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Home Blog How to Gain Leadership Buy-In for Volunteering Programs
Corporate volunteers logged 23.7 million approved hours in 2025, a 175% increase since 2019, while the number of unique volunteers more than tripled to 1.87 million – Benevity
Lou Cooper
August 26, 2026
The continued and significant growth in corporate volunteering is great. But many CSR and ESG teams still struggle getting leadership to approve budgets, commit employee hours, and give programs appropriate room to grow.
I’ve spent the last four years at Be My Eyes working with organizations around the world and hosting corporate volunteering events. One of the key things I’ve learned is that leadership buy-in rarely comes from a passionate presentation about why volunteering is important. Instead, what they need to see is why it matters to their organization, how it will work in practice, and what they can expect to get from it.
Instead of going to leadership with a volunteering proposal centered around the activity you have planned, start with the objective the program supports.
Otherwise, it’s typically much easier for leadership to put it into the “nice to have” category instead of a “must have”.
“Employees will volunteer for a few hours.”
“Teams can take part remotely.”
“We’ll support a great cause.”
All of those things are true, but they don’t yet explain why the business should invest in the program.
I’d recommend really thinking about what’s ultimately important to the business here. For example:
When framed like this, volunteering becomes part of the answer.
And in fact, this was one of the reasons why the Zain and Be My Eyes partnership has worked so well. The program isn’t treated as a standalone CSR activity that sits outside the business but actually supports two pillars of Zain’s 4WARD strategy: Customer Delight and Purpose in Action.
Since launching in July 2024, the initiative has run across Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Sudan, South Sudan and Oman. More than 80 real-time calls have been answered during each volunteering session, with a 96% satisfaction rate reported from both users and volunteers. Learn more about our partnership with Zain here.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”
This saying is very relevant here, and one of the best things I’d recommend before presenting to leadership is to put yourself in their shoes. What questions are they likely to ask?
Most are likely to be pretty straightforward, such as:
These are questions that most responsible leaders are going to ask, and it’s your job to have answers ready.
Also, be clear about what success looks like and be completely realistic about what the program requires.
A pilot or trial event can be a particularly useful way to answer those questions and is something we offer as part of our own corporate volunteering packages.
The impact of volunteering isn’t limited to the people receiving the support. For leadership, one of the strongest arguments for investing in a program is what employees take away from the experience.
Volunteering can give people the chance to communicate with different audiences, solve unfamiliar problems, and work outside their usual roles. In an accessibility-focused program, it can also give employees a much more practical understanding of disability and the barriers blind and low-vision people can face.
That matters because these aren’t just useful experiences in the moment. They can influence how employees approach customers, colleagues and the products or services they help create.
For example, an employee working in customer service may come away with a better understanding of how a blind customer might experience an interaction.
When you can connect the volunteering experience to those wider employee and business outcomes, the proposal becomes much easier to justify than a simple request for employees to spend a few hours supporting a good cause.
One of the easiest ways to strengthen your case for a volunteering program is to show leadership that you already have a plan for measuring its impact.
Rather than asking them to approve a program and promising to work out the KPIs later, decide upfront what you want the program to achieve and how you will demonstrate that.
That could mean measuring things such as participation, employee satisfaction, willingness to volunteer again, changes in confidence around accessibility, the number of people supported, or the reach of the program across different markets.
The important thing is to choose measures that connect to the reason you’re asking leadership to approve the program in the first place. If employee engagement is the priority, show how you’ll measure engagement. Or, if the goal is to bring your company’s values into everyday employee experiences, make that part of the measurement plan.
When you’re asking leadership to approve a volunteering program, it’s worth showing them what happens after the first event.
A recurring program, for example, might give you a stronger case for investment because it creates more opportunities for employees to participate over time. Different teams can take part at different points, new employees can get involved, and people who enjoyed their first experience can volunteer again.
That’s one of the reasons Be My Eyes offers corporate volunteering packages built around multiple events, with a mix of hosted and unhosted sessions. The aim isn’t simply to put one event in the calendar. It’s to give organizations a practical way to build volunteering into the employee experience over time.
When making your case, show leadership not just what the first event will achieve, but what could happen when employees have the opportunity to keep coming back.
After working with organizations on corporate volunteering for several years, I’ve found that the most successful programs don’t feel bolted on.
They make sense.
They fit the company’s values, they give employees a reason to participate, and they create a tangible benefit for the people being supported.
And that is ultimately the case you need to make to leadership. Show them exactly why it belongs in the business, why employees will engage with it, how you’re going to start, and what you’ll learn from doing it.
If your team wants something that feels immediate, human, and easy to get started, then explore our corporate volunteering solutions at Be My Eyes. Or, for deeper insight into how volunteering drives employee engagement and business value, download our free eBook below.
