and, and do more skills based volunteering. Cause it's such, so a need right now.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. And to skillset Andy has and an idea for folks that are looking for skills based opportunities, Andy's really good at operations and efficiency. And a lot of nonprofits while we're doing these programs is they're just resource trapped. They don't have the people in place. They don't have the financials in place. But you know, Andy's really good at going and taking existing resources and going, you don't need more resources. You just need to use your resources more efficiently. And here's some ways that we can do that. Lot of nonprofits need help with that. So if there's companies out there that have that skillset.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, yeah. We hear that. Almost on every nonprofit call. Yeah. Is, you know, our board is asking us to deliver 15% more impact and we have to cut our budget by X amount. And so there's so many process focused consultants, you know, business folks that are just so in need at these nonprofits. And so we, we could, we could share ideas all day long Ben, but I wanna make sure we keep this brief. Anything else you would add on skills based volunteering that we haven't covered.

Ben - WeHero: People need help reach out. Like we want to help you make sure that this is successful and we're happy just to brain Jim or answer questions or give you a ideas. Our job is just to make sure that we can help you make an impact. And so if you're thinking about this, you're already doing a great job. Just even considering this for many companies, this is still very new. And so just exciting that you're thinking about this and that you're thinking about taking that leap and we're here to help.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, absolutely. We're always happy to bring jam, even if you don't wanna work with us as can tell, we get really excited by helping nonprofits. And so we're always happy to chat through this and share some of the ideas that we've had for doing this last couple years.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. Perfect. Thank you everybody.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. Thank you, Ben. Thank you. Look forward to the next conversation.

Ben - WeHero: Two of many, like I said.