You run a small business. Some of your staff already help out around town, coaching a team, serving at a church supper, pitching in at a festival, and you would like the company to back that up. The trouble is that most guides to an employee volunteer program are written for a bank with a software budget and a department to run it.
This one is written for twenty people. The short answer: a small program needs paid volunteer hours, two or three partner organizations and one person to run it. This guide walks through each: a volunteer time off policy you can adapt in an afternoon, five steps to a first year you can finish, and how to find organizations in Miami County that can use a team.
At the end, it shows where a gift of money fits alongside the time, because the two work better together than either does alone. You won’t need a platform, a consultant or a committee, just one decision and one person willing to own it.
What an Employee Volunteer Program Looks Like at a Small Company
At a large company, an employee volunteer program means a portal, a tracking app, and someone whose whole job is community relations. At a small one, it is much simpler.
A working employee volunteer program has three parts:
- Time. A set number of paid hours each employee can use to volunteer, written down.
- Places. A short list of two or three organizations the company has already talked to.
- An owner. One person who schedules, answers questions, and counts the hours at the end of the year.
That is the whole structure. T-shirts, awards and a newsletter are optional, and most of them can wait until the second year.
It also helps to be clear about what the program is not. It is not the company’s charitable budget. Giving money is its own decision, covered in our guide to how a local business approaches corporate philanthropy. And it is not a way to get unpaid work done for the business itself. That line has a legal edge, covered below.
Why Small Employers Bother: The Benefits of Employee Volunteering
Volunteering is already part of ordinary American life. More than 28 percent of Americans, over 75.7 million people, formally volunteered through an organization in 2023, giving 4.99 billion hours, according to AmeriCorps’ Volunteering and Civic Life in America research. Some of your employees are very likely among them.
So the first benefit of employee volunteering is simple. A program recognizes something your people already do, and makes room for it on the clock instead of only on weekends.
The other benefits are real but hard to measure, and be wary of anyone who puts a precise number on them. What a small employer can reasonably expect is more ordinary:
- You see people differently. The quiet bookkeeper who organizes a food drive may turn out to be a natural lead.
- People from different corners of tbhe business meet. In a company of twenty, the shop floor and the front office may barely talk.
- The company becomes known for something. In a county the size of Miami County, people notice which businesses show up.
None of that shows up on a balance sheet in the first year. It shows up in who stays, and in who calls you when they need something done.
Volunteer Time Off: The Policy That Makes It Real
A program without paid time is a suggestion. Volunteer time off, often shortened to VTO, is paid time an employer gives staff specifically for volunteering, separate from vacation and sick leave.
It is less common than you might expect. SHRM reports that the share of employers offering paid time off for volunteering has ticked up slowly, reaching 28% in 2024. A twenty-person company that offers it is doing something most employers do not.
How Much Time to Give
There is no standard amount. Pick a number you can lose from the schedule without scrambling, and put it in writing. Three common ways to set it:
- A fixed number of hours per year, usable in blocks of a few hours at a time.
- One team day, when the whole company volunteers together, plus a few individual hours.
- Matched hours, where the company pays for one hour of volunteering for every hour an employee gives on their own time, up to a cap.
Start small. Raising the number in year two is easy. Taking hours back is not.
Paid Volunteer Time Off and the Wage Rules
Two pieces of federal guidance shape how you set this up. First, employees may not volunteer unpaid services to their own for-profit employer. The Department of Labor’s guidance on volunteers under the Fair Labor Standards Act says so plainly. The program has to send people to real charitable work, never to “volunteer” at the company’s own booth or jobs.
Second, the Department looked at an employer volunteer program directly in opinion letter FLSA2019-2 in March 2019. It found that unpaid volunteer time outside work hours was not hours worked where participation was not required, skipping it had no adverse effect on the employee, and no bonus was guaranteed. If the employer uses its tracking to direct or control what employees do, that time becomes hours worked.
The practical reading: keep the program voluntary, never penalize anyone who skips it, and do not tie pay or bonuses to hours logged. This is general information, not legal advice. For anything unusual, ask your employment attorney.
A One-Page Volunteer Time Off Policy Template
Most VTO policies fit on a page. Copy this, fill in the brackets, and have someone read it over before you share it:
- [Company name] Volunteer Time Off Policy
- Who is eligible: All [full-time / full- and part-time] employees after [number] days of employment.
- How much time: Up to [number] paid hours per calendar year. Unused hours [do / do not] carry over.
- What counts: Volunteer work for a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, a school, or a public agency. Work for a religious congregation [is / is not] included.
- What does not count: Any work for [Company name] or its customers, political campaign work, and any activity the employee is paid for by someone else.
- How to request it: Ask [program owner] at least [number] days ahead. Requests are approved on the same basis as other time off.
- How to record it: Log the date, hours and organization with [program owner].
- Participation is voluntary. No employee is required to volunteer, and choosing not to will not affect pay, evaluations or promotion.
Building Your Employee Volunteer Program in Five Steps
The order matters. Programs that fizzle usually skipped the first step or never did the last one.
- Ask your staff. Three questions over coffee or on a slip of paper: what do you already volunteer for, what would you like to do, and would you rather go as a team or on your own? You may find the program half-built already.
- Name one owner. Pick someone who wants the job, not someone it is handed to. Give them a couple of hours a month to run it.
- Pick two or three partners. Call before you commit. Ask how big a group they can take, which days work, and what the work actually is. A small nonprofit may be glad of four skilled people and swamped by twenty unskilled ones.
- Put one team day on the calendar. A single date everyone can plan around does more for a first-year program than a generous policy nobody uses. Then open the individual VTO hours.
- Count the hours and tell people. At year’s end, add up the hours and list where they went. Share it with staff and, if the partners agree, with customers. That short report is what gets the program renewed.
Finding Partners in Miami County
You do not need a volunteer-matching platform in a county this size. You need to know who is doing what.
- Start with the events calendar. The Foundation keeps a Miami County events calendar covering Paola, Osawatomie, Louisburg and Spring Hill: festivals, fun runs, concerts and fundraisers.
- Look for events that come back every year. The calendar has carried the Paola Roots Festival on Park Square, the Louisburg Cider Run & Fall Festival, the Spring Hill Fall Festival and Porchfest in Osawatomie. Events like these depend on volunteers, and a team that returns each year becomes part of them.
- Meet the nonprofits in one room. The Foundation hosted an all-day Miami County Non-Profit Gathering in August 2026. A gathering like that is the fastest way to learn which organizations need what.
- Match skills, not just hands. A bookkeeper, a web designer or a contractor can often do more in an afternoon than a whole crew moving chairs. Our guide to skills-based volunteering in Miami County covers how that works.
A team day at a festival is a good start. A standing relationship with one organization, where the same people show up each year, is where a program earns its keep.
Pairing Time With Money: Where the Foundation Fits
Once a team has spent a day with an organization, the next question is usually whether the company can do more. That is where time and money work together.
- Match the hours with dollars. Some companies give a set amount for every hour an employee volunteers, often called “dollars for doers.” It works like a matching gift, and the setup is the same one described in how to set up a corporate matching gift program.
- Give to a fund that serves the same cause. The sitewide Donate Now button opens a list of the Foundation’s funds you can give to online. You can also mail a check made payable to the Miami County Community Foundation, with the fund name in the memo line, to 702 Baptiste Dr, Paola, KS 66071. Every route is laid out on the Foundation’s ways to give page.
- Start a company fund. Businesses are among the Foundation’s fund holders. An expendable fund starts at $1,000 and can be spent down to zero. An endowed fund starts at $10,000 and stays invested permanently. Setup takes seven to ten business days. The details are under establishing a fund with the Foundation.
One tax note keeps expectations honest. IRS Publication 526 is clear: you can’t deduct the value of your time or services, and neither can your employees. Unreimbursed out-of-pocket costs of volunteering may be deductible, and charitable driving can be figured at 14 cents a mile.
FAQ: Employee Volunteer Programs
Can an employee volunteer for their own company for free?
No. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, employees may not volunteer services to a for-profit private employer. An employee volunteer program should send people to nonprofits, schools or public agencies, never to unpaid work for the business.
Is volunteer time off paid?
Yes. That is what separates VTO from simply allowing people to volunteer. The employer pays the employee’s regular wage for approved volunteer hours, up to the limit in its policy.
Is volunteer time tax-deductible?
No. The IRS does not allow a deduction for the value of anyone’s time or services. Unreimbursed expenses directly tied to the volunteer work, such as mileage at 14 cents a mile, may be.
How do you start an employee volunteer program with no budget?
Start with time rather than money: one team day with one local organization, organized by one person. Write down a simple VTO policy, count the hours, and decide in year two whether to add a donation.
Employees will ask whether volunteering counts as work experience, and owners will ask what percentage of profit to donate.
Conclusion
A small company’s employee volunteer program does not have to look like a corporation’s. It needs paid time, a short list of places, and one person to keep it going. In a county where businesses and nonprofits already know one another, that is enough to matter.
The part most small programs miss is the follow-through: the count at year’s end, the same partner the next year, and the moment someone asks whether the company could give as well as show up.
When that moment comes, the Foundation’s ways to give page sets out every route, from a gift to an existing fund to a fund with your company’s name on it. Questions go to info@micocf.org or (913) 404-7287.
