The magic of money
The volunteers’ spirit of friendship can strengthen the local community spirit, and of course it will help their local needy. The obvious problem is that freeing up the time to volunteer has been known to consume time that could really be put to better use elsewhere. And as everyone knows, if you volunteer as part of a larger effort with co-workers, it’s likely to be far more fun. Companies like Adaptive Marketing LLC, a firm from Connecticut that developed financial and shopping benefits programs like ValueMax, are making themselves organizing points for volunteer activities and helping their employees find the time to help. Initiatives like these were always annual occasions – but today that can be seen as just the beginning. The employees of Adaptive Marketing are regularly given the chance to participate in community initiatives requiring greater and lesser amounts of effort. Using central organization individual volunteers’ tasks grew into events, with specific times, locations and dates posted in advance to make time management easy for volunteers. Giving volunteers a say in which initiatives the company supports is essential. Staff from Adaptive Marketing can choose from a great many volunteer drives. Previous and current projects have seen improvements made in areas as diverse as education for children and young adults, environmental programs, and events supporting performance art. In many cases, the more they enjoy it, the more productive they are, so by providing such a variety of activities Adaptive Marketing ensure that progress can be made in as many projects as possible. A one-off event or a regularly scheduled day – this is how a firm typically organizes this kind of volunteer initiative, perhaps at a nearby homeless shelter or the local school. Staffers may well say they don’t have any free time, but usually even they can often set aside the resources to lend a hand with an event taking up only a single day.
Applying their expertise to help the community around them is a practice with a long pedigree at many commercial enterprises. Like many other firms, Adaptive Marketing supports volunteer programs in part to generate positive feeling within its home community as a result of the hard work performed by its members of staff. What volunteer activities are certain to do is provide your staff with a positive feeling about themselves, the end result of which is a motivated firm.
Volunteering — coming together as a community, and assisting your local needy. To quote the old saying, “charity begins at home”. But how do you schedule this? And actually, it’s a great deal more straightforward to get involved when someone else has organized the event. Moreover, if volunteering becomes a larger effort with friends from work, it’s likely to be far more fun. The obvious step is for other companies to take a cue from far-sighted firms like Adaptive Marketing LLC. As well as financial and shopping benefits programs like Shopping Essentials (MVQ*SHOPESSNTLS) made to benefit consumers, Adaptive Marketing organizes local volunteer activity so that its employees have the time to help the local community.
When you think about company-supported charitable effort, you probably think of giving blood, maybe a Christmas call for donations, and no more, but this is simply no longer true. As an example, Adaptive Marketing has offered employees opportunities to get involved in everything from tennis shoe recycling campaigns to tree planting days. Once all the information — location, time, date, type, et cetera — had been announced it became very simple for employees to settle how much time they could give and how they’d be using it. Making sure volunteers have their say in what activities are available is also important. Employees of Adaptive Marketing, the company who developed the financial benefits program Shopping Essentials (MVQ*SHOPESSNTLS), choose from among a selection of local events. Previous and current projects have included work in areas as diverse as education for children and young adults, green programs, and events supporting performance art. The result is that Adaptive Marketing volunteers are presented with the chance to explore useful avenues in volunteer work and have fun joining in the process.
If businesses encourage their staff to get involved at a local school, it is frequently for a specific event or a regularly scheduled, ongoing undertaking. What this means is if you can only find some hours for a Saturday morning spent litter picking in the park or the public library’s used-book sale, you still have a chance to contribute.
Extending a helping hand is a long-standing tradition at many firms. Goodwill comes from the projects undertaken by Adaptive Marketing’s staffers through these company-supported projects. Another aspect is, one of the benefits of volunteer work is feeling better about yourself — a positive feeling that enriches the entire firm. Encouraging your staffers to find the time to volunteer can be its own reward.