Are you looking for more skilled volunteering opportunities for your staff?

Volunteering Australia believes that the challenge of skilled volunteering lies not simply in the sourcing of opportunities, but in the accurate assessment and matching of volunteer skills with volunteering projects. The problem can be compounded by a lack of understanding about how commercial skills can be applied in a not-for-profit context.

In 2007, NAB worked with Volunteering Australia to explore skill-based volunteering. NAB’s employee volunteering program has been running successfully for many years.   Recent trends have meant a greater appetite for skill-based volunteering, enabling the transfer of employees professional and business skills through volunteering.

The manager of NAB's volunteering program believes that "community groups have similar organisational challenges as for-profit enterprises such as managing change, coordinating the activities of branches in different geographic locations, recruiting and retaining human resources and developing new business concepts.  Skill-based volunteering requires greater commitment on behalf of all parties.  To be effective, particularly for the transfer of skills, a constructive relationship is necessary."

What did the project involve?
The first step was to accurately assess the skills of potential volunteers.  NAB employees possess a general set of financial skills and knowledge, but are also unique in terms of the breadth and depth of their knowledge and experiences, the additional skills they possess, and their own strengths and weaknesses.

The starting point was to bring together a group of NAB employees with a group of not-for-profit organisations in a half day workshop.  The two groups had the opportunity to discuss the types of skills NAB volunteers possess and determine how they might be applied within the not-for-profit context.

The not-for-profit organisations were then in a better position to identify and develop suitable projects which could be matched against the skills of NAB volunteers.

A toolkit was developed to help organisations manage skilled volunteers, covering issues such as recruitment, training, supervision, and ongoing project management. The guidelines were developed within the framework of the National Standards for Involving Volunteers in Not-for-Profit Organisations and are available via the NAB website.

Community expo brings together staff and the community 
In the final phase of the project NAB and Volunteering Australia organised a community expo, inviting over fifteen not-for-profit groups to participate. The event was held onsite at NAB and staff were encouraged to visit the expo during their lunch break.

The organisations came prepared with scoped volunteering projects (ranging from assistance with upgrading databases to communication support) and were able to showcase their work and discuss the role vacancies with NAB employees.

More than thirty projects were created and matched by NAB employees with the relevant skills.

Long term outcomes
The skilled volunteering toolkit is now available on NAB’s website - http://www.nab.com.au/About_Us/0,,88967,00.html. 

Once the not-for-profit group has developed their skilled volunteering position, they can complete NAB's volunteering e-form for the activity to be communicated to NAB employees.

The volunteer manager reported that “more than 150 skill-based volunteering positions have successfully filled since we held the expo in May 2007, creating new opportunities for our people to transfer skills through volunteering.”