Capacity Building How the intermediary Empact provides

pro-bono services and skills-based volunteering (SBV)

At the heart of venture philanthropy is an engaged approach with the funded organisation. Ideally
what is provided by the social investor or resource provider matches what is needed on the side of
the social purpose organisation. The social purpose organisations needs tend to come from internal
parameters in the social purpose organisation, e.g. the development stage of the organisation, the
management team, its social mission, business model and growth plans as well as the external
environment, which shapes the entrepreneurial eco-system, economic stage of the country and the
role of the government. Social investors then have different in-house capabilities to support capacity
building and hence need to draw on third-party providers (either paid, low- or pro-bono). This requires
the venture philanthropy organisation to manage the third-party interactions.
The outcome of this relationship is capacity building through a variety of tools such as strategic
support, professional services and physical infrastructure, which aims to create real value for the social
purpose organisation by helping them to achieve their social missions and value for the social investor
or resource provider by increasing their impact.
In recent years, more corporations are looking beyond monetary donations to give back to society.
Individuals are also looking for alternative ways to contribute.i In particular, pro bono services have
gained popularity because corporations and social organizations are beginning to realise the benefits
of engaging in skills-based volunteering (SBV). According to a Landscape Study on the State of SkillsBased Volunteerism in Singapore,ii which was supported by UBS and Ministry of Social & Family
Development (MSF), the key motivational factors for corporations to engage in SBV include
opportunities for staff development (72%), better employee engagement (64%), ensuring the success
of community investment partners (33%) and maintaining a positive public image (28%). On the other
hand, social organizations that lack money, resources and talent often engage in SBV to receive access
to high quality services that they would otherwise not be able to afford (65%), meet current critical
organizational skill needs (60%), and build capacity for the company in the long term (46%). Thus,
while the popularity of SBV continues to grow, it should be noted that the priorities of these two
parties do not necessarily align.

Portrait of Empact
This is where intermediaries such as Empact can play a role in channelling the good intentions and
skills of corporates and individuals to increase the capacity of various social enterprises and nonprofit
organizations (collectively known as social organizations).
Empact is a Singapore-based social enterprise founded in November 2011iii by Peter Yang. It is
currently a small company consisting of eleven staff. It provides a range of intermediary and consulting
services to social purpose organizations (SPOs, including nonprofit organizations and social
enterprises) through pro-bono volunteers and offers advisory services to grant-makers and
corporations. However, its mission is first and foremost to assist SPOs in their pursuits of creating
social change.
To date, Empact has registered 300 individual volunteers, 150 of whom are currently active. They are
given the opportunity for self-development whilst contributing their skills and time to make a positive
and sustainable impact on the community. As a result, approximately 60 social organizations have
benefitted from the support.iv
1

Stakeholders
Together with its stakeholders, Empact works towards creating a world where individuals are selfactualized and act as active citizens. Empact empowers individuals who wish to contribute by
providing a platform for them to channel their skills to SPOs.
Social organizations that champion various social causes benefit from the assistance of these
volunteers to fulfil their critical backend operational needs such as accounting, marketing and
management review of operations. This support allows the SPO to focus on pursuing their social
mission and building their capacity to serve more needy people in the community.
In addition, Empact engages corporations that are looking for opportunities to contribute to society
through sustainable processes that involve their staff.
Other stakeholders of Empact include grant-makers such as social venture capitalists, who provide the
necessary funding support to SPOs. Empact provides the necessary groundwork to assist these grant
makers in comparing causes, measuring social impact and evaluating the soundness of ideas and
organizations.v
Figure 1: Empacts enterprise model

Mapping Capacity building in an intermediary context

Empact acts as the intermediary that brings together capital providers and SPOs. It attempts to
understand the objectives of the corporates and the real needs of the social organizations in order to
effectively match the volunteers skill sets.vi As Empact founder Peter Yang comments, We are the
lynchpin between many stakeholders.vii Typically, Empact serves SPOs, corporates and governments.

1/Assessing the needs of the client

Starting with SPOs, Empact has the following process:
In general, the engagement begins when SPOs approach Empact expressing need for
professional services that are critical to daily operations. These are referred to as shared
services (including bookkeeping and accounting services, payroll & HR support, donation
tracking, etc.).
Empact assesses the needs of the SPO by sending its own staff, at times accompanied by the
volunteers themselves, to the social organization. Together, the staff and volunteers work out
the process to deliver the solutions to the SPO. Throughout the process, the staff ensures
accountability to the SPO.
2

This helps Empact and its volunteers build their relationship with the SPO, so that when the
SPO requires additional services, Empact can go back to their team and see how they can
provide these added services, e.g. offering a CFO type role. In this instance, Empact considers
the needs of the SPO and then staffs its volunteers or own employees accordingly.

Empact also engages corporates and governments in designing volunteering programs that place
volunteers in SPOs. This is the reverse process and can take two similar shapes, depending on the
stakeholders:
Corporations

In this collaborative approach, corporates or government bodies approach Empact to design

a program for professionals to volunteer their skills with SPOs. In this case, Empact acts as a
consultant to design and implement the program allowing employees to put their skills
towards contributing to SPOs whilst concurrently developing their participation in local
communities as active and engaged citizens.
For example, Empact worked with Procter and Gamble (P&G) to create a staff volunteering
program. Based on the stipulated community interests of the company, Empact designed and
tailored the program according to P&Gs needs and scouted for social organizations that were
requiring such assistance.

Third-parties

Empact was also commissioned by the Ministry of Social & Family Development (MSF) to
conceptualise, design and implement the Pilot Social Enterprise Mentoring Program, a
platform for C-Suite professionals from various companies to mentor identified social
entrepreneurs who were on the brink of bringing their enterprise to full realization.

The full list of services offerings are listed in below:viii

SPOs baseline services/shared services
Bookkeeping and accounting services
Payroll and HR support
Corporate secretary
Taxation
Donation tracking
Vendor payment tracking

Government and Grant providers/donors

Research
Programme design and evaluation
Quality assurance and due diligence for
grant/donation recipients
Social impact measurement
Specialised programmes (eg. mentoring,
acceleration programmes)

SPOs advisory services

Financial control and planning
Programme review and evaluation
Legal contract drafting and review
Service innovation
Marketing plans and fundraising
Strategic and business planning
Mentorship programme
Training and development
Process improvement
Volunteer management

Corporations
Advise on community investment
projects
Advise on social impact measurement
Design and implement corporate skillsbased volunteering programmes
Design and incorporate talent
development into corporate
volunteering programmes

2/ Recruiting volunteersix
Empact seeks to provide opportunities to as many individuals as possible by customising the Volunteer
Development Program to fit volunteers needs and interests. This will allow working professionals,
retirees and students the opportunity to allocate time to champion their social causes. However, there
is a minimum commitment of 4 hours a month; and at least for a period of 6 months. For corporates
interested in developing a volunteering program, Empact is able to tailor the Program to their needs
and structure the engagement accordingly.
The recruitment process differs depending on the background of the volunteers.
Empact generally reaches out to students through partnerships with universities and student
associations. For example, Empact engage students of the Accounting Association at the Singapore
Institute of Management (SIM) to participate in the Volunteer Development Program. The student
organization will identify interested students and Empact is responsible for the training program.
On the other hand, Empact participates in recruitment and selection directly for professional
volunteers from corporations and professional bodies.
Volunteers are categorized as follows according to their experience and expertise, which influences
how they contribute:
1. Do-ers (basic, hands-on work that is generally completed by student or young professionals
volunteers)
2. Reviewers (generally volunteers who guide the do-ers in completing tasks, typically more
experienced professionals)
3. Subject matter experts (generally offers advice as part of the consultancy work or as trainers)
4. Mentors (mentors founders and leaders of social enterprises through specialised
programmes)

3/ Training volunteersx
Empact provides training to the volunteers once they have started and experienced some of the needs
and gaps. Training usually works best on middle and junior staff levels. However, since it is assumed
that the volunteers are competent in their respective fields and at their level of involvement, the
training is largely focused on helping volunteers understand the social sector and contextualise their
specialisation to the sector (e.g. gaining an understanding of the charity accounting standards).
On-the-job training is also provided within each volunteering teams, with the Empact staff and
Reviewers leading and guiding the Do-ers. Previous batches of volunteer groups are also brought in to
share their understandings on how best to manage projects involving social organizations, successes
and challenges and personal experiences.
Most of these volunteers are not consultants, but when they volunteer with Empact, they need to act
as consultants. Empact plays an important role in helping them change their mind-sets and recognize
the differences between corporate and social organizations. Two examples of differences:
1. Solutions in corporate environments may not always work for social organizations.
When P&G volunteers asked the marketing team of an SPO for a budget, the team
said $0. In the marketing experience of the volunteers, the budget determines the
strategy.

In SPOs, theres frequently no budget, yet there remains a need to act creatively to
augment the lack of funding. This is the mindset and working approach change that
volunteers experience.

2. Relationship between volunteers and SPOs are not based on Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs).
Instead, volunteers need to influence and collaborate with each other to work in
SPOs.

Sustaining the social enterprise

Initially, Empact was bootstrapped with Peter Yangs own funds to cover its initial operating expenses.
Since then Empact has supported itself through a mix of revenue streams.
By mobilizing individual and corporate staff volunteers who are willing to offer their professional skills
to help others, Empact is able to provide SPOs support in areas such as accounting, marketing, advisory
services and fund-raising at affordable, discounted rates. Such discounted rates are based on Empacts
operating costs with a slight mark-up and are between 50% and 100% lower than the market rates.
Fees received from organizations that use Empacts services also help to take care of its business costs.
However, the fees received through these avenues are not sufficient to sustain the enterprise. Empact
additionally receives grants from the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre (in 2012) and the
National Youth Council (with disbursement of its National Youth Fund over 1.5 years from October
2013).
Empact also generates its own funds by working with corporates and third parties interested in
creating a structured volunteering program. If a company pays Empact to engage its staff as
volunteers, the beneficiary organization does not pay for Empacts service.xi Finally, Empact also earns
income by providing advisory services. Each of these revenue streams (organization fees, grants and
consulting/advisory fees) generate approximately 1/3 of the total income.
The company also recently received a fresh injection of funds by a private investor who now has a
minority stake in the company.xii

Overcome hurdles
Empacts strengths lies in volunteer management, as it has developed ways to ensure that volunteers
deliver quality service to SPOs. One of the challenges Empact has found in regards to volunteer
management is keeping all its volunteers active. Currently, although Empact has registered 300
individual volunteers, only 150 are active.
Also, Empact realised that it is necessary to manage the expectations of volunteers. There needs to
be an understanding with the volunteers that apart from availability/ scheduling, the skills that they
offer may not be in demand by the social organisations. Furthermore, because Empact must play the
role of an intermediary between the social organizations and corporations, Peter Yang acknowledges
that there may be inefficiencies in communication between the three levels from SPO to Empact to
volunteer. Empact is mindful of this and actively works on improving the process to ensure that
important information is not lost along the way. The mutual selection of availability and required skills
ensures a continuous focus on maintaining quality.

Continuous challenges
Empacts challenges however lie in strategy, talent, impact assessment and finally growth capital.
Whats your endgame?xiii
Looking towards the future, Peter Yangxiv believes that Empact must consider its endgame the role
that the social enterprise intends to play in the overall solution to social problems, once it has proven
the effectiveness of its core model or intervention. Through many years of experience, Empact has
learned the best practices in the field - thus, Peter Yang envisions that Empact may eventually move
towards adopting an open source model that serves as a knowledge hub for research relating to
skill-based volunteerism. Alternatively, government may adopt the role of such a knowledge hub.
Neither of these options are necessarily attractive to investors, which then increases Empacts fourth
challenge in finding growth capital. Ideally, Empacts vision is to move to sustained service.
Attracting talent to the sector
It is difficult to attract fresh talent to join the company (and the sector in general) because Empact is
competing with large corporations, banks and other firms for graduating university students. The
values of Empact may not necessarily resonate with these students, and the company is unable to
compensate skilled personnel unless they are willing to take pay cuts. Another challenge is to rally
senior management to become involved as mentors for Empact. Through this, Peter hopes that more
C-level executives can come forward to offer their invaluable expertise and experience.
Measuring impact versus measuring Empacts value creation
From a return on investment perspective, a dollar of investment in Empact brings four dollars worth
of volunteer services.xv Yet, that does not necessarily indicate where Empacts value creation lies.
Hence, in order to measure the perceived value creation for volunteers, Empact volunteers fill out a
motivational survey before and after the volunteering experience. Yet, since the value of services such
as bookkeeping and mentoring can be hard to evaluate, each program requires a separate evaluation
method and has different outcome measures. Empact is still exploring different ways to measure its
value and impact in a more holistic and standardized way to allow for comparisons.
Growth capital
In the future, Peter expects to see increasing demand for Empacts services, as capacity-building will
become more important with the expected rise in the number of social enterprises. In this sense, then,
part of Empacts core mission has been achievedxvi. The company has plans to scale up operations by
improving its productivity through the standardization of processes and provision of common tools
and training. To serve more beneficiary organizations, more manpower and funding will be needed.
Thus, one of the challenges for Empact is the requirement of growth capital to pilot new revenue
streams and improve the business model. Peter is seeking capital providers who provide holistic
solutions of loans, grants, equity, etc.

Outcome and looking into the future

When Peter Yang founded Empact in 2011, skill-based volunteering was still a novel concept. In recent
years, the idea has gained popularity with corporates and many companies now incorporate skillbased volunteerism into their CSR programs. As Peter Yang looks into the future, he envisions Empact
acting as a knowledge centre, providing its expertise to companies. xviiUltimately, the key value that
Empact brings is awareness of the social organizations of their needs and how individuals and
corporations can offer their professional skills to address those needs.

http://beantherecountthat.sg/articles/making-empact/ (Accessed 29 May 2015)

http://empact.sg/redefiningcommunitygiving (2014)
iii
Conversation with Peter Yang on 15 June 2015
iv
Conversation with Peter Yang on 15 June 2015
v
http://www.empact.sg/ourstakeholders.php
vi
Asian Venture Philanthropy Network Conference 2014 (Session Report Human Capital Intermediaries)
vii
Conversation with Peter Yang on 16 June 2015.
viii
http://empact.sg/social-organisations.php (Accessed 16 June 2015)
ix
Conversation with Peter Yang on 15 June 2015
x
Conversation with Peter Yang on 15 June 2015
xi
Joachim Sim, 2015, Giving A Helping Hand Celebrating Singapore Social Enterprises (Page 100), Singapore,
Really Good Books Publishing House Pte Ltd
xii
Joachim Sim, 2015, Giving A Helping Hand Celebrating Singapore Social Enterprises (Page 104), Singapore,
Really Good Books Publishing House Pte Ltd
xiii
Alice Gugelev and Andrew Stern: what is your end game?, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2015
available on http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/whats_your_endgame, accessed on 30 June 2015
xiv
Conversation with Peter Yang on 15 June 2015
xv
Conversation with Peter Yang on 15 June 2015
xvi
Alice Gugelev and Andrew Stern: what is your end game?, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2015
available on http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/whats_your_endgame, accessed on 30 June 2015
xvii
Conversation with Peter Yang on 15 June 2015
ii

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0

International License.