Every month, more than 500 employees from over 120 companies spend one hour volunteering together.
Same event. Different companies. People who have never met, working side by side toward the same goal. No travel. No full day off. One focused hour, online, open to anyone.
We call these community events. They're free to join, and they're the easiest way to see what high-participation volunteering actually feels like. Here's what happens in the hour, and why it works.
What a community event is
A community event is an open, virtual volunteer event that Percent Pledge runs every month. Any company can bring its team. Any employee can join.
We've run more than 1,000 corporate volunteer events across 50-plus global markets. The community events are the open version of that. You don't have to be a customer to attend. You show up, you take part, and you see the format in action.
It's built around a real task with a real nonprofit. Not a webinar. Not a talk about volunteering. Actual volunteering, done together, in an hour.
What the hour looks like
The event opens with a quick welcome and the why. Who the nonprofit is. What the group is about to do. Who it helps.
Then everyone does the work together. It might be writing letters to isolated seniors. Building learning kits for students. Creating care materials for people in crisis. The task is simple enough that anyone can do it, and visible enough that you can watch your piece add up.
Picture a letter-writing event. The host introduces a nonprofit that supports homebound seniors. For the next forty minutes, hundreds of people across dozens of companies write short notes of encouragement, while a facilitator keeps the energy up and shares a few on screen. A counter climbs as letters get logged. By the end, the group has written more than a thousand letters in a single lunch hour.
Throughout, there's a shared sense of progress. You see the group's collective impact grow in real time. By the end, there's a number. Letters written. Kits built. A concrete result the whole group made in sixty minutes.
People log off having met a few coworkers and strangers, having done something good, and having spent a lunch hour on something that felt better than another meeting.
Why one hour works
An hour is the whole point.
The biggest barrier to volunteering isn't willingness. It's time. A full volunteer day is a big ask. People have deadlines and lives, so most never sign up.
An hour removes that barrier. It's small enough to say yes to and real enough to matter. That's why these events draw the turnout they do. Low barrier, real impact.
The virtual format removes the other barrier: location. Someone in a home office three time zones from headquarters joins the same event as everyone else. For a distributed team, that's the difference between including everyone and including only the people near the office.
The community part matters
There's a reason we don't run these company by company in isolation.
When over 120 companies show up in the same hour, employees feel part of something bigger than their own org. A movement, not a task. People from companies that compete in the market end up on the same side of a good cause for sixty minutes. That shared experience is part of what makes it stick.
It also means a small company gets the same energy as a large one. A ten-person team isn't volunteering alone. They're part of a room of hundreds.
Why we run them free
We don't gate community events behind a sales call. Anyone can come.
The reason is simple. The fastest way to understand what a high-participation program feels like is to be inside one for an hour. No slide deck explains it as well as the experience does.
So we invite HR and people leaders to join with a few of their team. See the facilitation. Feel the energy. Watch how a one-hour format pulls people in. Then decide if you want that running inside your company every month.
What it reveals about your own program
Most people leave a community event with the same realization. Their employees would do this too, if it were this easy.
That's the real lesson. Low participation is rarely about people who don't care. It's about a format that asks too much, a platform that gets in the way, or a program nobody has time to run. Strip those away, and participation shows up.
The community event strips them away for an hour. It's a working proof that the barrier was never your people.
Who should come
Two kinds of people get the most out of it.
HR, CSR, and people leaders sizing up what a modern program could look like. An hour here tells you more than a demo about whether your employees would actually show up.
And teams that just want to do something good together. An ERG, a department, a remote team that rarely connects. The event gives them a shared hour that builds something real.
There's no catch. You can attend, enjoy it, and never talk to sales. Many people do exactly that, then come back the next month.
How to bring your team
If you want to use a community event as a test run, a little setup makes it land better.
Pick a date and put it on your team's calendar as you would any meeting. Send a one-line invite that says what it is and that it's an hour, no prep required. Ask a manager or two to join, since their presence pulls others in.
Then just show up together. Afterward, ask your team one question: would you do that again? The answer tells you whether a monthly version belongs inside your company.
Come see for yourself
We've written about what makes corporate volunteer events work. But reading about it isn't the same as being in one.
The next community event is open. Bring a few people from your team. Spend an hour. See what high participation feels like from the inside. Browse upcoming events and join the next one, or book a demo to talk about running events like this inside your company.
Frequently asked questions
What is a Percent Pledge community event?
A free, open, virtual volunteer event held every month, where employees from many companies volunteer together for one hour around a real task with a nonprofit.
Do we have to be a customer to join?
No. Community events are open to anyone, and you can attend with your team without talking to sales.
How long is it, and what actually happens?
One hour, online. The group does a real task together, like writing letters or building kits, and sees the collective impact add up in real time.
Why just one hour?
Because the biggest barrier to volunteering is time. An hour is small enough to say yes to and real enough to matter, which is why turnout is high.
