300 Ericsson employees seek charities that need skilled-based volunteers
Howard Lake | 19 November 2019 | News
Technology company Ericsson is seeking charities that can make the most of over 300 skilled employees who wish to volunteer for charities. The first round of applications particularly welcomes applications from charities based in Berkshire or with outreach work in Berkshire.
The staff offering to volunteers are legal, digital, marketing, HR or finance professionals. Ericsson has 1,300 employees in the UK including 300 in the Reading HQ.
The matching of skilled volunteers to relevant charities is being handled by whatcharity.com. Launched in 2018, the platform helps charities and businesses collaborate on grants, awareness campaigns and competitions. Using Charity Commission data, it covers all charities in England and Wales.
Ericsson’s Our Year of Volunteering
Ericsson’s “Our Year of Volunteering” starts at the beginning of 2020. Throughout the year, approximately 40-50 charities with whatcharity.com profiles will make the shortlist to be presented to Ericsson staff. In the first round this December, 10-
15 charities will be presented.
Tiia Sammallathi of whatCharity.com explains: “This is a great opportunity for charities of all size and type to benefit from much needed and highly sought after expertise from a wide range of professional skill-sets. It is a democratic and fair process facilitated by our platform technology. Like our previous applications for grants and competitions, the process is simple and straightforward. We don’t do complicated!”
Roger Peacock HR Director Ericsson explained the company’s aims. He said: “As a large employer we want to give back our time, skills and experience to worthy causes, especially for us in the Reading area.
“We provide our employees up to one day per year of paid time out for their charity-based activities and in addition staff often give many more hours of their own time. During 2020 we’d like to encourage more staff to take part and create stronger links with charities that may benefit from our staff’s time and skills by making it easy for both parties to engage.”
“Ericsson is very open to the kind of charities we will look to support and can vary these from year to year. Our ideal situation to start with, is to work with Reading-based charities to allow them to benefit from the large number of our employees who travel and work in Reading.”
Applications open on 19th November 2019, and the deadline is 8 December 2019 for the first round, with more opportunities in 2020.
WATCH: What is whatCharity.com
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.