Corporate Volunteering vs. Skills-Based Volunteering: Which Is Right for Your Programme?

Most corporate volunteering programmes start with activity-based volunteering: litter picks, food bank shifts, painting community centres. These are valuable, accessible, and easy to organise. But skills-based volunteering — where employees volunteer professional expertise — often delivers greater long-term impact per hour.

Understanding the difference, and how to blend both, is key to building a programme that works.

What is traditional corporate volunteering?

Traditional volunteering involves employees giving time to complete tasks that don't require professional skills: sorting donations, clearing land, serving meals, cleaning up public spaces.

Advantages: - Easy to organise and coordinate - Accessible to all employees regardless of role - Creates shared experience and team cohesion - High participation potential

Limitations: - Lower impact per hour (charities often have non-skilled volunteers available) - Less differentiated from other forms of volunteering - Can feel tokenistic without proper integration

What is skills-based volunteering?

Skills-based volunteering involves employees donating professional expertise: a solicitor giving free legal advice, a marketer helping a charity rebrand, a finance director supporting a board. Sometimes called "pro bono" when it's professional services.

Advantages: - Higher impact per hour — professional time is genuinely scarce for charities - More meaningful for employees (they use skills they've developed) - Stronger CV and development credentials - Differentiates your programme

Limitations: - Harder to organise and match - Lower participation (not all employees have relevant skills to offer) - Requires charity partner alignment

The case for blending both

The strongest programmes mix activity-based and skills-based volunteering:

• **Regular activity events** (monthly, accessible, team-building)
• **Skills-matching programme** (annually, sourced from volunteer applications, matched to charity needs)
• **Campaign events** (quarterly, themed around SDGs, mix of both types)

This ensures high participation rates while maximising impact.

How to track both types

Both types of volunteering should be tracked the same way: hours, participants, SDGs, outcomes. The difference is in the outcome metrics — for skills-based volunteering, outcomes might be "hours of legal advice provided" or "marketing strategy delivered."

With Kind Folk's outcome metrics system handles both types. You define the metrics relevant to each event — whether that's "meals served" or "hours of professional advice given."