As corporate volunteering evolves from a feel-good initiative into a strategic driver of culture, wellbeing, and social impact, technology is playing a pivotal role in shaping its future. In this interview, Abhishek Humbad, Founder & CEO of Goodera speaks about how the company is redefining volunteering at scale—blending purpose with innovation, data with empathy, and global reach with local impact. Humbad shares insights on engaging Gen Z, leveraging AI responsibly, measuring real outcomes, and why volunteering is fast becoming a cornerstone of the modern employee experience worldwide.
1. Corporate volunteering seems to be gaining unprecedented traction worldwide. What factors are shaping this movement, and how has Goodera positioned itself as a frontrunner?
Corporate volunteering is gaining unprecedented momentum because it solves three critical needs at once: employees, especially Gen Z and millennials want purpose and community at work; organizations are seeking ways to rebuild belonging in hybrid workplaces; and scalable platforms now make volunteering easier to access globally. Many now set volunteering goals, offer paid volunteer time off (VTO), and integrate volunteering into CSR, with participation rates doubling in companies that provide VTO. Goodera’s 2024 benchmarking among 212 companies, shows workforce participation at 22% globally and 31% in India surpassing the global average. Smaller firms (<5,000 employees) lead with 44%, while tech (35%) and financial services (31%) are the top sectors. Indian volunteers Goodera has emerged as a frontrunner by treating volunteering asinfrastructure, not an activity. We enable companies to deliver meaningful, consistent programs anywhere in the world through our network of50,000+ nonprofits across 100+ countries,1,000+ curated experiences in 30+ languages, and2,500 trained hostswho ensure high-quality engagement. Over500+ enterprises, including several Fortune 500 companies, trust Goodera, with2 million+ volunteershaving contributed millions of hours and satisfaction scores consistently above80%.
Corporate volunteering is gaining momentum because it’s answering several very real gaps at once. At an employee level, Gen Z and younger millennials are looking for work that feels meaningful and they value experiences that build skills and community. Companies are grappling with loneliness, fragmentation, and weakened culture in hybrid and remote setups. Volunteering has emerged as one of the few experiences that consistently brings people together across roles, locations, and identities.
In a world grappling with disconnection, social unrest, and widening inequality, volunteering has become a powerful cultural and societal bridge. Governments are encouraging corporate participation, and companies now see volunteering as a strategic lever for wellbeing, culture, and impact. Goodera’s mission is to make volunteering accessible, engaging, and truly impactful at scale, grounded in real community needs and credible outcomes.
2. Younger professionals, especially Gen Z, want work with meaning. How is volunteering becoming central to engaging this generation?
For Gen Z, careers are about values as much as compensation. Volunteering gives identity, purpose, and relationships at work. Millennials and Gen Z, forming nearly 75% of the global workforce, are turning volunteering into a key factor in recruitment, retention and culture. It’s how they explore causes they care about, contribute skills beyond their job descriptions, and form real relationships in increasingly hybrid and distributed workplaces. On Goodera’s platform, 70% of Gen Z employees who volunteer once return within the same year—clear proof that when the experience feels meaningful, it sticks.
Volunteering has also shown to reduce stress, combat loneliness, and strengthen relationships directly influencing collaboration and productivity. Our data shows volunteers are 2.5× more likely to report a strong sense of belonging at work. Large, shared experiences—like school programs, environmental drives, or festival-linked volunteering, often see 70–80 employees participating together, creating moments of connection that typical workplace interactions don’t.
When companies introduce structural enablers like Volunteer Time Off (VTO), flagship campaigns, or technology platforms, participation nearly doubles. Many organizations now make volunteering core to their employee value proposition, shaping how younger professionals choose, stay, and engage.
3. AI is being integrated into many workplace tools. What does it look like when applied to volunteering, and how do you balance technology with empathy?
At Goodera, AI doesn’t replace human connection, it strengthens it. We use AI primarily behind the scenes to remove friction and scale impact. Our AI Ops Brain manages thousands of live programs, tracking 100,000+ tasks, flagging risks, and ensuring consistency across geographies. This saves 1,200+ manual hours every month, allowing our teams to focus more on partnerships, quality, and meaningful community outcomes. Our Goody AI recommendation engine further helps CSR teams design smarter, faster, and more relevant volunteering programs.
Equally, we’re using volunteering to democratize AI access. Through our AI for All Mission with Global Citizen, we aim to reach 1 million people by 2030 with inclusive AI learning, through workshops, student programs, and community sessions inspired by insights from our State of AI Literacy in Social Impact 2025 report. For us, the balance is simple: AI manages complexity; humans deliver empathy. When done right, technology doesn’t dilute volunteering, it makes it more human at scale.
4. Many organizations stop at measuring volunteer turnout. How does Goodera help companies focus on impact instead of just participation?
Our impact measurement framework looks at two dimensions: social impact and people impact.
On the social impact side, we track real-world outcomes, lives impacted, resources created, skills transferred, and measurable program outputs. Whether it’s students gaining STEM exposure, communities receiving essential support, or environmental outcomes like trees planted, every initiative is backed by structured nonprofit feedback and consolidated into credible, leadership-ready impact reports.
Equally critical is people impact, because volunteering shapes culture. Beyond counting hours, we assess depth and sustainability: unique and repeat volunteers, hours per volunteer, champion engagement, and whether volunteering is becoming a behavior rather than a one-time event. We also measure how people felt, through NPS, qualitative feedback, and sentiment indicators like pride, connection, and motivation to volunteer again.
Our analytics link these to tangible goals, like a Fortune 500 tech firm reaching 10,000+ students through STEM programs or a global software enterprise mobilizing 50,000+ employees to plant a million trees. We’re shifting the focus from counting heads to capturing meaningful outcomes that drive pride, purpose, and lasting change.
By uniting community outcomes + employee experience in one framework, Goodera helps companies see the full picture: the difference they made, the culture they built, and how to design stronger, more meaningful volunteering programs year after year.
5. How does Goodera ensure its large non-profit network delivers meaningful outcomes rather than corporate checkboxes?
Our global reach enables us to match companies with nonprofits that truly need their employees’ skills and energy. We focus on outcomes rather than outputs, and we design every experience need-backwards: starting from beneficiary and nonprofit priorities, then co-creating the volunteering experience around what will actually help.
Using a trained host model, we handle logistics and execution so both volunteers and nonprofits can focus on impact. Through Community Missions like Light-A-Life, Leap India, Educate India, Green India, and AI for All, rooted in insights from our research such as The Community Pulse Report and The State of AI Literacy in Social Impact 2025, we build sustained pathways for impact over time.
We address real social needs aligned with community priorities in education, environment, health, community welfare, women’s empowerment, and inclusion. This needs-first approach ensures every volunteer hour delivers measurable, meaningful impact for communities and a sense of purpose for employees.
6. With stress and isolation rising in modern workplaces, how is volunteering used to support wellbeing?
Mental wellbeing is becoming one of the biggest workplace challenges and volunteering is emerging as one of the few interventions that consistently helps. A research by Oxford’s Dr. William Fleming found that volunteering stood out as the only workplace wellbeing activity with a clear positive effect on employee wellbeing, which is telling in a world full of wellness apps, workshops, and one-off initiatives.
Hybrid and remote work have boosted productivity but also led to loneliness and disengagement, with over half of Indian employees feeling stuck in “survival mode.” Volunteering offers a meaningful way to reconnect: it gets people out of autopilot, brings teams together around something bigger than work, and creates real social interaction, without the pressure of “networking” or performance. It also works because it combines three things many other wellness efforts miss: purpose (doing something that matters), connection (doing it with others), and agency (choosing a cause and seeing outcomes).
At Goodera, over 80% of our programs now happen within workplaces, making participation easy while fostering connection. From mentoring students to assembling care kits, these experiences rebuild empathy, strengthen relationships, and help create a healthier, more connected workforce.
7. Smaller firms are outperforming large enterprises in employee volunteering. What explains the high participation rates in these organisations?
The strong 44% participation rate in smaller firms suggests a cultural advantage rooted in agility, closer-knit teams, and flatter hierarchies. These organisations often operate with greater visibility of leadership and quicker decision-making cycles, allowing volunteering to be integrated seamlessly into company culture. Employees in smaller firms typically work in more collaborative environments, which naturally extend into volunteering activities. Moreover, younger employees, who form a larger proportion of staff in fast-growing firms are more likely to seek purpose-driven opportunities, mentorship, and peer connection through volunteering. The data indicates that these companies are not only encouraging volunteering but treating it as a core part of employee engagement and identity-building. As a result, smaller firms are shaping a model where participation is not dependent on scale but on cultural intent.
8. Several Indian cities are emerging as volunteering hubs. What drives high turnout in regions such as Bengaluru, Pune, and Chennai?
Cities such as Bengaluru (65 volunteers per event), Pune (61), and Chennai (60) are recording the highest volunteer turnout in India, reflecting a strong correlation between urban workforce demographics and volunteering behaviour. These cities host large concentrations of technology and knowledge-sector employees, who are typically younger, more socially aware, and keen to participate in activities that offer community connection. Additionally, these metros have well-developed civic and non-profit ecosystems, enabling smoother mobilisation of volunteers and more structured engagement opportunities. The presence of large corporate clusters also leads to greater coordination between organisations and non-profits, making it easier to scale events and sustain participation. Together, these factors position India’s tech-driven cities as centres of volunteering momentum.
9. Top causes such as education, environment, and community welfare dominate volunteering initiatives. What does this reveal about workforce priorities?
The prominence of causes such as education, environment, health and wellbeing, community welfare, and elderly care reflects a workforce that is deeply aware of societal challenges and eager to contribute to long-term change. Education continues to attract the highest participation due to its potential for direct and visible impact, while environmental initiatives resonate strongly with younger employees concerned about climate change. Health and community welfare activities have become increasingly relevant as employees recognise the vulnerabilities exposed during and after the pandemic. These preferences indicate that the workforce is moving beyond one-off charity activities and aligning with causes that are sustainable, scalable, and tied to national development priorities. The data suggests that volunteering is no longer viewed as an isolated corporate event but as a meaningful channel through which employees can contribute to broader social progress.
10. As volunteering becomes more important to employee experience, how are organisations balancing technology adoption with the need for human connection?
As volunteering becomes more central to employee experience, organizations are learning that technology and human connection don’t have to be at odds. When designed well, technology removes friction while intentionally creating space for connection.
At Goodera, technology enhances accessibility and efficiency by personalizing opportunities, simplifying sign-ups, and localizing content across languages and geographies, so programs can scale without losing relevance. Digital tools also support real-time participation insights, coordination with nonprofits, and deeper impact measurement.
But connection is not left to chance. We deliberately engineer human connection into volunteering experiences through a structured flow of orient, act, and reflect.
Orient: Every experience begins with context, why the cause matters, who it supports, and how volunteers’ actions will help. Icebreakers and nonprofit storytelling create emotional readiness and shared intent.
Act: The volunteering activity itself is designed to be collaborative and guided, often led by trained hosts, so people work together rather than in isolation.
Reflect: Reflection closes the loop. Volunteers share what they felt, learned, and noticed—turning action into meaning, and participation into pride, gratitude, and connection.
Technology supports this journey, but the heart of volunteering remains deeply human. The current trajectory shows that the most effective organizations aren’t using technology to replace connection, they’re using it to design for connection at scale, ensuring volunteering stays both scalable and human-centred.
11. Impact measurement is becoming increasingly central to CSR programmes. How are companies shifting from counting volunteers to assessing real outcomes?
Organisations are moving beyond participation metrics to evaluate actual contributions, such as beneficiaries reached, resources delivered, skills imparted, and feedback from communities and volunteers. This shift reflects a broader demand for transparency and alignment with ESG and SDG frameworks. Companies are seeking to understand not just how many employees volunteered, but what was achieved and how it connects to long-term social goals.
They’re also evaluating cultural impact, not just hours logged: repeat participation, volunteer satisfaction/NPS, and whether employees felt proud, connected, and motivated to return. These indicators show whether volunteering is becoming sustained behavior or a one-off activity.
Measurable outcomes, whether it is students mentored, trees planted, or communities supported provide a clearer picture of the value volunteering brings to both employees and society. As corporate responsibility becomes more strategic, impact-focused measurement is becoming the standard rather than the exception.