A new resource is available for employee volunteer programs, bringing an effective and time-efficient solution to the often jam-packed schedules of the corporate world. 

Earlier this month, The Extraordinaries, a for-profit social enterprise headquartered in San Francisco, launched their micro-volunteering network, Sparked.com.

The new micro-volunteering site targets the millions of professionals that can’t or don’t volunteer, often because of a lack of time.  The Sparked paltform gives employees a way to contribute their skills, online, to brief virtual volunteer projects for nonprofits. Current examples in the Sparked network include helping to design a new logo, writing a Google ad, or reviewing the job description of a new position a nonprofit is thinking about hiring for. Sparked fills a gap in the employee volunteering community by providing quick, short-term ways for people to have an impact on nonprofits that are in need of skilled services.

“Large corporations and small businesses alike have been looking for a way to more easily engage their employees, create community goodwill, and use their professional skills to promote social good,” says Jacob Colker, CEO and Co-Founder of The Extraordinaries. “We developed Sparked specifically to fill that need.”

The Extraodinaries team has also developed ways for both small-to-medium size businesses and large corporations to utilize the Sparked network for their specific needs – from strengthening company culture around volunteerism to expanding pro bono services across corporate departments.

A Platform to Help Nonprofits Get Things Done

Of course, the news here is not that individuals can gain new skills while making a difference, or that companies can benefit from adding a new micro-volunteering component to their employee volunteer program. The innovation is that Sparked offers a platform for helping nonprofits distribute virtual volunteer opportunities, connect with skilled volunteers, and manage the collaborative process of getting their mission-critical work done.

Sparked not only answers a need in the corporate giving sector, but it provides a new resource for nonprofits to gain the help they seek by tapping into the potential of crowd-sourced skilled volunteering.

While there are similar services out there to help companies crowd-source their projects (99designs.com, Mechanical Turk, and Elance, for example), Sparked is free for nonprofits.

If you are an Employee Volunteer Program Manager or CSR professional, would you use Sparked to engage your employees or consumers in skilled volunteering? We’d love to hear your thoughts.