Pro Bono Comes in All Shapes and Sizes

Pro bono service – also known as pro bono work, pro bono volunteering or skill-based volunteering – is the provision of professional or technical services to social-purpose organizations or individuals free of charge. The best-known model of pro bono service is offering the professional services a company sells, such as legal counsel, free of charge. There are, however, many other pro bono models, including:

Project-based team engagement
In project-based team engagement, teams of employees deliver a standard deliverable to nonprofit partners, such as a website redesign or strategic plan development, over a few weeks or months. For example, SAP has a program in which teams of employees spend a week working full time with a Black-owned business on business development and related topics and five weeks working at part time.

Serve-a-thons
In serva-a-thons, programmers, designers or other specialists collaborate intensively during one or several days to create solutions for nonprofit organizations or charitable causes, such as a new app or refreshed website. Cisco’s “Hack for Good,” for example, develops apps, products or other innovative solutions for nonprofits over a period of time lasting no more than a few days.

Board service
Board service involves employees serving on the board of directors of a nonprofit. For example, Unilever’s "The Compass" program invites all employees to serve on nonprofit boards, either individually or in teams, and trains and provides other support to those who sign up.

Service sabbaticals
A service sabbatical is when an employee takes a leave of absence from their job to serve full time at a nonprofit, typically for one to twelve months. Patagonia, for example, offers employees a two-month paid sabbatical to support an environmental nonprofit.

In summary, whatever your company is, there’s likely a suitable way for it to engage in pro bono service. To learn more, contact us!