Three Reasons to Include Volunteering at Your Conference

Do you want to create a meeting or event that will leave a long-lasting impact on those who attend and the local community? Volunteer events can do just that! They also offer numerous other benefits. 

The Community: 
Large-scale conferences often bring revenue to cities; however, they can also be problematic for residents. 

Residents may experience congestion on local roads and highways. They may also have a hard time getting restaurant reservations. For conferences held during busy seasons, like graduations, visiting family members may find not be able to find hotel rooms or only find them at exorbitant prices. 

To assist local communities, conferences can implement volunteer activations. 

In 2022, for example, we hosted a Social Impact Zone at Cisco Live!, a 30,000-person conference. This brought attention to those living in Las Vegas and were plagued by hunger as well as the impact climate change has had on the region. 

Throughout the conference, attendees built bee houses, compost bins, garden beds, and nesting boxes. The items supported two local organizations which allowed the organizations to expand their community garden program and increase low-income residents' access to healthy foods while supporting environmental initiatives.

Nonprofit partners also benefitted from local news coverage of the conference’s Social Impact Zone, which brought heightened awareness to the issue as well as the work the nonprofits were doing.

The Attendees: 
The benefits of volunteering are well known for individuals whether they engage in these activities on their personal time or with others. 

At conferences, these experiences can be magnified. Attendees, for example, can use volunteer opportunities as networking events whether they are spending time with current or past colleagues or meeting members of distributed teams for the first time. This approach can be especially valuable for those who are introverted as well as those who choose not to partake in late-night activities.

Attendees can also learn more about the community where the event is being and its most pressing social issues. Individuals can begin to understand more about recent environmental impacts, social justice issues, and more. Many volunteers may also learn valuable skills. 

The Host Company: 
By hosting volunteer events at conferences, companies are able to tell their story of good. They are able to not only communicate their corporate social responsibility goals, but also the steps they’ve taken to meet those goals since the announcements of goals were made. For companies like Cisco, which is devoted to sustainability, they can also promote new products and services that are available for partners, vendors, and others to use to meet their social responsibility goals as well. 

Give To Get offers volunteer events for meetings and events that run from minutes to hours, can be hosted at the conference center or an offsite-location, and support a wide range of causes.  To learn more about our work, please visit our website. To discuss your event in detail, please contact our business development team.