I attended the National Conference on Volunteerism and Community Service this week in Atlanta, and participated in many of the business track sessions.  A major focus of many workshop was on engaging volunteers from big and small corporations who would use their talent, not just their time, to help build stronger non profit organizations throughout the country.

I attended two workshops which illustrated how important this is.  In the America's Promise workshop, I learned about a 5-year goal of improving the lives of 15 millions young people by ensuring that they experience more wraparound services.  To achieve this goal, the Americas Promise Alliance will collaborate on three national action strategies, with the highest priority being to improve high school completion rates.  In another workshop I picked up a booklet from the National Mentoring Partnership, which is titled "The National Agenda for Action: How to Close the Mentoring Gap.

Neither of these goals will be met without tapping the wealth of talent and resource of the business community, who benefits most when America has a talented and innovative workforce. 

Thus, the workshops I attended and the information I picked up as handouts, provide quite a bit of ammunition that non profits and businesses can use to build strategic alliances that help strengthen volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring programs, reduce the drop out crisis, and prepare more young people for 21st century careers.

Here are some related resources:

Become a Pro Bono Champion, http://www.nationalservice.gov/about/initiatives/probono.asp

Deloitte Volunteer Impact Research - For several years, the Deloitte Volunteer IMPACT research series has focused on measuring important aspects of corporate community involvement. In April 2008, Deloitte released its latest survey results, which revealed that most corporate human resource managers overlook skills-based volunteering as a cost-effective opportunity to unlock new training and development resources.

Points of Light & Hands On Network SBV Resources
This offers an array of online resources and information to support the volunteer engagement of the business community.

Pro Bono Action Tank - http://www.doitprobono.org/pbat/
Partners with companies, universities, trade associations, and public interest organizations to make more high-quality pro bono work happen across the country.  Working with business to help meet the President's Council's challenge to increase corporate pro bono service contributions to nonprofits by $1 billion per year.

Executive Issues in Nonprofits -
Accenture research found that nonprofits could achieve higher levels of performance by embracing basic business practices and tools that can help them use their money more effectively, ensure their sustainability and make bigger impacts on the communities and people they serve. The report recommends specific actions that nonprofits can take to improve their operations and address the internal and external challenges they face.

As you read this information, I encourage you to browse the other discussions on this forum and see ways that your company, university and/or civic organization might partner with the Tutor/Mentor Connection to help you unleash this volunteer talent to help tutor/mentor strategies grow throughout the country, and to help those strategies have a greater impact on workforce development, education, violence prevention, diversity, etc.

Below are links to organizations that I met at the conference who are doing some innovative work in social marketing, which is essential to building a larger network of volunteer and business involvement in social network organizations.

Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy - http://www.corporatephilanthropy.org/boardofboards/index.htm

Home Garden TV/Change the World Campaign - http://hgtv.com/changetheworld

CMT One Country - http://www.cmt.com/one_country/

The campaigns of HGTV and CMT One Country were supported by http://www.volunteermatch.org .  Non profits should pay attention to the lessons of these campaigns because while they focused on only a few cities, they resulted in volunteers in other cities searching for similar opportunities.  Thus, if you are aware of a cause marketing campaign that gains regional or national attention, you can draw volunteers to your organization if you have your listings updated on Volunteer Match and similar search engines while the campaign is active.

Another important resource is the Center for Intergenerational Learning at Temple University. It's training division provides information that connects older adults with community based service and learning opportunities.  There are FREE training resources that non profits and businesses can use to engage the time and talent of seniors in volunteer service.  Visit http://ciltraining.org/about_cil