What’s Next for Corporate Volunteering and Service?

If corporate volunteering had a motto over the past few years, it might have been: “Pivot, flex, repeat.” The pandemic rewrote the playbook for how businesses engage with their communities, and now, as Atlanta companies look ahead, the big question is: what’s next?

Spoiler alert: it’s not going back to the way we used to do things. The future of corporate service is more flexible, more skills-based, more employee-driven, and if done right, more impactful than ever.

1. Supporting Ongoing Partnerships

Remember when volunteering meant a single day of service, complete with matching T-shirts and photo ops? Those projects still have value (and yes, we’ll keep the T-shirts), but companies are increasingly shifting toward long-term partnerships with nonprofits.

Take Smurfit WestRock, a CVC member and sustainable packaging company that has partnered with nonprofit Trees Atlanta since 2017. In recent years, the company joined forces with Trees Atlanta and the Atlanta Hawks for their “Rock the Rim” challenge. For every dunk made by a Hawks player during their season, Smurfit WestRock would plant a tree. More than 445 trees were planted in the first year of the collaboration. In addition to this innovative project, Smurfit WestRock currently has an employee serving on the Trees Atlanta board of directors, and the company regularly activates volunteers and contributes financially to support year-round programming.

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