Victor Lee

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR / CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, COMMUNITEER

“Our clients find Hack4Good a particularly effective way to encourage internal networking and improve communication across teams. ”

VICTOR LEE

“They have to be hyper-present and use core mental skills to lower their heart rate and brain activity,” explains Visser, adding that most of the participants believe that the water exercise is impossible when it’s first outlined in the program. But once they’re shown how to do it, the lessons are valuable back in the workplace.

“It’s all about belief – people believing in themselves and having confidence within their own space,” says Visser, who is based on the Sunshine Coast and still surfs every day. “The path to success is about the process in each moment.”

When DeadlyScience, a charity that assists Australian First Nations students to develop STEM skills, needed a fresh marketing plan, it turned to property developer Mirvac. Its staff worked on ideas to connect DeadlyScience with potential partners and donors during a one-day volunteer hackathon – then Mirvac committed to provide ongoing pro bono help to implement the plan.

The bridge between Mirvac and DeadlyScience is Communiteer, a Sydney-based “social good network” that pairs community organisations, such as the Australian Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity Australia and the Heart Foundation, with corporate volunteers, including Pfizer, UNSW Business School and Aspen Medical.

But the volunteers aren’t planting trees or dishing up soup. Instead, they use their professional skills to tackle a range of typical not-for-profit challenges, such as fundraising, community outreach and partnership strategies.

Communiteer CEO Victor Lee says the Hack4Good program is not simply about ticking off corporate social responsibility goals. A major drawcard for companies is the team-building benefits of bringing their employees together from across the organisation to collaborate on solving problems, while also giving back to the community.

“Employees are taken into the world of community organisations to understand what drives them, how they support the most vulnerable and how they can make a meaningful difference,” he says.

“Our clients find Hack4Good an effective way to encourage internal networking, improve communication across teams and engage employees in direct community development.”

The fast-paced hackathons run for about four hours in person, online or hybrid, matching between 25 and 200 volunteers with up to four community groups. The volunteers are split into multi-disciplinary teams of four to six people, to brainstorm ideas, develop solutions and present them to the organisation for its feedback and the announcement of the “winner”. The pricing starts at $6000 for a virtual hack with 30 participants.

Lee, who launched Communiteer in late 2019, says interest in Hack4Good and his enterprise’s other volunteering activities has accelerated since the end of the pandemic, as employers try to reconnect their teams and encourage in-office attendance.

But he’s aiming to do more if he can find the right organisations to partner with. “Corporate volunteering presents an opportunity to effectively align ESG [environment, social and governance] with people, culture and employee management strategies to create a unified organisation.”