Benevity’s State of Corporate Volunteerism 2026 report is out and, upon first glance, the trend feels promising. Employee volunteerism is up!
- The percentage of employee volunteers has grown 30% since 2019 to reach an average participation rate of 13.6%
- The number of unique individuals volunteering has tripled since 2019 and now stands at 1.87 million volunteers
- Volunteer hours have reached a record 23.7 million in 2025
Benevity acknowledges that the news isn’t all good. Because while participation numbers have trended upwards, the depth and impact has suffered.
Why?
Because we’re incentivizing, measuring and recognizing the wrong things (or, more accurately, not enough of the right things)
As a sector, we’ve done a genuinely good job of addressing an early-stage problem: awareness, access and first-time participation. Platforms like Benevity and others have made it simple, streamlined and accessible for employees to show up, participate, and track their hours.
Because KPIs largely focus on participation rates and volunteer hours, this makes perfect sense. We’ve built a system that does exactly what we asked it to do.
The issue isn’t that we did something wrong. It’s that we stopped there.
The next challenge – keeping people meaningfully engaged, developing leaders, and building a pipeline toward deeper, pro-social behavior – is where our real work lies.
The Red Flags To Pay Attention To
At first glance, more volunteers in easier-to-access project sounds like a win. But Benevity’s data reveals several signals we need to take very seriously:
- 60% of employee volunteers logged fewer than 5 hours/year
- The proportion of new volunteers are down
- Prior year attrition rose to 39%
When we put all of our eggs in the first-stage volunteer basket (see Journey of the Volunteer) and focus largely on transactional (see Transactional vs. Transformative volunteering) experiences, we disincentivize employees to participate again because we’ve sacrificed meaning at the altar of metrics.
The risk isn’t just stagnation. RW co-founder Chris Jarvis puts it plainly,
“If we’re not careful, this becomes the dollar store problem. It’s accessible, there’s lots of stuff, you can find the things you want, and you can buy it quickly – but it’s a revolving door. Eventually people stop going because it’s not important to them. There’s nothing special there.”
Worse, says Jarvis, “We may be actively inoculating employees against pro-social behavior.” A forgettable or perfunctory experience doesn’t just fail to inspire – it closes the door. “I gave at the office” is a real phenomenon, and when that’s the experience we’re designing, we’re creating it at scale.
The challenge, he adds, happens when there’s no room for growth for these first stage volunteers. And more experienced, intrinsically motivated second- and third- stage volunteers (see Journey of the Volunteer) are “eclipsed from the company’s program, because the company is driving towards a revolving door version of volunteering.”
What We’re Losing Sight Of
By narrowing our collective gaze to participation rates and volunteer hours, RW co-founder Angela Parker says, “We’re losing sight of the perspective shifts we can achieve through corporate volunteerism.”
- Greater awareness of important societal and environmental issues (Convictional shift) “I didn’t realize this was such a critical issue.”
- Deeper ownership of those issues (Psychological shift) “I see my connection to and responsibility for this issue.”
- Pro-social behaviors in response to these shifts (Behavioral shift) “I can – and will – do something about this.”
Parker says,
These perspective shifts can be tracked and measured just as easily as employee sentiment. They’re key indicators that culture shift is happening, and that the impact of volunteering will begin to show up in the behaviors of employees.
Importantly, Parker notes that this isn’t about the type or duration of volunteering. Even a short, episodic experience can be Transformative – if it’s framed and facilitated appropriately. The problem isn’t the format, length, or type. It’s in the absence of meaning.
Expand What We Measure
Keep tracking participation rates! They’re key lead indicators – plus, your leaders will continue to ask about them. But it’s time to expand those metrics beyond “leads” to “lags” – meaning what happens as a result. Because without better metrics, scale is destined to be short-lived.
The good news: if you’re already running post-event surveys, you’re closer than you think. You may just need to start focusing on different questions.
Here’s what to start tracking in your workplace giving/volunteering platform:
- Repeat participation: People return not because they’re required to but because the experience is intrinsically rewarding.
Nearly half of Benevity users already have the infrastructure in place to take the first step. Here’s what to start tracking in your employee/participant surveys:
- Issue awareness: Volunteers must understand who the task is for and why it matters. A well-crafted Brief (see The Three Keystone Behaviors) can provide proper framing. A pre- and/or post-project participant survey can help benchmark and track this metric.
- Critical reflection: As humans, we don’t understand what we think about something until we say something about it. A Debrief creates space for this reflection (see The Three Keystone Behaviors). You can include this in your pre-post survey as well.
- Behavior change: Transformative volunteering is ultimately about breaking down barriers between people and activating pro-social behaviors. Repeat volunteering is a key indicator of broader behavior change, such as new or increased donating, inviting a colleague to participate, seeking leadership development through volunteering, or increasing pro-social activities outside of work. Again, add this to your pre-post survey.
Even if your volunteerism is largely transactional right now, try taking your metrics and tracking one step farther than you have before. (Want help designing your survey? Reach out to me and let’s chat!).
Then, if you haven’t yet already, learn more about Transformative volunteering and start doubling-down on the meaning-making elements of your corporate volunteering program.
We’re Ready for This
The fact that Benevity is naming these gaps and acknowledging participation growth has come at the cost of depth is a strong signal that we, as a field, are ready to grow and deepen our efforts. This is an encouraging sign!
As a sector, we’ve done a pretty good job of addressing awareness, access and first-time participation by focusing on “lead” metrics. Now it’s time to level-up. To ensure your program is built to be sustainable and scalable, layer in “meaning metrics”. Without meaning, the numbers may climb for a while, but employees who’ve had a forgettable experience won’t come back and they’ll take others with them when they leave.
When we get meaning right, the data show that attrition drops, repeat participation rises, and employees start showing up not because they have to, but because it matters to them. That’s not only a better volunteer program – it’s the beginning of a culture shift.
