Terravek ran an annual company volunteering day from 2017 to 2022. We have stopped, and replaced it with matched giving and paid volunteering leave.
The volunteering day was popular internally and produced good photographs. What it produced for the organisations we visited was more mixed. Several told us — when asked directly and given permission to be honest — that hosting forty enthusiastic corporate volunteers for one day cost them more in supervision than it delivered in labour.
What they wanted instead was money, or sustained help from a small number of people over time. So that is what we now do: two days of paid volunteering leave a year, taken when the organisation needs it rather than when it suits our calendar, and matched giving up to €1,000 per person per year.
Uptake in the first year was 34% for volunteering leave and 41% for matched giving. That is lower participation than the volunteering day, which had near-universal attendance because it was a day out of the office.
It is less photogenic and it is better. The Delft office continues to host the Zuidwal food bank's cold storage, which costs us almost nothing and matters considerably.