In collaboration with Volunteering Australia and Australia’s volunteering peak body, LBG has launched ‘Corporate Volunteering in Australia: a snapshot’. This paper pulls together data collected through Corporate Citizenship’s LBG framework that has tracked corporate community participation and value in Australia since 2006.
In addition to highlighting the many benefits of corporate volunteering for all stakeholders involved, the snapshot shows that many companies have a corporate volunteering program in place and intend to grow participation. Furthermore, employee participation has grown steadily since 2006, and Australian companies spend more as a percentage of their social investment budgets on corporate volunteering compared to global figures.
The snapshot also indicates that while (LBG member) corporate volunteers contributed over 1 million hours to the community in 2018, there is an additional 500 FTE of corporate volunteering capacity that is not utilised every year.
Over half surveyed by LBG indicate that they aim to increase their focus on skilled volunteering. This is welcomed news for Volunteering Australia’s CEO, Adrienne Picone.
“It is heartening to see that Australian businesses are keen to make a difference in the community through volunteering, and as a sector, we need to do more to ensure it’s easy to harness this enthusiasm. We know that corporate volunteering leads to people volunteering more out-of-work hours, so the ripple effects will be felt throughout the community,” Ms Picone said.
Corporate Citizenship’s Australian Director, Simon Robinson said, “Our data tells us that corporate volunteer participation is indeed growing in Australia, but it is clear that we need to do more to ensure it is more integrated into a company’s corporate citizenship strategy, and that the real value to the business, and the community is being realised.”
Volunteering WA’s Corporate Volunteer Council (CVC), chaired by Social Investment Manager Gemma Rapson from Woodside Energy, is encouraged by the data in the snapshot.
“The report does acknowledge that balancing workloads can present a challenge to companies. The CVC will continue to promote the far-reaching benefits of corporate volunteering to ensure it becomes part and parcel of every corporate social investment framework.” Ms Rapson said.
The paper can be viewed here.