Companies view volunteerism as a career-builder

NEW YORK -- Colleen Bramhall's friends used to think she sold out by going to work for Accenture as a consultant after college. Now she says they're jealous.

She's been to Sri Lanka and South Africa as a participant in Accenture Development Partnerships, a program that sends employees to work on nonprofit projects in developing countries.

"I used to be the one that was working for the man, the one with the corporate job that was the sellout, and now I think my friends are looking at Accenture in a different light, as a sort of corporate citizen," she said.

As more employees see volunteer work as a way to learn new skills or move their careers forward, volunteering has become a sort of corporate benefit. Companies are increasingly offering time off for volunteer projects, volunteer work on company time or company-organized efforts.

VolunteerMatch, an online database that pairs volunteers and nonprofits, now has roughly 70 corporate clients, up from 30 in 2005 and 47 in 2006. The client list -- which includes Google Inc., Target Corp., General Mills Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co. Inc. -- keeps growing, according to Jen Kim Field, director of VolunteerMatch Corporate Solutions, a division that creates employee volunteer programs for companies.

For an annual fee between $5,000 and $50,000, companies can give their employees access to a VolunteerMatch list of 55,300 nonprofits seeking help. Nonprofits join for free.

Field said one major attraction for companies is the chance to align their employee volunteer programs with the objective of their business. For example, VolunteerMatch has designed a program for the dog food maker Pedigree that features volunteer opportunities at animal shelters, and another for lifestyle cable channel HGTV that organizes remodeling-rebuilding projects with the nonprofit group Rebuilding Together.

General Electric Co. has tutoring programs that bring elementary school children from the Philadelphia public school system to GE offices for help on school work from employee volunteers. A program for high schoolers teaches networking, interviewing and resume-building skills.

Volunteer programs are tied to efforts to retain two major employee groups, younger workers looking for work-life balance and ready-to-retire older workers who want to serve their communities, said David Eisner, chief executive of the federal government's Corporation for National and Community Service.

Younger workers' priorities have been shaped by witnessing events such as the Sept. 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami, said Evan Hochberg, national director of community involvement at Deloitte.

Eisner noted volunteers often sign up to network or spend time with work friends and find they've improved their interpersonal skills, their ability to work as part of a team and their ability to overcome obstacles.