The Business of Volunteers

With corporations, community and private foundations, and individuals focusing donations to more specific areas, and the push for increased accountability and measurement systems, nonprofits are strapped with strategic and financial challenges that require skills more often exercised in for-profit businesses. That according to Alice Korngold, national consultant to businesses, foundations and nonprofits, and founding president and CEO of Business Volunteers Unlimited, which places business executives on nonprofit boards. While nonprofits take on more business-like practices requiring expertise in strategic and financial planning, market research and human-resource management, businesses are encouraging employees to volunteer. This presents an opportunity for nonprofits to tap into the business help they need through volunteers. Relying on real-life success stories, in Leveraging Good Will: Strengthening Nonprofits by Engaging Businesses, Korngold illustrates how nonprofits can partner with businesses to reshape their organizations — from creating better boards, to enlisting the services of trained matchmakers who can link them with the right business volunteers.