Two paths operate in parallel.
On one path, a corporate leader wakes up, goes to work, and deploys the skills she has been building over the course of her education and career. On another path, a nonprofit leader wakes up, goes to work, and deploys the skills he has been building over the course of his education and career. What keeps these paths separate? Capacity.
The modern American career path is a winding one, punctuated by chance encounters and big questions. What am I good at? What is the meaning of my work? What contribution do I want to make to the world? And while it may be true that these questions were largely left out of the traditional corporate path of yore, today’s professionals are demanding answers to these questions of both nonprofit and corporate employers alike. Yet while Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) opened the door to meaning and philanthropy in the business sector, the nonprofit sector still bears a disproportionate amount of the world-improving load.
The nonprofit sector is charged with saving the world, yet it pursues this mission facing constant limits to resources and capacity. While corporate companies often spend 20-35% of their budget on infrastructure–talent and leadership development, technology, innovation–nonprofits have an average of 2-5% to spend on those infrastructure-building functions. Yet the resource disparity between these two paths can be closed through an innovative approach to CSR: skills-based volunteering. Our CEO Danielle Holly explains on this episode of Re-Quilibrium.