CORPORATE COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT AND WHY IT'S SO IMPORTANT TO CANADIAN VOLUNTEERING

In the volunteering world we toss around words such as corporate community involvement, corporate volunteering and corporate engagement, but what do terms like this really mean? What is the for-profit sector doing with the non-profit sector? How is this relationship between volunteering and the business affecting Canada? What you may not know is that the vast majority of Canada's large corporations have incredibly active civic responsibility programs and are engaged in our communities at a variety of levels.

Corporate Community Involvement is increasingly important to Canadian communities as it is an opportunity for large scale businesses to use their resources and man-power to benefit our country on both a national and community level. From programs such as Home Depot’s unbridled support of Habitat for Humanity’s home building program to Investors Group’s support of National Volunteer Week, the business community has it’s hand in the vast majority of programs which Canada benefits. The other important facet of corporate involvement is visibility. From birth we are targeted with imagery and iconography of powerful business’s through marketing campaigns, their influence is so great that the McDonalds and Coca-cola logo’s are the most recognizable icons or logo’s across the globe. Now combine this amount of visibility with a great cause and the impact nationally increases substantially. For example the Run for the Cure, was a great event, which had small scale community recognition, however add CIBC’s brand power and marketing teams to the event and we have an incredible cause/event that is recognized nationally. The brand power of the business sector is indelible and allows for the nonprofit sector to further awareness of the causes affecting Canadians today.

In terms of Corporate Volunteering, corporate supported employee volunteering is important as it gives Canadians an opportunity to volunteer their time without having to take time off. It also is one more example of how the corporate community is giving back to the communities that allow them to continue to grow and develop new products and services. The man-power that has been shown through events such as SAP’s overhaul of numerous Boys and Girls Club’s across Canada have allowed for major community projects to be completed in an exponentially less amount of time than it wuld have with SAP’s incredible employee volunteering program.

To ensure that Corporate Community Involvement continues to stay as a main facet of company protocol Volunteer Canada has developed the Corporate Council on Volunteering. The CCOV is comprised of 24 Canadian business leaders and focuses on engaging in discussion on improving non-profit and for-profit sector relations while continuing to support volunteerism in Canada.

Interested in learning more about the CCOV head to www.corporatevolunteering.ca and follow the CCOV meeting which is happening June 10th in Calgary on Twitter and Facebook.

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