5 Strategic Ways Volunteering Can Advance Your Marketing Career5 Strategic Ways Volunteering Can Advance Your Marketing Career
Seventy-six percent of HR executives say volunteering makes candidates more desirable. What if your unpaid marketing efforts could have an even bigger impact? Here’s how to turn skilled volunteering into a resume boost.
July 15, 2025
Selfless good deeds are impossible, according to Joey Tribbiani, that wise sage from the TV show Friends.
The giver always gains something — at a minimum, it’s the good feeling from helping out.
In the professional setting, volunteering brings much bigger benefits — 76% of HR executives say skilled volunteering makes a job candidate more desirable, according to the Deloitte Volunteer IMPACT Survey, as reported by the Food Bank of Wyoming.
If done strategically, volunteering can solve a number of challenges. It can let you showcase the results that your work can produce. And it can be the solution to the catch-22 challenge of needing experience to earn a promotion, but not being able to gain that experience in your current paid work.
Skilled volunteering can also illuminate how you’re willing to use your expertise to help others. Let’s look at five opportunities to use volunteering to better your career.
1. Boost the stories on your resume and portfolio
“Volunteering comes in very handy if you’re looking to get low-stakes experience in roles you’re unfamiliar with, like wanting to learn more about email marketing, social media, or even aspects of business development,” says Kelly Meyer, senior digital marketing manager at Marketri, who volunteers for the American Marketing Association’s chapter in Madison, Wisconsin.
“It’s a great way to showcase your skills if you’re just graduating, changing roles, between jobs, or just need a boost in your own portfolio,” she says.
Whether you volunteer to do marketing-related tasks or not, you can gain helpful soft skills from your unpaid experiences. For example, if you want to be promoted to a management role, having volunteer experience leading a project or a team will be a help. More than adding a line on your resume, you will gain stories to tell about lessons learned and challenges overcome.
If you can’t share your paid work and its results that your employer considers proprietary information, volunteering can help. Since you’re giving your time to the organization, it will likely be OK with you publishing how your efforts have positively affected its business goals — something any employer would like to see from potential marketing candidates.
Takeaway: Seek volunteer opportunities to gain professionally related hard and soft skills that employers want to see in candidates.
2. Grow your personal brand
Nadine Leighton volunteered as a marketing assistant at The Stroke Association while she was at university to build her real-world skills. Since then, she’s donated her time and skills to initiatives that align with her personal passion and professional development interests. She’s been a marketing volunteer for the Bloom UK community and a mentor through Lollipop Marketing.
“These opportunities have sharpened my leadership and mentoring abilities, expanded my industry network, and helped me stay deeply connected to the marketing community,” she says.
More recently, Nadine, who is the marketing director at Bright, co-founded Join Our Table, a community to create space and visibility for Black women working in advertising, communications, marketing, and media.
While she gives her time and skills to benefit that community, she's also grown her personal brand through related speaking engagements and advocacy at industry and community events. “Giving back meaningfully enhances not just your career but your leadership identity,” she says.
Takeaway: Raise your profile by leading and advocating for volunteer organizations.
3. Get out of your remote world
Identity and connection are at the heart of Catherine Whiteman's professional volunteering strategy. The public relations strategist at Gaffney Austin moved to Nashville about 17 months ago.
“I work remotely for clients all over and wanted a way to get to know the Nashville business community better,” she says.
Introduced by a friend to the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, she signed up to be a volunteer advisor, offering her expertise to founders and program participants. More recently, she joined the organization’s awards event committee.
“It’s an opportunity to give back in a way that supports innovation and economic growth,” she says. “It’s also a way for me to get to know the Nashville business community and more about the city as a whole, emerging businesspeople, and long-established Nashville professionals.
"Even in a time with so much remote work, in-person connections and connecting to my newly adopted city matter,” Catherine says.
Takeaway: Use volunteering to expand your in-person networking.
4. Show your individual or organizational values
Catherine, Nadine, and Kelly bring their marketing skills to help organizations that align with their values and skills. Agencies and companies can do something similar, helping them to show clients and employees (and prospective customers and hires) what they value.
Abra Marketing is a health care marketing agency, so its decision to donate web development time to Nor-Cal Think Pink, a breast cancer awareness organization, just made sense. It also volunteered on the organization’s project to light a bridge in Redding, for which its founder was recognized in a thank-you letter on the nonprofit’s website.
The agency connected with Nor-Cal Think Pink through a client who was a major sponsor of it. “It definitely looked good for us with that client to become involved,” says Kurt Hoffmann, founder and chief marketing officer. It was also a great networking tool to connect with the health care community.
Because the bridge lighting was a game-changing concept, Abra Marketing shares the story in its agency materials, including its website, social media, and proposals.
Look Left Marketing, a public relations agency for B2B tech, follows a similar philosophy, executing pro-bono partnerships with organizations that have similar missions and values, says Liesse Jayalath, director of creative and content strategies.
She points to two partnerships that do just that. Scientific Adventures for Girls works to close the gender gap in science and technology, a mission that supports the future of innovation, as Look Left Marketing does. Protect Us Kids delivers on a mission of cyber safety and exploitation for youth. “It’s an issue we believe every tech company and communications professional should take seriously,” Liesse says.
“Professionally, this kind of volunteering sharpens your storytelling instincts, expands your understanding of social impact (especially the societal implications of technology for us) and demonstrates your values in action,” she says.
“This is a great way to communicate what you stand for and spark meaningful conversations with clients, collaborators, and future team members who care about purpose-driven work,” Liesse says.
Look Left Marketing tells its volunteer stories on social media, shares them in client pitch decks, and highlights the charities it supports on holiday cards for clients.
Here’s how Liesse helps promote the organization through her individual LinkedIn page. She highlights three facts related to the mission of Scientific Adventures for Girls — California elementary schools offer less than 20 minutes of science instruction a day; in the United States, only one-fourth of jobs in computing and engineering are held by women; and Latina, Black, and Indigenous women account for less than 10% of the STEM workforce. Then, she shares about the organization, “Scientific Adventures for Girls is changing those stats by providing free STEM education to underrepresented K-6 grade kids in the Bay Area. I’m so honored to help them spread the word about their work. Check out their latest news at the link in the comments.”
Takeaway: Don’t limit your volunteer work to a section on your resume, profile, or website About page. Regularly, tell stories about your work and the organization's work.
5. Look for less-expected opportunities
While volunteering for professional and industry-related organizations to gain and grow your marketing skills is an organic fit, pay attention to your non-professional world, too.
Abra Marketing’s Kurt stepped up to help the kickboxing gym where he and his children trained. He helped produce a short documentary titled Win. Lose. Forgive. about the coaches and the sport of Muay Thai, a Thai-style of kickboxing.
It premiered at a local movie theater, garnered media attention, was featured at the Wine Country Film Festival, and has been viewed over 100,000 times on YouTube. The description mentions Abra Marketing’s involvement with a link to its website.
The film changed the gym’s stature in the Muay Thai kickboxing world and attracted many new students. “They gained deep respect and brand recognition,” Kurt says.
Takeaway: Ask local businesses that may not have the budget to hire a marketing pro if you could volunteer your skills.
Tell the story publicly
Sharing your volunteer experience typically happens in a separate section on your resume and in your LinkedIn profile. You can still do that, but if you’re doing skilled volunteering to fill a gap in your paid experience, consider other options.
Move your relevant unpaid work to the experience section. You can list it as a separate role and include “(volunteer)” next to it or add a line labeled something like “pro bono consulting.” As you would with paid roles, detail the work and results achieved. Include links to the organization and your projects if possible.
But don’t stop there. Ask the organization to include “credits” in its promotional content, tagging you and other volunteers. That not only helps the individual volunteer, but it expands the reach of the organization.
And do what Liesse does: Talk regularly about the organization, your work, and the impact in your social media feeds. She explains, “Volunteering your professional skills doesn’t just feel good, it builds your personal and professional brand in a way that’s authentic, relevant, and lasting."
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