Corporate volunteering: from food packing to skill sharing

As the volunteer sector becomes more adaptable and diverse, corporate volunteering is rich with scope for further innovation. Romy Sandler, Staff Engagement Lead for the Macquarie Group Foundation in Australia and New Zealand, shares some of the initiatives Macquarie has developed to engage employee.

This story is part of our focus on 2024 National Volunteering Week. See our other stories: A sector at the crossroads: how volunteering needs to change and Flexibility is key to my volunteering with Delta Therapy Dogs.

We’ve implemented some popular and diverse incentives, such as two days of paid volunteer leave and rewards of up to $500 a year for time tracked on our Benevity platform, which can be donated to an employee’s not-for-profit of choice. We also hold an annual global event called Foundation Week, where staff are encouraged to volunteer with incentives for their selected charity of up to $5,000.

Ad hoc team volunteering ranges from supporting organisations including Our Big Kitchen,OzHarvest, IndigiGrow and RSPCA to name a few, to more structured, Foundation-promoted programs with our long-standing partners Australian Business and Community Network and Raise.

The Macquarie Group Foundation has also focused on utilising the wide array of skills of our Macquarie staff by partnering with the Social Impact Hub. Our Social Enterprises Needing Development (SEND) program connects people from across Macquarie, in different business groups and seniority levels, with for-purpose organisations to volunteer their expertise on a range of social issues. Our people have found these experiences to be particularly meaningful and we were pleased that more than 50 employees signed up to work with 10 social enterprises last year, prompting us to renew the partnership with Social Impact Hub this year.