Four out of the five readers of this article are volunteers in their community.
They are the referees at the junior sports games, the literacy mentors, board and committee members, the wildlife warriors and everything in between.
We know this because Volunteering Tasmania’s 2014 State of Volunteering Report found that 80 per cent of Tasmanians were volunteering.
But we don’t need a report to tell us that Tasmania’s volunteering culture is thriving because it’s around us every day.
We read about our friend’s weekend volunteering endeavours on social media, we hear about it over coffee at work and we see it when we drive past the sports fields on Saturday mornings.
But volunteering by, and within the Tasmanian corporate community, is less obvious.
Whilst corporate volunteering programs are becoming more common across Australia, the reasons organisations are introducing them, and the measures of success, are still being formed.
There is an increasing belief that organisations are motivated by the desire to support their communities whilst simultaneously growing their bottom-line through reputational, brand and competitive advantage.
The benefits for employee engagement are also believed to be a key motivation because of the ability to leverage an organisation’s community connectivity to attract the best talent, increase staff engagement and keep employees for longer by providing diverse and meaningful professional development opportunities through volunteering.
The number of Tasmanian businesses who offer structured corporate volunteering programs to allow their employees to undertake unpaid work for the benefit of a community organisation is not known.
To help increase our understanding of corporate volunteering in Tasmania, Volunteering Tasmania is seeking feedback from the business community.
If you have a corporate volunteering program, or if you’ve been contemplating one, or even if you don’t, Volunteering Tasmania wants to hear from you.
The survey results will be published into a research report and used to develop best-practice resources for organisations considering corporate volunteering programs.
The survey takes just 10 minutes and can be accessed here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CorpVol
By Alison Lai, CEO of Volunteering Tasmania
Tasmanian Business Reporter 
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