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The ABCs of corporate volunteerism |
When companies and nonprofits team up, not only do great deeds get accomplished, but employees return to the office with valuable teamwork, project management and leadership skills, as well as increased company loyalty. Here are some profiles of favorite volunteer efforts from eight of Atlanta's most successful companies, and why these worked so well for the employers, the employees and the nonprofits: A partnership worth the effort When McKieva Sullivan committed to be one of four NetBank Inc. employees teaching a 12-week course of 24 classes on how to use Microsoft programs, such as Word and PowerPoint, to adults in underserved communities, she said it was the biggest volunteer commitment she had ever worked on. However, she knew it was worth the effort when the mother of one of her students told her that her daughter had gotten a new and better job and bought a house, and she "couldn't have done it without the skills she was taking away from the class," said Sullivan, NetBank's manager of employee development. Indeed, Sullivan's story is just one of many anecdotes from people who took the classes and found new or better jobs, said Jack McMillan, CEO of TechBridge Inc., the nonprofit group that organized the classes. TechBridge's mission is to help other nonprofits leverage technology to better serve their communities, which makes it the perfect match for a technology company, said Greg Jones, NetBank's director of regulatory relations. "It's a very logical connection to put some of our employees in a program teaching [people] how to use technology that we are very familiar with," he said. Conversely, NetBank employees had a chance to hone their own skills in those applications, as well as communication, presentation, team dynamics, coaching and mentoring, Jones said. This is not the first time the Alpharetta-based Internet-only bank has stepped up to help TechBridge; indeed, the relationship spans more than three years, McMillan said. |
