To boost employee engagement, recruit Charity Champions—passionate individuals who encourage volunteering within their teams.
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To help drive engagement from the ground up, it can be a great idea to recruit a team of Charity Champions. These representatives can be charged with encouraging volunteer uptake in their teams, offices and departments.
Charity Champions (or you may prefer Ambassadors) can be recruited to lead engagement efforts, connect teams with impactful local causes, assist volunteers and provide ongoing feedback to leadership. These respected internal advocates can encourage participation through their passion and knowledge.
While prior volunteering experience is beneficial, a genuine commitment to community action and enthusiasm for the programme’s goals are most important. Charity Champions should be influential team members excited to rally colleagues in supporting community initiatives.
Research shows that branches and locations with active champions consistently see higher participation and satisfaction rates. By establishing this supportive volunteer structure, organisations demonstrate commitment while enabling smooth execution.
Champions can support with responsibilities such as;
- Promoting the programme to colleagues
- Acting as a point of contact for queries
- Recommending local good causes for the company to support
- Helping to run gamification elements such as competitions, leaderboards etc
- Capturing and sharing success stories
- Encouraging social sharing
- Acting as a chair during programme meetings
- Organising group events for colleagues
You can read about RSA’s success with charity champions in the “good engagement strategy example” section.
We suggest looking at the data - who is often the first to put their hand up and volunteer? It’s important to recruit people that are passionate about supporting their local community and practice what they preach!
Key Qualities of a Volunteer Champion:
- Engaged & enthusiastic about volunteering/charity work
- Shows interest in opportunities when they arise
- Has a particular interest in a specific workstream (e.g. Environmental impact or Zero Hunger)
Benefits of Charity Champions
- They can help “demystify” volunteering
- There to make sure volunteering is more accessible and achievable
- Ground level help for filling empty volunteering spaces on your campaign
- There to share top tips & best practice
When thinking about recruiting Charity Champions, consider putting together a role description that includes the below responsibilities:
- Promoting volunteering opportunities across the employee network
- Supporting the delivery and embedding of the Neighbourly platform as a source for volunteering within the business
- Supporting colleagues in carrying out volunteering activities
- Celebrating success via internal channels & LinkedIn
- Feedback on what is going well and areas for improvement
- Helping the business create a greater impact in local communities!
What's in it for them? Think about the benefits that volunteering as a charity champion will bring your colleagues
- Developing leadership and influencing skills by driving forward volunteering activity
- Building their network through interacting with lots of different people from across the business and in the local community
- Standing out from the crowd
- Playing a central role in bringing the company's goals to life and helping achieve ESG metrics
Resources
Copy the email template below in pink to recruit Charity Champions
Sign up as a charity champion!
Hello everyone,
As you know, we recently partnered with Neighbourly for our new volunteering programme.
To drive engagement and success, we're looking for 5-10 Charity Champions across the business. These internal volunteers will:
- Promote the programme internally
- Act as a point of contact
- Recommend local causes
- Support gamification initiatives
- Capture success stories
- Chair programme meetings
- Organise group events
Ideal candidates have volunteering experience, but it's not essential. This informal role is for those passionate about our company's community impact. Those with existing links to local charities have an opportunity to nominate them for support and get them added to our programmes.
If interested, please email [contact details] with your background and any thoughts.
We hope you'll consider this opportunity to have a positive impact on our volunteering efforts.
Thank you!
Once you’ve recruited your team of Charity Champions, it’s important to engage them right from the start:
- Set up an Introduction call - involve internal and external partners such as a senior lead, your Neighbourly contact
- Create a place for charity champions to communicate and share their experiences and ideas - a teams group chat for example
- Communicate official targets to all champions and the wider business
- Put in place a monthly or quarterly call with all champions as a time to update on progress and upcoming opportunities
- Give ownership of specific volunteering/SDGs - for example, a leading champion for the environment.
- If your business thrives on competition, why not provide a leaderboard - encouraging achievements & highlighting key performing champions/areas.
- Thank them! Why not give back to your champions by offering them an extra volunteering day or a gift box of sustainable goodies!
Master doc worksheet
Collect your findings and input into the Charity Champions tab in the master doc.
Note: We have left a few examples in the document for reference & format.
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This material is part of the Neighbourly Volunteer Engagement Success Plan, for use by Neighbourly partners only.