Episode notes:

• Follow Megan on LinkedIn

• Learn more about Realized Worth

• Check out Engage for Good

• Get a primer on ERGs

• Check out employee volunteering at Stryker and eBay

• Tune into Realized Worth’s Real Talk series

• Learn about Marc Benioff’s social impact philosophy 

• Dig into the IKEA effect

Transcript:

This transcript was automatically generated.

Welcome everyone to the Impact Audio podcast, brought to you by your friends at Submittable. I'm your host, Sam Caplan.

Megan Strand, Director of Strategic Consulting at Realized Worth, joins me today, and we discuss the nuts and bolts of establishing a volunteer leader network in your organization.

Realized Worth is a longtime friend of the podcast, and I've featured both cofounders, Angela Parker and Chris Jarvis, in previous episodes, and I couldn't be more excited to speak with Megan.

As the director of strategic consulting, Megan helps organizations create transformative volunteer experiences, providing guidance on everything from strategy and design Megan, welcome to the podcast. I'm glad to have you on Impact Audio. Oh, my Megan, welcome to the podcast. I'm glad to have you on Impact Audio.

Oh my gosh. I'm so happy to be here, Sam. Thank you so much for the invitation.

That is the right right answer and the right attitude, my friend. We run into each other, like, at all the good conferences out there and through your work at Realized Worth. We've had many opportunities to connect, and I'm just really become a big fan of yours. So I'm super excited.

And, I guess that's a great place to start. Maybe before we get too deep into the discussion, like, tell me a little about about you and and the work that you do at Realized Worth.

Yeah. Absolutely. I I'm trying to remember when you and I met, Sam. Was it at when I was at Engage for Good maybe a handful of years prior to Realized Worth? Is that where you and I first connected?

I think that was our initial, connection. Yeah.

Okay. I was trying I was trying to think and think back. I knew I knew you before my time at Realizeworth, but okay. So just to introduce myself.

So let's see. I've been in the social impact space since maybe twenty ten. And for many, many years, I ran a conference that's now called Engage for Good, which, again, is where you and I first met, where I had sort of the great opportunity and privilege to talk to folks who are in the corporate social impact space as well as people who are in the nonprofit corporate development space and how they were partnering together in ways that were meaningful for their community and their employees and their consumers. So I did that for about ten years. I was communications director there as well. And then almost three years ago, exactly, I joined Realizworth. So at Realizworth, I'm now exclusively on the corporate side, where I have the honor of working with some of the most iconic brands in in the world, really, on their, employee volunteer programs and helping them make those programs scalable, measurable, meaningful, all the things that, companies care about and rightly so.

So, yeah, that's a little bit about what I do and, Yeah.

Yeah. Tell me just a little bit more about Realized Worth. Like, it's it's such a great organization and I've been really big fans of Chris and Angela who are the cofounders there. And I know you guys are doing tons of great work. So, like, if if I were a corporation, like, what would be my reason for reaching out to Realized Worth?

Yeah. So like I just said, I think our biggest focus with corporate employee engagement programs as companies are looking to engage employees around community impact has to do with making those programs scalable, measurable, and meaningful. So, companies are constantly trying to engage employees in new and different ways. They know that folks that are in the workplace workplace today are really focused on purpose, and making sure that their their own personal purpose connects to that corporate purpose.

So one way to do that is through things like corporate social impact programs and employee engagement programs, employee volunteerism, which tends to be sort of our sweet spot. So, to give you to tip our hand just a little bit, we really believe that, the why behind what we do at Realizeworth is really about breaking down barriers between people, and we think that the corporate volunteering space in particular is a really great sandbox to do that. So there's lots of interesting ways we're gonna get into today about the what and the how, but that's really our why. And I think you know that, but just so your listeners are are clear about our perspective and where we're coming from.

That's awesome. Thank you. Alright. So let's jump right into kind of the how and the why here. So Yeah. I know that that you have been a really big advocate for something called volunteer leader networks. And I would love to hear a little bit about, like, what is a volunteer leader network and, you know, like, why would I be interested in in having one of these if I were a corporation with a volunteerism program?

Yeah. It's a great question, and thank you for the opportunity to talk a little bit more about it because I think it's one of these behind the scene things that happens that's really, really important and from our perspective, from what we've seen, but it's not talked about quite as publicly in the corporate social impact space. So I appreciate the opportunity. I think when you're thinking about corporate volunteering programs and, again, engaging employees in community activities, prosocial behaviors.

There's a couple of ways you can go about that, and sort of the traditional way is to have I mean, you know, Sam. Like, very under resourced CSR team or social impact team that has one, two, maybe three people who are working. You know, we were just talking about, like, the duck on top of the water with their legs pedaling frantically under the surface. You know, you can spend a lot of time and energy as a small, small team trying to set up hundreds of events for all of your tens of thousands of employees around the globe.

And there's great vendors that can help with standing up those types of events. But that's not really that scalable because you have a tiny, tiny small team, so it's kind of that one to many approach. So that's one traditional way of engaging employees around volunteerism. But the way that we like to do it and the things that we've seen work the best is to have more of, like, a many to many approach where, really in any given group of employees, you have people in North America, it's twenty five percent of people who are intrinsically motivated to give back to their communities, who are already volunteering and doing these pro social activities in their personal lives.

So if you can tap into that network of people who have that intrinsic motivation to help you and deputize them and give them support and training and resources, then you start to have sort of an internal employee network of people who can lead these types of activities. So you still have the social impact team that's involved, of course, and they're providing training, support, nurturing for this internal people network. But then you have this whole cadre of folks who are really passionate about this type of work. It tends to be things they do on top of their day job, so they're doing this, you know, voluntarily in their extra little times and and pockets of time that they can find.

But when you can do that, you have an internal network that can really start to tap their peers, start to engage their coworkers instead of, you know, a tiny, tiny team trying to spread spread the word out through the masses. So I think that's why we do employee volunteer leadership networks. And you can kind of think of them sort of similar to ERGs. It's that type of people network internally at a company.

This is really cool. So not only does this group, like, help an organization scale, its volunteerism. Right? But it's also a really cool way to democratize a program, like giving employees more purview and, man, you know, sharing power and bringing them into the process and letting them help. Right? Like, I don't know that we talk about that enough.

Yeah. And I think that's a a huge tenant of what we talk about in our training and as we're working with practitioners about nurturing their network. It's about giving those folks that autonomy, giving them the agency to own that program for themselves.

And, yeah, that's such a great point, Sam, because it's so, so important that these people are not necessarily voluntold that they're doing this role, which does happen a lot of companies where it's like, oh, you're really good at organizing things, so you should also do volunteerism.

No. We want people who care about this, who are intrinsically motivated, like I've probably said seven times now, but who, you know, care about this and and can kind of take it and run with it on their own.

Yeah. That's super cool. Alright. So, let's talk about, like, a specific example of a volunteer leader network in action. Do you have one that you can share with me?

Yeah. I've got a couple that, one I've worked on directly and one that, a colleague has worked on, but they're a little bit different. So at Stryker, they have a global volunteer network. So Stryker is a global corporation.

I think they have fifty thousand employees, something like that. So they have a global volunteer network, and there's a couple of different ways these employee volunteer networks, the structure that they can take place and depending on the needs of the company. So at Stryker, they have sort of a global volunteer council of people from around the globe who act as advisors to the social impact team. They set the strategy for the entire network.

They set goals for the entire network. But they're really kind of at that higher level advisory level. And then they have sort of a regional layer of people who are geographically dispersed who, again, are setting strategy for the region and can speak to those regional nuances.

And then they also have, more of a local layer where people are actually organizing volunteerism and recruiting their their coworkers to participate in volunteerism. So that happens on a little bit more of a local level. And those folks kind of I don't wanna use the word report into, but are supported by that regional layer. So people at that regional layer are providing support to the the folks on the ground who are doing those activities.

So it's kind of a multi pronged approach at Stryker. So that's one model that we've seen that's got a a council, a regional layer, and then, kind of those local activity leaders. And that works well for companies that are globally distributed, that are very matrixed like Stryker is, lots of different business units so that you can have that conversation and address some of those nuances. Then we have a company like eBay that has more of a committee model.

So at eBay, they have a program called the Changemakers, and they have committees of folks who participate together to create an annual engagement plan, and they're working collaboratively.

Each committee has a leader. So these are geographically specific committees that are planning engagement activities specifically for their location. They're very autonomous. They operate, independently.

They all look a little bit different, but that's kind of how they bring that to life at eBay. Some of those committee members also can have functional roles. So maybe somebody's really great at communications and they take on that role. Maybe somebody's passionate about recognition and celebration, so they take on that role.

Maybe somebody else is in recruitment.

So they can be a little functional roles as well within those committees. So those are two examples just to kinda give you a flavor of what these can look like.

Yeah. It sounds really cool. Like, I and as I hear you talk about this, Megan, like, I'm getting a sense that, like, this is a pretty structured approach. Right?

So you're not just, you know, sending out a survey and identifying, like, who you're most popular or, you know, who the employees are, who enjoy volunteering the most, and then saying, like, go go, create a volunteer event for me. Right? Like, there's a there's a structure and a process behind this. Can you maybe talk just a little bit about, like, you know, if I'm if I'm an organization wanting to explore this, like, are there resources out there that can help me get started?

I'm sure I'm sure you and Realize Dorther are fantastic resources. But, like, you know, what if you just wanna start by, like, reading about this or watching a video or something?

Yeah. That's a great question. And I I think there are plenty of employee volunteer networks that start exactly as you've described. You know?

People send out a survey. They have kind of a volunteer or group of people who've raised their hand and said, yes. I care about this, and are just kind of left to their own devices to go organize volunteerism. And that's totally fine.

In some companies, that's exactly what they need. It just kind of depends on the goals of the company, what they're hoping to accomplish, how important this is in the eyes of leadership, things like that. So, not to dismiss that. If you can get help and you can get a group of folks to help you, fantastic.

You know, at Realize Worth, this is sort of our, focus area, so we're gonna put a lot more structure, and rigor to it because, again, we're dealing with these huge global corporations typically.

That said, there are a lot of great resources that we have on our website, lots of great blog posts, lots of great, I don't know about if they're great, but the Real Talk episodes that I participate in, can provide some information there as it relates to, why you might wanna do this, how to make them measurable, meaningful, how you set goals within these employee volunteer leadership structures.

On the consulting side, which is kind of my my center of gravity at Realize Worth, we we're taking companies through this, on a very high touch level. But we also have a membership platform called Social Rev where people who are a little bit more DIY can access those, all of sort of the frameworks and methodologies and materials we've developed over the years, and they can kind of take that and run with it on their own. So that tends to work well with companies that maybe are a little bit smaller and have a team that can commit some time to to working on this. So, yeah, lots of great resources out there.

Alright. I'm I'm gonna rewind, and and deviate for just a second. You mentioned, like, the Real Talk series that you do. Tell me about that.

Oh, thanks for asking. So this is a fun webinar series that, the CEO of of Realize Earth, Angela Parker, and myself do on a quarterly basis. It's a free series, and it's called Real Talk for a reason because we know that we don't have all the answers. But what we try to do is bring tough topics and say for real what's happening and our perspective of how we see them and try to equip people with a couple of tools and tactics and strategies that they can implement in their in their work. We do try to get the audience members engaged as well because there's a lot of very smart people who join us who we know have their own perspectives, so we do try to call them out a little bit and get them involved in the discussion. But just a great community, and, we have a lot of fun with it. I don't know if you've ever attended, Sam, but it's we we like to have fun on Real Talk.

Yeah. Well, I'm I'm definitely coming next quarter now now that I've been officially invited.

You are officially invited.

Thank you. I'm super excited. Alright. So I'm a leader, and I wanna start a volunteer leader network. Like, let's, like, talk through the steps. Like, what would I need to take as a leader, starting my volunteer leader network?

That's a great question. You know, I would say maybe the first thing you would want to do is take a little bit of a snapshot look, bird's eye view of what you've got going on in your current state. So what's working, what's not, where are the gaps, and then kind of move toward that future state and get a little bit dreamy about, you know, ideally where you'd wanna see this go. So current state, future state exercise we always like to do.

One of the most important steps I think is stakeholdering, and this is very, very often skipped, missed, not given the attention it deserves and needs. But change management can be a huge big deal when you're standing up a new internal people network, making sure that the right people are on board, making sure you have leadership support. So making sure you identify who those stakeholders are and then really starting to engage them in the process.

And then from there, just kind of designing. You know, you've got your future state, your vision of where you wanna go. So how are you gonna get there just from a design perspective? What type of structure is gonna make the most sense for your organization?

Do you even need a structure? You know, not every organization is gonna need an employee volunteer leadership network with a global council and pieces like that. So what does your specific organization need?

And then working to figure out, you know, how are we gonna recruit these people? How are we gonna find the right people, who are intrinsically motivated? What is that process gonna look like? So doing a little bit of, ideating and, strategizing around how this is all gonna stand up and then launching your network.

And we always like to espouse sort of a, test and learn approach. So maybe we're piloting something. Maybe we're bringing things out in little phases. We are not bringing massive corporations online in every single geography right away because we know there's gonna be some wobbles, and we need to make sure we have time to kind of iterate and tweak and make sure that the approach is working and can continue to work as we continue to to scale and grow.

Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Like, out of out of all of that, is there, like, a particular step that you feel like is the most important step or something that people should really focus on most after that process?

You know, I think when you're thinking about current state and future state, I think that future state piece can be important.

And I I don't wanna I don't wanna drill down too far into this, but making sure that you know what the end is, what, what your what your target is, where you're headed. I think sometimes people get, a directive from leaderships or from executive that says, you know, we need to be at sixty five percent of participation, and people just panic and start to throw, spaghetti at the wall, if you will, to try to hit those numbers. But really taking a beat and saying, like, okay. What is our future state?

What does this ideally look like? Is it sixty five percent of people just, like, showing up and checking a box? Is that enough for me? And most social impact practitioners are gonna say no.

No. It's not. It also has to be meaningful. It has to bring our purpose to life.

It has to truly engage people and wanna make make make them want to come back and do this type of activity again and again. So getting really, really clear about what your end state looks like and then maybe even putting some some goals around that so you can get to that measurement piece at the end. And, again, it could be that sixty five percent, but, you know, what are the nuances there? What are what are what is it gonna take to kinda get there?

So I would say that's a really important piece. And then you asked for one, but I gave you one more, and I I already sort of talked about this. But that stakeholdering piece, we find again and again and again. Like, even if there's leadership support, even if there's executive directive, if you don't have the right stakeholders on board and it always takes longer than you think it's going to, and you need more people than you think you're going to.

But that change management piece ends up being a little bit of a bugaboo in a lot of cases. So, you know, making sure you're taking the time to really bring people along with you even if you are sick of hearing yourself tell the story about why this is important. But just making sure you're bringing those people along, I think, is, really, really key too.

Yeah. I agree totally. Like and when you talk about the end state with all of this, like, you know, is it typically, like, we want to increase our volunteerism rate by this much or we want to host this, you know, additional number of volunteer events, or we want to somehow transition, you know, from, like, a transactional to a more transformative volunteering strategy. Like, what do a lot of the companies that you work with like, how do they envision the end state of the the network?

Well, it depends who you ask, Sam. So if you're asking leaders, they're like, we want what's the what's the top quartile? We wanna be in that range. You know?

Oh, this just came out. This report came out and said it's twenty two percent. We need to be at fifty five percent. You know, whatever it is, those metrics piece, that ends up being really important for leaders, and that ends up being the directive.

So, again, from our perspective, is it better to have more people who are just showing up to check a box? No.

And I think if you ask most social impact practitioners, they really do wanna make sure that they're centering the needs of their community, engaging employees in a meaningful way, helping them build a sense of belonging and build the cultural of or giving back whatever that is at that particular company and just really starting to bring those values to life. I think that's what the practitioners would say is most important.

So from our perspective, you can do all of those things. Right? You can be scalable, measurable, and meaningful. You can have the metrics.

You can have the meet the the meaning piece, but you have to be able to create that space where transformation can occur. Some of that occurs through training. Some of it occurs through, you know, how you're working to stand up this network, who you're finding, making sure you have those right people who can who do resonate, and who do care about that meaning piece. So there's a there's a lot of little layers to to all of this.

And and then we do think you can have you can have it all. You can have it all, Sam.

But you have to be you have to be intentional and careful with how you do it.

You know, it's it's so interesting listening to you describe sort of some of the differences between, like, if you're a leader and your goals and objectives versus if you're a practitioner and, like, what your goals and objectives and aspirations are. Like and I I saw this exact same thing, like, when I was working in practice and and as I talked to a lot of corporations day in and day out about their social impact programs. Like, why do you think that is, Megan? Like, why is it that, like, leaders tend to have a much more traditional business oriented view and definition of success when it comes to, like, participation and engagement? And, like, practitioners who, you know, began their careers, you you know, like, serving as, like, a volunteer coordinator and sort of, like, working their way up into the end of the CSR program and team and organization, you know, their perspective tends to be a little bit different. Like, is that interesting to you, or am I the only one here?

I know. I think that's fascinating. I'm gonna ask you the same question. I'm gonna answer that question, but I want you to answer that question too.

I'm gonna flip it back on you for a minute. But, I don't know. I think from our perspective so at Realize Worth, one of the things we do are Realize Worth experiences. So we we don't do massive large scale volunteer events, but we will take a group of, you know, a board.

We'll take thirty people on a board, or we'll take a group of volunteer leaders. You know? Again, twenty, thirty, forty people, and we will show them what a transformative volunteer experience is really like. And what we say internally is you have to see it to believe it.

So I think that's part of the dynamic. Right? People who are in corporate social impact, maybe they came from the nonprofit space. Maybe, like you said, they started as a volunteer coordinator, and they started to engage with their community partners.

And they were like, oh, this stuff really matters, and I care about this, and I wanna make this my career. So people who have experienced that space where transformation can occur, where you can start to kind of see how those barriers can break down between people, where you can start to see how we relate with one another human to human, like, that becomes really compelling. So I think I would say from that perspective, from the CSR practitioner's perspective, that's why they're in it.

That's why they're doing it. And, like, yes, scale and measurement is important because they wanna bring that to more people, and they will work tirelessly to make sure that those, conditions are created or they'll they'll do their best to make sure those conditions are created so that more of their colleagues can experience this type of of thing. But I think, from the leadership perspective, I mean, let's be fair. Right?

They are looking at all sorts of numbers and metrics. Like, that is what they're judged on often is hitting those metrics, hitting those numbers. It's the bottom line. That's what they care about.

They need to be able to draw a straight line between employee engagement and retention or recruitment, and they wanna know that these programs are gonna help them, reduce turnover and get new great workforce talent. That that's kind of what they care about, which makes sense. Right? They have lots of things on their plate.

They can only focus on one thing at at a time.

And if we can start to invite these executives into some of these experiences that are transformational, really incredible things can happen. So that's my answer, but I wanna hear your answer.

Yeah. No. You you you said it so beautifully. Like, I I don't know that I can add much to it.

Like, when I think about organizations like Salesforce with Marc Benioff and and Microsoft with Brad Smith, like, there are very few organizations out there that have, like, a top level CEO or executive who really seem, like, thoroughly invested in this idea that, like, there is such a thing as corporate purpose. Right? And then volunteerism, giving and matching, you know, DEI, employee resource groups. Like, all of those things contribute to a much greater sense of corporate purpose than just, you know, these sort of, like, measurable KPIs that leaders, are are so, like, obsessively focused on.

Right? Like, you know, you you have quarterly goals, and it's all about, like, can I tick the box on these quarterly goals? And so, you know, for me, I think the best CSR leaders out there are those who, like, eventually get it. Like, you know, you might have, like, a Mark or a Brad Smith who, sort of instinctually understand these things.

And then you have others who really kind of quickly come around and they understand, like, you know, oh, if we do these things and employees are really, like, genuinely, authentically more engaged, you know, in the company and in the work, and there's this sort of connection between their values and our corporate values, and it leads to much deeper engagement and eventually better performance and people stick around longer. Like, that makes sense for everyone.

You know, and I think that's when you tend to see, like, the most impactful, the most transformative, work being done, you know, in CSR and across the sector. Then, you know, I think, sadly, like, there's still some other leaders out there where it's always just a matter of, like, hitting a certain KPI or metric or measure. And even if they do mostly get it, like, their leaders may not quite get it. So it's a really kind of interesting dichotomy, I think, that that we have in this sector there.

No. I think it is too. But I I will say, and this has been a setback of mine for years and years and years, I do think the best CSR practitioners, social impact practitioners are the ones who also understand that business piece, and that it has to be tied to business objectives. Like, if you're not moving the needle on a business objective, you're gonna be the first thing cut out of that budget. So, you know, I do think that it's a critical point to make sure that we're tying those, whatever it is we're doing with employee volunteer networks or employee engagement or whatever it is we're doing in the social impact space. Like, what are those straight lines we can start to draw?

I realize we're really kind of focused and interested in talking to people about, like, as a sector, what can we start? Like, how can we start to work together to draw some very clear straight lines about that business piece, that business benefit across companies between this work and between those business objectives. So, more to come on that. But if anybody has, any interest in joining us in that conversation, please reach out to me because Yes.

It's it's definitely an important one. Alright. Join us, Sam. Join us.

Totally. Totally. Alright. So I'm gonna jump right back into the volunteer leader networks here. So, like, in one of your blog posts, you mentioned the IKEA FX. So explain what that is and kind of how it links back to that, leader network.

Yeah. So the IKEA effect is essentially a cognitive bias that we have as human beings where if we are part of creating or building or assembling, as in IKEA furniture, something, then we're more more apt to view that thing favorably, so we're more likely to have strong affinity toward it.

So I would say from the perspective of an employee volunteer network, or any type of CSR program that you're building, like, if you can get people to be part of that building process, be part of that creating process, like, talking about stakeholdering earlier, similar. If we can bring them along, bring them on board, help them start to cocreate with us, they're going to have a lot more affinity toward it. They're going to believe in it more strongly. So, yeah, the IKEA effect is a fun cognitive bias we all have, like I said, but it's it it can definitely be useful in these social impact programs that we're trying to stand up, just making sure we're including people and bringing them along with us and giving them, a seat on the bus to kind of help that creation process.

Yeah.

I wanna talk a little bit more about this, like, idea of volunteering events kind of transitioning from, like, transactional to transformative. I know that, like, you and and Angela and and everybody at Realized Worth is, like, really invested in this idea that, like, for a volunteer program to really, like, achieve its goals, it has to it it's not it's not the the classic, like, we're gonna we're gonna all go out and and clean up a park or paint a wall. Like, those are good activities, but they're not necessarily transformative. So, like, maybe, like, let's just backtrack a little bit. Like, when we talk about transformative, like, what does that mean to you?

Great question.

And you've actually you've actually floated a little bit of a myth here, Sam. So I'm glad that you did that because I wanna bust that myth. So from our perspective, any volunteering engagement can be transformative. So even if you are painting a wall, even if you are cleaning a park, it can be transformative. So when we say transformative, we're talking about creating the space where transformation can occur within us as human beings. And the way that we do that is kind of a three step process. That's pretty simple, but it gets a little bit nuanced the more you learn about it.

But it's creating space at the front, something we call the brief, where you're framing that experience. And ideally, in a brief, you're giving people an opportunity to kind of challenge their own assumptions and start to have a little bit of a, like, moment where you're, again, creating that space where people are kind of cocking their head a little bit and being like, didn't think about it in that way, giving them an opportunity to go have that volunteer engagement or experience, guiding them along the way, meeting people at their highest level of contribution. So if you're a newbie, how what that's gonna look like is gonna be really different than if you're a seasoned volunteer leader.

And it's my responsibility as somebody who's guiding you and leading that experience to make sure I know where you are and be able to meet you at your highest level of contribution. So that's the second step. And then the last step is what we call the debrief, and it's creating space for critical reflection. So, as human beings, we don't know what we think about something until we say something about it.

So it's giving people space to have that reflection.

It's called sense making, and it's part of how we process information and learn as adults. So taking people through that three step process and, again, this is something you can train your employees to do. We do this all day long every day through these employee volunteer leadership networks.

But that three step process can create that space where transformation can occur. Now does it occur every single time for every single person? No. But when it does, it's very cool to watch and just watching people have moments of epiphany where they were like, I walked into this event thinking it was gonna be about this, but, really, it's about that, and it's about me and how I act and behave and stand up and appear in the world and interact with my colleagues and with my family and people that I run into on the street. Like, that's what we're looking for. It's just that space for change and that space for reflection. So that's what we say when we mean transformative.

And, again, lots of different types of experiences can be transformative. We just happen to be focused on the volunteerism piece.

And and you described how, like, this can be, like, part of the training for your volunteer leader network. Like, is this challenging for for you and and for Realized Worth? Like, as you guys are are training people, like, how how do you go about, sort of getting a volunteer leader to the point of being able to, like, help create a transformative experience?

Yeah. It's a good question.

So I would say there's a couple things that that we do at Realize Worth internally as a company that we try to emulate and share with employee volunteer leader networks as, and practitioners as they're working to kind of nurture and train those networks.

So, again, we consider ourselves a transformative workplace. So every day at Realize Worth, every team has a brief.

Along the way, a manager guiding their their teammates. And then every Thursday as a company, we have a debrief where we get together and we reflect on the week together as a company. So these practices can be embedded into a workplace. They can be embedded into employee volunteer leadership network.

And, again, is every employee volunteer leader doing all of these practices perfectly all the time? No. They're not. Are we working to kind of give them some tools so that makes it a little bit easier? Sure.

One of the best things we actually just got something, from one of our CSR practitioners, and she shared a snippet from a monthly meeting that she had with her employee volunteer leaders. And they were talking about the debrief. They were talking just about the debrief, that moment of reflection. We asked two questions. What did you experience, and was it what you expected?

There are some variations on that, but that's the basics.

And sometimes people rush through their volunteer experiences, and they don't wanna do that debrief. But when they take the time to do that debrief, really magical things can happen. So the CSR practitioner sent us a video from this Zoom call she had had with all of her volunteer leaders where they were just talking about the debrief, and they were a little bit blown away because they were challenged to incorporate the debrief in their latest volunteer event. And they were just sharing, like, what came out from that experience, how surprised they were that this had happened just by creating this little bit of space at the end of their volunteer activity.

So the more you're allowing people to share, like, oh, wow. This felt really awkward, but I did it anyway, and this is what happened. Or I did this, and it didn't quite work right. Like, what do you recommend?

Just giving people that space to kind of share, and share knowledge and learning between themselves, I mean, that can be really, really powerful. So, you know, again, the transformative approach is not about doing everything perfectly all the time. It's about kind of being in that space where you feel a little bit uncomfortable and sticking with it anyway.

Yeah. Alright. So, Megan, I am a CSR practitioner at a at a corporation. I'm listening to this podcast. I'm completely sold, that this is something that I am interested in establishing at my place of work. So, like, give me a couple practical steps that I can take to get this started.

Oh, it's such a good question, Sam.

I would say probably the first thing you can do just just purely selfishly from my perspective because we have this approach. Right? Go on to the Realize Worth website, read the blogs, listen to some of the real talks that stand out to you, and start to get, wrap your head around some of the pieces that feel most compelling and important to you. And then you know what?

Email me, pick up the phone. Like, let's have a conversation. We love talking to people who are in the space. We love kind of brainstorming and, you know, sharing some of experiences that we've had with the companies we've worked with and just giving people some some additional food for thought, some additional information.

And then from there, we can direct you to some additional resources because, again, our website, we realized this has been around for a very long time, so there's lots of resources on the website, everything from the social rev platform to the free blogs and the free real talks that are on there. But we can help direct you a little bit better. So those would be my tips outside of, you know, talking to you, Sam, and, making sure they're they're connected with you too. But yeah.

I'm pointing people back to to you on this one, Megan. This has been incredible, and easily my favorite hour of the entire week has been this very conversation. That's so generous. Is fantastic.

Sam. Yeah. Thanks so much for for making the time. As always, I can't wait to see you out there at a conference or some kind of convening. I'm sure we'll be at one, at some point in the coming weeks. And, we'll talk more about volunteer leader networks when we're in person.

That sounds great. Thank you so much for having me, Sam. So fun.

Thanks for tuning in to Impact Audio, produced by your friends at Submittable. Until next time.