Something to Consider This Summer: Deciding on Pro Bono Work in Your Upcoming Budget

For PR pros, summer is a time to recharge, take off a few days, eat ice cream (see page 6), read (p. 10), perhaps watch The Olympics (p. 3 and 16) before returning to work and crafting budgets for the coming year.

Owing to the state of the world in 2021, perhaps budgets will include more pro bono slots than previously.

When we heard about the story of a young woman you’ll read below, PRNEWS decided to delve into how companies and PR firms decide on pro bono projects.

For example, is there a formal decision process? Do they:

Budget a percentage of time every quarter to pro bono?
Survey employees to see what activities and causes are on staffers’ minds?
Have committees that oversee pro bono work?

Or is it informal? ‘One of our employees has a relative with a medical condition, so we’ve worked pro bono for one of the groups in that space.’ Or ‘ABC Charity, whose office is in our building, approached our senior partner about helping with fundraising.