By Andrea Wong, President

According to the 2009 Deloitte Volunteer IMPACT Survey, 95 percent of non-profits need and want more pro bono support but most lack knowledge and information about where to get it.  This may be attributed to the fact that 50 percent of corporations do not offer skilled volunteer support, despite a belief in its value.

Here are some more startling findings from the survey that reveal a contradiction between theory and practice:

• Non-profits face real business issues; nearly 40 percent of respondents say they will spend $50,000 and $250,000+ of their hard-won cash on outside consultants

• Although more than 9 in 10 non-profits surveyed say they need more pro bono support, one-fourth (24 percent) have no plans to use skill-based volunteers or pro bono support in any capacity in 2009

• Even though the majority of corporate grant makers believe a pro bono contribution valued at $10,000 is worth equal or more than a $10,000 cash contribution, they rank skilled volunteerism as least effective in helping non-profits achieve their goals

• Although 78 percent of corporate grant makers think their employees’ skills would be valuable to non-profits, only 50 percent offer skilled volunteer support

As the Deloitte report concludes, “these challenging economic times offer a tremendous opportunity to deepen the relationship between non-profits and businesses.  With philanthropic dollars becoming more scarce, the need to hasten the adoption of pro bono as a complementary giving strategy has never been more urgent.  It is a creative and cost-effective way for business and non-profits to offset a decline in corporate giving in order to maintain, or even increase, their impact on the community.”

According to the survey, two-thirds (66 percent) of corporate grant makers surveyed report at least one barrier to giving pro bono support, such as lack of infrastructure to manage volunteers.  By partnering with Endeavour to set up a pro bono program, corporations can overcome such barriers and improve their social responsibility performance through employee engagement.  Please get in touch with Endeavour if your company is looking to maximize its social responsibility efforts through pro bono work in the non-profit sector.  You can email us at contact@endeavourvolunteer.ca

For more information from the 2009 Deloitte Volunteer IMPACT Survey, visit http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/About/Community-Involvement/volunteerism/article/7651773b93912210VgnVCM100000ba42f00aRCRD.htm

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Partner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.