The following is RW co-founder Angela Parker’s followup to Empathy in Motion: 6 Reasons It’s the Right Online Course for You. Read it here.
By Angela Parker
1. You’re pretty sure companies only volunteer to improve their PR and create appearances of doing good.
To be honest, we think most companies volunteer for their own benefit (in addition to the benefit of the employees and the community) – and that’s a good thing! We also find that it’s typically about more than PR. In our free online course Empathy in Motion, we’ll share the typical reasons companies volunteer, better reasons to volunteer, and even the potential financial benefit companies may gain from volunteering.
2. You’re tired of volunteering to paint a wall or plant some shrubs – you want to see some real impact!
We are right there with you! Traditional volunteer projects are good, but they’re often not good enough. In the second half of the course, we’ll take a deep dive with you into the differences between transactional and transformative volunteering. What does it look like? Why is it more impactful? With this information, we hope to offer a reminder of what inspires you to give back to the community and empowers you to offer meaningful experiences to others.
3. You sometimes plan and lead volunteer events and you could use some practical tips on how to quickly and easily make them more meaningful.
Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence says, “managers with excellent cognitive empathy get better than expected performance from their direct reports.” On a larger scale, empathy is what drives us to defend, protect, and care for each other. Volunteering can be a safe, nonthreatening space to develop empathy for others – and it’s not difficult to create the conditions for this to happen. In Empathy in Motion, we’ll teach you how to frame the volunteer experience to open up people’s minds to new ideas and inspire them to adopt new ways of thinking and being.
4. You’ve heard that volunteering can be a leadership development tool, but …
… how? Is there any research to back this up? As employee volunteering programs pick up speed, more and more research is being conducted to measure the personal and professional benefits of volunteering – including leadership development. Studies have been done that demonstrate how volunteering produces increased resilience, broader influence, hard and soft skills, expanded networks, and more. We’ll list some of the most interesting recent statistics and what you can do to integrate leadership development tactics into your company’s volunteer program – or into your own volunteer work.
5. You could use some quick and dirty tips on how to solve some of the logistical challenges that come up during volunteer events.
Ever wanted to hear from someone funny and creative (our very own Chris Jarvis, for one) on how to solve challenges that tend to present themselves during volunteer events? For example, is there a clever way for experienced volunteers to get newer volunteers to take on more responsibility without looking lazy? Or – what do you do when you want to hold a brief before the event starts, but everyone is late? Listen to these and other fun examples and ideas in Empathy in Motion.
6. You want to measure impact, but you have no idea how to do it or what to measure.
This is an exciting trend in the field of CSR and corporate citizenship and we are excited to participate in solving it! Join us to learn the categories that must be measured in employee volunteer programs in order to report on impact. We’ll make an effort to address the most pressing questions like:
- How do you measure engagement?
- How is impact defined?
- Is it possible to measure these things without adding resources to my team?
We’ll also tell you how the categories of measurement interrelate, and we’ll provide some practical steps for applying them to your employee volunteer program.
Enroll now!
Empathy in Motion: The Power of Employee Volunteering is a free online course and it’s open for enrollment now! Starting March 14, 2017, the course offers a new perspective on the power of volunteering that goes beyond the traditional transactional model. Anyone can enroll and can share course details with colleagues, other volunteers, and even family and friends.
You can view or download more information at rw.institute including outlines, overviews, FAQs or you can simply enroll by visiting openSAP.
Realized Worth designs and implements corporate volunteer programs for companies around the world. Want to discuss your program with us? We’ll be happy to hear from you! Find us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Angela Parker
Co-founder/Partner, Realized Worth
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