Community Connections: The LinkedIn for Skills-based Volunteering

Community Partner: Noel Lam, Founder of Third Sector Connect (TSC)

Skilled Volunteers:

Fanny Ho, Commodities and Global Markets, Macquarie Group
Monica Cai, Controller, Cost Management & Analytics, Nomura
Michael Fung, Senior Accountant, PwC Hong Kong

Location: Hong Kong

Problem Statement

Founded in 2019, Third Sector Connect (TSC) is a social enterprise that aims to help social impact organizations build capacity. It does this by connecting social impact organizations with corporates, volunteers, and donors and funders in the social impact space, and facilitating the establishment of collaborative partnerships across sectors. Apart from offering operation enhancement services to its NGO partners, TSC also runs a Learning Community to facilitate the co-creation and sharing of collective wisdom necessary to build a more sustainable future.

Noel Lam, the founder of TSC, joined FSI’s Community Connections Program as a Community Partner with the aim of looking for committed volunteers with different expertise and skillsets such as IT development, organizational development and operations, PR and communications, finance, and fundraising. In particular, TSC was hoping to connect with Skilled Volunteers who understand the pain points and challenges faced by social impact organizations.

FSI’s Shared Impact Solution: Community Connections

At the Connection Session organized by Community Connections, Noel was able to recruit seven Skilled Volunteers (from the 10 that attended her breakout sessions) to work on several projects organized by TSC. Each of the Skilled Volunteers were given projects to work on, and the outcomes are positive for the Skilled Volunteers as much as TSC.

One of the Skilled Volunteers Noel engaged was Fanny Ho, a Commodities and Global Markets specialist from Macquarie Group. Since connecting with Noel at the Connection Session, Fanny has brought in her expertise in project management and data analytics to formulate a set of methods to measure the social impact of social enterprises and the services they offer.

Working and researching with Noel, Fanny helped to start the social impact analysis project from scratch, and created a roadmap to achieve the final goals. “Community Connections enables participants to be matched with the right ones to contribute and make the city a better place,” said Fanny.

Also recruited by Noel but for a different project were the Skilled Volunteers, Monica Cai, a Cost Management and Analytics Controller at Nomura, and Michael Fung, Senior Accountant at PwC Hong Kong. Together, Monica and Michael created an accounting record input and a financial reporting Excel template for TSC’s NGO partner, Outdoor Wildlife Learning Hong Kong (OWLHK).

As a financial professional with more than 10 years of experience, Monica decided to volunteer her skills and expertise in spreadsheet, automation, and reporting for TSC’s NGO partner because TSC’s vision and mission align with her own values. “I remember I was really impressed by how passionate Noel was with TSC and with what she does to try to bridge the gap between volunteers and other NGOs,” said Monica.

Michael focused mostly on using Excel, including power query and pivot, conditional formatting and data validation, to restructure OWLHK’s data recording system/methods with automated fill-ins. Monica and Michael also worked to map out OWLHK’s staff reimbursement and claiming workflow to better understand the types of problems and issues the charity was facing, and they consolidated multiple spreadsheets into one to streamline the work process for OWLHK’s staff. “When we delivered our first iteration of the template, our client was really amazed,” said Monica. “She was like, ‘Oh wow, this is really what we need!’ And that makes me happy. That makes the entire team happy!”

The fruitful partnerships that TSC has been able to establish with the Skilled Volunteers that Noel recruited at a Connection Session are a validation of the Foundation for Shared Impact’s Shared Impact Philosophy: through our Community Connections Program, we are able to facilitate the creation of shared impact through broad collaboration and free sharing of knowledge, resources, and information. Said Noel: “I see Community Connections as a very beautiful idea, which is relevant to what TSC is doing. We hope to leverage corporate volunteers’ skills to help organizations in the social service sector build capacity. Through Community Connections, we can reach out to high-caliber corporate volunteers, who have the expertise and know-how to help our clients.”

As a Community Partner of Community Connections, Noel said she was pleasantly surprised. “I think Community Connections exceeds my expectations, to be very honest. I had very satisfactory outcomes from joining the Connection Session.” Echoing her positive feedback are the Skilled Volunteers who worked with TSC. “I think the Community Connections Program is a really good platform, especially for first-time corporate volunteers,” said Monica. “It really introduces them and gives them exposure to the landscape of Hong Kong NGOs. This wouldn’t be something that they can do easily by themselves. It is like a LinkedIn for the volunteering area.” In addition, Fanny has likened the Community Connections Program to a series of speed dating activities matching corporate professionals and social impact organizations.

Join Community Connections

Are you interested in joining Community Connections? Register as a Community Partner or get in touch with us to find out how your and your company can be involved!