Expanding the volunteer workforce - capacity building

Yesterday I talked about creating a supply chain to support multiple non profits doing similar work in the same city, or in many different cities. I concluded by saying "While we have a constant challenge of maintaining this information and supporting the technology, the real challenge is increasing the number of potential volunteers and donors who look at this information every day."

While in the National Conference on Volunteerism and Community Service I heard many corporate leaders talk about how important it is to encourage employee engagement and how worker talent could be used to address important issues in non profits. I saw many examples of university-community engagement.

With this chart I'm suggesting that teams of volunteers in consulting companies like Deloitte, Accenture, Booze Allen, Boston Consulting, etc. or in business schools at high profile universities, could be challenges to define this problem, and could be the volunteers who work with other institutions and corporations to help them implement this strategy.

The current system puts the burden on non profits to be able to create this model, then market it with limited resources to hundreds of potential sources of volunteers and donors. It's a redundant process and only works for a few organizations with brilliant marketing leaders, and high profile causes.

Imagine if responsibility for resource generation moved out of the non profit sector and into intermediary organizations who want to create positive public visibility, offer extra learning and networking opportunities for high potential employees, and will benefit from a resolution to the social issue being addressed.



This chart outlines what I'm suggesting. Instead of recruiting a few more tutors/mentors from big consulting firms, my goal is to recruit some talented people who will become the sales force for tutoring/mentoring and who will use their consulting skills to help business and professional groups throughout the Chicago area(and in other cities) create leadership teams that encourage volunteer involvement by employees and customers, using the Program Locator and Tutor/Mentor Maps, as tools to choose where to get involved and to find contact information for volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in these areas.

This is just one way pro bono volunteers from specific industries can leverage there talent to impact the flow of resources, and the supply chain infrastructure, supporting an entire sector of non profit organizations doing work that is important to the community, and the industry.

I'll write more tomorrow.