Through decades of working in banks and FTSE 100 companies, our Trustees noticed how many employees were drawn to a company because of their philanthropic approaches, such as having several optional volunteer days a year, but once they joined never used them.

Many of the top companies see a tiny proportion of their volunteer days used, and the company often derives little benefit from people taking them, as they splinter off in small projects that often do not get enough attention to finish or see them through to their impact. Ultimately a handful of days a year is not enough to make a dramatic impact.

This is a coordination problem. If employees used their volunteer days as a tag team on a carefully selected and managed charity ongoing project, the charity will benefit from many fresh eyes and the company can see a project through to a more dramatic impact. This is how the Digital Skills Timebank was formed.

Transform Foundation is working with companies to find projects that help to amplify their CSR targets and then pair them with charities to measure the results and create case studies as a managed service.

For our first Digital Skills Timebank project, we have been donated 10,000 hours of senior employees time, to help 100 charities raise funds through a simple online campaign. Transform is comparing and evaluating all 100 campaigns to identify the strategies that succeed and then sharing non sensitive data as a collaborative white paper with the sector.

We are opening up applications for the Digital Skills Timebank later this year once our new grant programmes have all launched.