Last February, Margarita and me went to the Pro Bono summit in Berlin joined also by Kristin from Baker&McKenzie as partner representative.
The event is supported by the BMW Foundation which valued the development of Pro Bono intermediaries to support the capacity building of NGOs through the world. We were close to 22 countries represented: US (Taproot, Pyxera), Canada, China, Japan, Thailand, France, UK but also Egypt, Marocco and Saudi Arabia. It was amazing to spend 3 days all together getting to know more about the specificities of each of us, the success and some of the failures. Personnally, it felt quite nice to be part of something so large and not having to reinvent each time the wheel.
But ...most of you...even being very polite and not daring to ask it...are still wondering what is Pro Bono? In a country like Turkey where even volunteering is not a really known concept, why do I keep upsing this strange world and encouraging everyone to use the #ProbonoTR.
I really like looking at the pyramid done by Taproot (for me, Taproot is a little bit the Google of the Pro Bono movement..). Their definition of Pro Bono is: Pro bono – short for pro bono publico, "for the public good" – has come to mean professional services delivered at low or no cost to social change organizations. We define it as professional services (marketing, legal guidance, human resources, technology, and so on) donated to nonprofits to further their missions.
There are different kinds of volunteering:
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Hands on volunteering: the favorite one in Turkey...reading to children, painting schools, cleaning beach...great to engage a lot of persons and book a max of hours....but, most of the professionals will see it more like a team building event and, at the end, the impact for the cause of the NGO is quite limited.
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Skill- based volunteering: volunteering where one uses his/her common sense to support others like for exemple mentoring.
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Pro Bono: Probono is that part of the pyramid where a professional uses his/her sepcific skills (legal, financial, IT, strategy, etc.) to support a social cause. Of course, we can only engage some people at a time..but what an impact!
As C@rma, we are focusing on skill-based volunteering and Pro Bono, aiming at having the largest impact as possible.
So now? Is it more clear what we mean when we are speaking about Pro Bono? Interested to use your skills? Register on the platform now and we will let you know when an opportunity for volunteering will match your registred skills!
