[tsaksa]

My company has a program that allows employees to request up to 1 hour per week off for volunteer activities. Of course it requires manager approval and is not always allowed, but several employees do use this option to do all variety of school or community volunteering. During the per-season I found it came in really handy getting to one meeting a week by the time the students were getting off school. If we had more than one meeting a week I came latter to the others. During build season it is just a drop in the bucket, but everything helps.

The company also allows you to keep track of volunteer hours and will donate some money at the end of the year to the organization based on employee volunteer hours up to some limit. At one time they were a larger supporter in donations, but times being what they are, we are lucky to get what we do.

Other than that, there are no other official sponsorship such as awards, meals, etc. However, my manager is particularly supportive and was willing to allow the volunteers on our team to take the two days off we need for travel to regionals as a combination of comp time and attendance of a technical conference. This was very generous and not typical.