Painting the walls of a classroom. Participating in story time at the local library. Planting flowers or a garden at a nursing home: Those are some ways employees have traditionally volunteered with nonprofits through their employer.
Then there are initiatives such as the one this year in which 40 employees from LinkedIn’s advertising unit built and optimized more than 2,400 ad campaigns for 90 nonprofit organizations on the world’s largest professional networking site.
It’s an example of skills-based volunteering (SBV), which “involves a little more effort than traditional volunteering,” said Leila Saad, CEO of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Common Impact. The organization acts as an intermediary to create partnerships between companies and nonprofits.