Skills-based volunteering applies employees’ professional abilities to nonprofit needs, including consulting, board service, communications, finance, technology, and other specialized work. Recent benchmarks show both substantial corporate investment and a relatively small share of eligible employees participating directly.
Contents
- Definition and valuation
- Corporate adoption and scale
- Participation, hours, and intensity
- Workforce and career outcomes
- Nonprofit capacity and community outcomes
- Global delivery models and employers
Definition and valuation
CECP’s 2023 definition identifies three requirements for pro bono service: a formal commitment, performance of an employee’s professional function, and a charitable nonprofit end-recipient. This separates skills-based volunteering from general volunteer activity while recognizing that the work is delivered for community benefit. (CECP, Giving in Numbers: 2024 Edition)
Taproot’s 2024 Pro Bono Valuation put the value of one hour of skilled-volunteer service at $220, 18% higher than its prior 2019 update. Taproot and CECP had valued an average hour at $195 in 2019. (Taproot Foundation, “Learn How to Use Taproot’s Pro Bono Valuation in Upcoming Webinar”; Taproot Foundation, “What is Skills-Based Volunteering?”)
When employee skill-area data and internal billing rates were unavailable, CECP’s 2015 guidance, cited in 2019, recommended a fallback estimate of $150 for a pro bono service hour. These figures are valuation benchmarks, not cash donations or wages paid to volunteers. (CECP, “Pro Bono Service Remains a Key to Unlocking Corporate Purpose”)
The corporate scale is visible in CECP’s non-cash investment data. In 2023, 69% of surveyed companies used non-cash community investment, the category that includes pro bono service. Pro bono represented an average 20% of those companies’ non-cash community investment, and its median reported value was $560,000. (CECP, Giving in Numbers: 2024 Edition)
For comparison, the median reported pro bono value among companies that reported a value in 2022 was $565,932. In CECP’s inflation-adjusted matched set, the median value rose 4% from 2020 to 2022. (CECP, Giving in Numbers: 2023 Edition)
Corporate adoption and scale
In 2018, 62% of CECP companies reported offering a pro bono program. CECP also identified pro bono service as one of the three most offered domestic volunteer programs that year. Its share of companies making a domestic volunteer program available to employees recorded the largest three-year growth from 2016 to 2018 among the program types examined. (CECP, “Pro Bono Service Remains a Key to Unlocking Corporate Purpose”)
Fifty-six percent of CECP companies reported pro bono monetary values in both 2016 and 2018. The same 2018 dataset shows that companies offered an average of 5.2 domestic volunteer programs and 4.1 international programs. These measures describe program availability and reporting continuity, not the number of employees who participated. (CECP, “Pro Bono Service Remains a Key to Unlocking Corporate Purpose”)
CECP’s 2022 non-cash investment mix places pro bono alongside other forms of corporate support. Pro bono service averaged 17% of non-cash community investment, while product donations represented 65% and other forms represented 16%. (CECP, Giving in Numbers: 2023 Edition)
Company size strongly shaped the median reported value in 2022:
| Company size | Median pro bono value in 2022 |
|---|---|
| More than 100,000 employees | $4.24 million |
| 50,000–100,000 employees | $577,200 |
| 30,000–50,000 employees | $666,469 |
| 10,000–30,000 employees | $269,781 |
| Fewer than 10,000 employees | $100,000 |
These are medians for the reported company-size groups, so they should not be read as an average value for every employer in each band. (CECP, Giving in Numbers: 2023 Edition)
Participation, hours, and intensity
CECP’s 2022 figures show a marked difference between companies with and without a skills-based volunteering program. Companies with such programs had a median of 65,560 volunteered hours, compared with 11,184 hours for companies without one. Among employees, the corresponding median was 54,965 hours at companies offering skills-based programs and 15,459 hours at companies without them. The dataset describes an association between program presence and hours; it does not establish that the program alone caused the difference. (CECP, Giving in Numbers: 2023 Edition)
For companies with skills-based programs, median volunteered hours increased 31%, from 50,000 in 2020 to 65,560 in 2022. Companies without such a program also recorded growth, with median hours rising 35%, from 8,261 to 11,184 over the same period. (CECP, Giving in Numbers: 2023 Edition)
Participation rates were much smaller than the program-level hour totals. In CECP’s 2023 company survey, pro bono service had a 4% eligible-employee participation rate. Board leadership, another skills-based volunteer format, had a 3% rate. (CECP, Giving in Numbers: 2024 Edition)
Access also expanded geographically. The share of companies offering pro bono service to international employees grew by 8 percentage points between 2021 and 2023. CECP’s matched set recorded a 75% increase in median volunteer hours from 2021 to 2023; this is a broad corporate-volunteering benchmark that includes skills-based programs rather than a skills-only measure. (CECP, Giving in Numbers: 2024 Edition)
Workforce and career outcomes
Deloitte’s 2016 Impact Survey measured employer-side views of skills-based and non-skills-based volunteering. Eighty-five percent of respondents said skills-based volunteering helps employees improve communication skills, compared with 77% for non-skills-based volunteering. Eighty-eight percent said it helps develop strong character, compared with 84% for non-skills-based volunteering. These are respondent perceptions, not experimental estimates of causation. (Deloitte, 2016 Deloitte Impact Survey Report)
The same survey found that 92% agreed volunteering improves employees’ broader professional skill sets, and 92% agreed it is an effective way to improve leadership skills. Eighty percent said active volunteers move more easily into leadership roles. (Deloitte, 2016 Deloitte Impact Survey Report)
Recruiting views were also favorable. Eighty-two percent said they were more likely to choose a candidate with volunteer experience on a résumé, while 85% were willing to overlook other résumé flaws when volunteer work was included. The survey also identified unmet demand: 47% said their workplace did not offer a volunteer program, and among respondents whose employer lacked one, 66% wanted their company to offer one. (Deloitte, 2016 Deloitte Impact Survey Report)
Nonprofit capacity and community outcomes
Skills-based volunteering is intended to address organizational needs that may otherwise require scarce professional capacity. In Taproot’s survey, 92% of nonprofits reported that skilled volunteers are a strong resource for building capacity. (Taproot Foundation, “What is Skills-Based Volunteering?”)
Taproot reported that in 2022, 30% of nonprofits working with its skills-based volunteers saw revenue grow and costs decrease. Taproot itself increased its skills-based volunteer hours by 15% and its number of skills-based volunteers by 21% in 2022. (Taproot Foundation, “What is Corporate Social Responsibility? Can Skills-Based Volunteering Fulfill Your CSR Goals?”)
One later employer example comes from State Street. In 2025, more than 2,000 State Street employees contributed more than 35,000 pro bono hours. Ninety-five percent of participating nonprofits said the skills-based programs met or exceeded their goals. (Taproot Foundation, “Modernizing Skills-Based Volunteering: How State Street Scaled Talent Development and Community Impact with Taproot”)
Global delivery models and employers
Global programs demonstrate several ways employers organize specialized service. Johnson & Johnson’s Talent for Healthy Communities program had engaged partners in 23 countries across six continents by 2024, covering the period from 2018 to 2024. (Taproot Foundation, “Impact at Scale: A Blueprint for Global Skills-Based Volunteering”)
Deloitte reports more than 158,000 skills-based volunteer hours each year for local nonprofits. Its StepUp program had more than 700 professionals volunteering year-round and supporting more than 100 nonprofits across the United States. More than 4,600 Deloitte professionals serve as nonprofit board members. (Deloitte, “Pro Bono and Skills-based Volunteering”)
The same Deloitte program page reports an annual average of more than 200 consulting professionals on service-related consulting projects in countries including Guatemala and Nicaragua. Deloitte and New Profit completed 42 pro bono projects with 38 nonprofit and social-impact organizations since 2013. (Deloitte, “Pro Bono and Skills-based Volunteering”)
Deloitte also reports more than 935,000 hours devoted to pro bono service over the 12 years covered by its current program page, plus more than 158,000 hours of professional skills-based volunteerism in fiscal year 2020. The annual, fiscal-year, and cumulative measures refer to different periods and should not be added together. (Deloitte, “Pro Bono and Skills-based Volunteering”)