Maximising Impact: Corporate Donations Vs Volunteering

In the realm of corporate social responsibility, and with so many different ways to give back as a business, it’s often unclear how you can do the most good as a team within your available budget. One of the most common toss ups is between offering a volunteering employee benefit or simply making monetary donations to causes you align with.

Many companies hesitate to commit to employee volunteering programs, fearing that the costs might outweigh the benefits. However, what they may not realise is that skilled volunteering can be surprisingly affordable and can yield remarkable benefits for both their local community, and their own bottom lines.

In this article, we’ll shed light on the crucial distinctions in impact for charities between these two options, and we'll delve into which choice is the easiest and most suitable for your business and which provides the best "bang for your buck" concerning both social and business impact.

It is fantastic, and there is no way my charity could afford to prepare advice for us like this!

Tina from ‘Our Only World’ Charity after receiving help from skilled corporate volunteers.

With the traditional view on corporate philanthropy, we still see the majority of big businesses opting for donating significant sums to 1 or 2 chosen charities.

Financial contributions are obviously very valuable to resource-poor nonprofits, and can allow for much faster responses to emergencies.

But in the last decade or so, the employee volunteering approach has seriously grown in popularity, with 73% of companies now implementing some kind of volunteering policy according to the CECP, and for good reason…

Engaging employees in skilled volunteering presents an unparalleled opportunity for companies to channel their expertise directly into non-profit causes. Providing charities with year-round access to a huge pool of talent with a wide range of skills to tackle any job they have to advance their cause.

While the help of immediate financial aid shouldn’t be downplayed, instead employee volunteering can create a much longer lasting impact for charities, and can create a more meaningful, longterm relationship between your business and the charity.

Now the answer to this question really depends on your reasons for donating or volunteering, and what you’re hoping to get out of it as a business.

With the mounting pressure from the public for businesses to be socially and environmentally responsible, it’s more important than ever to think about how you can give back as a brand. But where is your money best spent?

For a lot of decision-makers, donating to a cause they are passionate about can seem like the easy, quicker route to making an impact, and creating some positive PR for your brand.

Organising regular, or even one-off volunteering days and maintaining long-term partnerships with charities can seem like a time-consuming task, but there are partners out there like Matchable that can help you reap the benefits of higher employee engagement and improved retention at a cost comparable to just donating!

While donating a large one—off sum to a charity can look good for your brand, and perhaps help towards building a stronger relationship with your desired customer base that cares about that cause, that’s typically where the benefits end.

In comparison, plenty of research has shown that skilled employee volunteering can:

• Reduce employee turnover by up to 57%

• Improve the mental wellbeing of your team

• Strengthen relationships between colleagues and departments

• Provide employees with an exceptional platform to develop their skills in a real-world context. This hands-on experience fosters personal and professional growth, making it a powerful tool for talent development.

With 60% of employees leaving companies due to a lack purpose* and seeking a fresh challenge, a solution like this that has been proven to re-engage your team can’t be undervalued!

So, how does volunteering, and donating money to charities look in practice? Below we’ve broken down an example scenario to help you picture exactly how the impact to charities, and your business can differ long-term…

Let’s take an example where your business donates £3,000 to a charity of your choice.

In this scenario, it’s a one-off (or annual) payment for you, and the charity immediately gets £3k worth of support towards their cause.

In comparison for a similar annual spend (depending on your team size) you can potentially get access to a platform like Matchable for your entire workforce, where they can create unlimited impact for charities with as many hours of remote volunteering from their desks as you allow as the employer. On average, our innovative, skills-based volunteer projects create £1,920 of impact for our charities compared to the industry average of £13.20 from traditional volunteering programmes.

This is why on average companies 15x the value of their impact through Matchable over 12 months compared to a one off monetary donation.

In addition to this much higher positive impact, there are monetary incentives for you to offer a volunteering benefit too….

If you’re curious about what a volunteering policy might look like for your company, and the costs involved, you can book in a chat and a demo of the platform here.