The modern corporate landscape is witnessing a remarkable shift towards social responsibility, marking a departure from the traditional focus solely on financial gains and professional titles. With millennials projected to dominate 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025, the emphasis now lies on finding workplaces that resonate with their values. Survey from Ernst & Young indicate a staggering 94 percent of millennials aspire to leverage their skills for societal betterment, often prioritising social impact over monetary rewards, willing to sacrifice a decent chunk of their average annual salary for roles aligned with their ethical compass.
This burgeoning mindset among the workforce not only influences career choices but also shapes the future trajectory of work dynamics. To remain competitive, companies must innovate to provide avenues for social engagement that resonate with top talent. Skill-based volunteering emerges as a powerful strategy, enabling employees to make meaningful contributions to society while also fostering their professional and personal development.
From Traditional Models to Skills-Based Engagement
The landscape of volunteering has witnessed a profound evolution in recent years, transcending traditional NGO paradigms to embrace a dynamic intersection of digital technology and professional expertise. This evolution fosters innovative collaborations among individuals, corporations, and nonprofit organisations (NPOs), catalysing impactful solutions to societal challenges and driving positive change.
Nasscom Foundation’s MyKartavya program is leading the charge in empowering corporate professionals to contribute their expertise to non-profit organisations, driving significant community development. Acting as a liaison for over 500 NGOs across India, MyKartavya facilitates the connection between these organisations and corporate volunteers. Through a structured approach, the program identifies credible NGOs with clear problem statements, forms volunteer teams based on skill matches, and manages projects to ensure effective collaboration and impactful results. This process concludes with a showcase and report to celebrate the volunteers’ achievements and the progress of the NGOs.
The benefits of MyKartavya are manifold. For corporate volunteers, it fosters a stronger workplace culture, promotes well-being, and offers substantial opportunities for professional development. Meanwhile, for non-profits, it brings in much-needed expertise and mentorship, fostering innovation and enhancing service delivery. Last year alone, the tech volunteering program supported 32 NGOs, contributing over 12160 volunteering hours, engaging 130 volunteers, and providing significant financial grants and cost savings upto INR 16,50,000. Collaborations with partners like Weeds and CMID have resulted in strategic digital enhancements, cost reductions, and increased donor revenue, further underscoring the program’s impact.
Empowering Corporate Professionals for Community Development
Digitalization has played a pivotal role in this evolution, making skill-based volunteering (SBV) more accessible and impactful than ever before. With the click of a button, volunteers can now lend their expertise to NPOs, offering support in areas such as teaching, finance, banking, and technology. This shift goes beyond simply lending a helping hand; it’s about individuals leveraging their professional skills to empower NPOs and community initiatives to thrive.
The benefits of skill-based volunteering are manifold. For employees, it offers personal growth opportunities, enhances leadership and teamwork skills, and fosters communication and problem-solving abilities. By collaborating with diverse groups and stepping out of their comfort zones, volunteers gain valuable insights into the diverse realities facing NPOs, contributing to their own growth in the process.
From the perspective of NPOs, SBV fills crucial gaps in expertise, enabling them to tackle projects and challenges that would otherwise be beyond their capacity. Whether it’s developing a data management system or revamping a website, volunteers bring invaluable skills and perspectives to the table, empowering NPOs to deliver their solutions more effectively.
The Role of Skill-Based Volunteering in Driving Social Impact
SBV helps bridge the digital divide, empowering NPOs with the tools and knowledge they need to thrive in an increasingly digital world. By serving as aggregators and project managers, volunteers ensure that digital empowerment becomes a reality for NPOs, creating a win-win scenario for all involved.
Corporate engagement in SBV has also seen a significant uptick in recent years, with more companies stepping up to mentor employees and support pro bono projects. Nasscom Foundation under the Pro Bono Residency Program with Adobe exemplify this trend, offering employees the opportunity to apply their skills to meaningful projects while fostering successful partnerships with NPOs.
One such NPO is Sankalptaru organisation, where volunteers under our Pro Bono Residency Program worked together on strategies for micro-donation pooling and blockchain campaigns. These initiatives not only raised funds but also enabled donors to track the impact of their contributions in real-time, illustrating the power of SBV to drive tangible results.
However, despite the progress made in SBV, challenges remain. Issues such as non-alignment of skills and opportunities, lack of institutional support, and deprioritization of volunteering efforts continue to hinder its full potential. To address these challenges, there is a need for greater sensitivity from organisational leaders and a shift towards institutionalising volunteering as a priority and process.
To realize the full potential of skill-based volunteering (SBV), it is imperative for organizational leaders to recognize its transformative impact and integrate it as a core aspect of corporate strategy. Companies must adopt clear metrics to assess the effectiveness of SBV initiatives, celebrate volunteer achievements, and ensure that volunteer skills align precisely with project needs. By fostering a supportive environment that values and promotes SBV, corporations can not only drive significant social change but also enhance employee engagement and satisfaction. We urge corporate leaders to champion this cause, making skill-based volunteering a cornerstone of their social responsibility efforts, thereby creating a mutually beneficial ecosystem for both the workforce and the community at large.