Corporate Volunteering: Top 7 Requests & the Bad, Better and Best Responses (3 of 7) - A blog by Chris Jarvis

 Companies want to engage their communities through employee volunteering programs. For most, this means calling a non-profit and scheduling an activity. But how should non-profits respond? Is there a “best” answer for everyone? (Part 3 of 7)

If men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, then non-profits and businesses must be from opposite corners of the universe. Their shoes, memos and boardrooms may look the same, but let me tell you - they do not speak the same language. 

Take, for example, the following: When a business says, “We want to help out for a day” the non-profits hears, “We want to give you a migraine.” Conversely, when a non-profit says, “We’d like a long-term relationship” the business hears, “We’d like to drain your wallets dry.”

Unfortunately, this debilitating language barrier exists between two groups who have the potential to significantly benefit one another. All that’s needed is a little translating....

And that’s what this blog series is all about. Thanks to Fabia Bates for initiating an interesting discussion on the newly launched www.i-volunteer.org.uk which effectively brings to light the communication issues to which I’ve referred. One writer from the Volunteer Center of South Derbyshire says she’d like to see longer-term, skills-based volunteering, but finds this concept difficult to sell to “CSR people with fixed ideas about why they are volunteering.” And so, we invite CSR people and Volunteer Centers alike to join us in this mutual effort to engage and understand each other....despite our differences.

The 7 typical requests by businesses of non-profits:

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