Global Trends in Skill-Based Volunteering - NAB Report

National Australia Bank has released a report on global trends in skill-based volunteering, as part of its sponsorship of National Volunteer Week.

The report, which draws on best practice and developments internationally, is an up-to-date analysis and examination of how corporations are tapping into skills they hold in areas such as marketing, IT, property and asset management, financial planning, accounting, business strategy and human resource management, and transferring those skills to build capacity in NGO’s and other community organisations.

Public policy and economic consultancy firm Allen Consulting Group carried out the research.

Key findings include:
– a rapid increase in community sector demand for volunteers with business skills and expertise;
– a desire by corporate volunteers to apply not only their general skills, but their work skills in particular to assist the community and;
– skill-based volunteering being able to engage employees in a manner far more powerful than general volunteering activity.

The report says its research indicates that until recently, the shift in skill-based volunteering is based less on deliberate strategy and more on responding to requests from volunteer hosts for more strategic, skill-based volunteer time.

It says that if skill-based volunteering has not been planned as part of an explicit employee volunteering approach, it has most often evolved as apart of a general approach to corporate volunteering.