Volunteer Profile Standards

The Evolving Marketplace

Nonprofits have a greater need for skilled volunteering than is currently being supplied by the corporate sector. In response, corporations are working to meet these needs by building out their pro bono programs. New service providers and models of service are emerging to help fill the gap. These new programs and models target expanded audiences, use new technology platforms and crowd sourcing and social networking techniques to help facilitate the matchmaking.

The Problem of Disconnected Systems

Disconnected systems: HR, NPOs, Capacity Builders, and Corporate Community Partners

Most systems for identifying skills, tracking of individual interests and activities and nonprofit project requests are disconnected. This poses a challenge for matching a supply of skilled volunteers with the nonprofit demand for their service. Human intervention is usually required to facilitate the leap between these systems.

The Need for Standards

Connected systems: HR, NPOs, Capacity Builders, and Corporate Community Partners

A standardized taxonomy will help to facilitate the identification of willing, highly skilled volunteers and the process of matching employees to relevant nonprofit projects. This is a first step toward developing foundational systems to support better and more efficient data sharing and matching. It will do this by unifying the articulation of relevant skillsets. The Standard can be used to develop fixed-field volunteer profiles. It can also develop into an API that can facilitate data sharing between systems. And it can be used as a key for querying and the development of project requests.

The Standard 2.0

[Release notes 12-1-11] The working group is developing guidance for a standardized lexicon of volunteer skills. This 2.0 update to the taxonomy hopes to create better clarity regarding interactive, technology and IT skills. We have added an extra top level category and re-organized the sub-categories related to technology. We will update this information has new drafts are published by the working group and we would welcome your input. Please email advisory@taprootfoundation.org if you have input or are interested in learning more.

See the standard

The Top-Level Skills

The current draft includes 20 top-level categories of skills. These categories seek compromise between high level skills sought by nonprofits and the depth of skills offered by potential volunteers.

  • Education
  • Children & Family
  • Animals & the Environment
  • Food Service & Events
  • Healthcare
  • Disaster Relief
  • Arts
  • Logistics, Supply Chain & Transportation
  • Administration & Clerical
  • Marketing
  • Interactive, Web and Front Office
  • Business Process Applications (CRM/ERP)
  • Back Office, IT Infrastructure & Administration
  • Sales & Fundraising
  • Human Resources
  • Strategy Development & Business Planning
  • Real Estate, Facilities & Construction
  • Engineering
  • Legal
  • Finance
  • People & Project Management

These high level categories can be used for the following purposes:

  • Preliminary screening tool for nonprofit who seek only certain skillsets
  • A short-form that volunteers can fill-out as an entrĂ©e into a volunteering system
  • Encouragement for employee engagement managers to think carefully about all of the skills that their employees can offer

Sub-Categories

The sub-categories flesh out the draft Standard with a preliminary list of more detailed skills. It is a draft, not an agreed-upon standard at this time. And it is not an exhaustive list. But it is useful first step toward providing the detailed skills information required for making good matches. The working group has agreed to circulate this draft and share best practices as these sub-categories get implemented so that the Standards may be further refined. The sub-categories can be used for the following purposes:

  • Reference categories and skills sets for nonprofits who are crafting pro bono project requests
  • A draft starting point those who wish to build or refine a robust volunteer matching system.
  • Key word list for crawlers and other technologies trying to aggregate skills-based and pro bono opportunities

See the full profile standard

Advice for Corporations

  • Survey all of your employees, or at least your active volunteer-base, to identify skills that can be applied to pro bono opportunities. Use this information to build your program
  • Begin to develop volunteer profiles—even if you do this manually at first-- that capture skills and interests. Use these profiles to facilitate sourcing and matching pro bono projects.
  • Talk to your HR department about how to tie pro bono into professional development or leadership training programs. Discuss how to develop better collaboration between your departments
  • Teach your nonprofit partners about the skills that you can bring to bear to support their capacity-building. Develop program tools that help your volunteers scope pro bono projects that leverage your available skills.
  • Tell us what you think! We are looking for feedback to refine this tool. E-Mail us at advisory@taprootfoundation.org to share your input.

The Working Group

This project was instigated by Microsoft Corporation and the Taproot Foundation. But a party of two does not make a standard. The following organizations have actively contributed input during the development of these drafts. We thank them for their participation.

  • Corporations: Microsoft, Netsuite, Salesforce.com, Cornerstone OnDemand, Intel, Home Depot, LinkedIn
  • Capacity Builders/Nonprofits: Taproot Foundation, HandsOn, VolunteerMatch, Catchafire, All for Good, Sparked.com, Npower New York, Social Venture Partners, Society of Human Resource Management, Corporation for National Community Service, YourCause