Lumen’s Volunteer Sprint Program is an opportunity for selected employees to contribute their unique skills and expertise to help a social enterprise or non-profit partner address some of their most pressing challenges.
In partnership with MovingWorlds, Lumen will offer selected employees the chance to leverage two weeks of paid time off to use their skills and expertise to complete a virtual skills-based volunteer project.
Examples of the type of skills and support the project partners are looking for in 2025 include (but are not limited to): digital transformation, strategy development, program management or rebranding.
Lumen Cares Volunteer Sprint Informational Session June 2025
All full-time, exempt, non-represented, Lumenaries are eligible to apply for a Volunteer Sprint but we do have limitations on capacity! In 2025, across Q3 and Q4, we will offer 60 volunteer sprints; one Lumenary will be eligible to sign up for each of the volunteer sprints, so up to 30 Lumenaries per quarter will be selected. Volunteer Sprints are designed to provide Lumen employees with dedicated, uninterrupted time off to:
Manager approval is required before submitting an application so be sure to speak with your manager and discuss your interest in participating. If accepted, you will work with your manager to select the dates of your time away to complete your Sprint.
Waves are time-bound participation periods. By committing a certain number of projects and Lumen employees per wave, the MovingWorlds team will be able to ensure that each project has an employee match. Lumen will offer one Wave per quarter, beginning Q3 2025. Within each Wave, participants will work with their managers to decide on timing of their two week Sprint dates.
Lumen Cares 2025 Volunteer Sprint Waves will be:
This program goes beyond traditional one-day volunteering or community service events. Instead, you'll engage in a skills-based project where you apply your professional expertise to make a deeper, more lasting impact. To see what this looks like in action, explore these examples of past experteering projects.
If selected to participate, here are the key steps you will take to engage as part of either wave of the Volunteer Sprint program:
Join the kickoff call to meet the other colleagues in your participation wave and receive an overview of next steps and how to navigate the MovingWorlds platform.
You will each individually complete the onboarding module linked in your dashboard. It shouldn't take more than 15 minutes, and provides guidance about how to navigate the platform, what to expect when working with project partners, and tips to help you get the most out of your experience.
Once you are onboarded, you will begin searching the platform for the right pro-bono consulting opportunity for your skills with our world-changing project partners.
When you find a project that looks like a potential fit, you'll request an introduction from the project description page.
We encourage you to send 3-5 introduction requests during this time, as it will give you more options to choose from when confirming the project you'd like to commit to.
Once you've sent introductions, you'll start meeting with project partners to confirm a match. When an introduction request you have sent is accepted, we will put you in touch directly with the partner who posted the project to set up time to discuss how you can contribute, ask questions, and get the information you need to determine if it's the right fit.
Choose the project that is the best fit for you based on your scoping calls, and confirm the match with the MovingWorlds team. Once confirmed, the MovingWorlds team will guide you and the project partner you're supporting through a planning guide to align on key deliverables and details about how you will work together.
Wrap up your project based on the end date you and the project partner you're supporting agreed to in the planning guide. Once the project concludes, MovingWorlds will send you a follow-up survey to learn more about the impact you co-created, and get feedback on your experience as a skills-based volunteer.
Attend a Reflection & Wrap-Up event to showcase the work you’ve done and the impact you’ve made.
We expect the following time commitments will be necessary:
Only if there are extenuating personal or professional circumstances that require it and your exception has been approved by Lumen.
Potentially. Projects (or segments of a
longer-term project) are generally designed to
be completed within two weeks (or 10 business
days) and we expect that to be the standard
amount of time volunteers dedicate to a project.
If a project is completed sooner and the project
partner has no other support required from a
Lumen employee volunteer before two weeks are
completed, employee volunteers can either:
No. Our focus is on providing two weeks (or 10 business days) per employee to dedicate to each project. Some partners may have longer projects where multiple employees participate, in which case part of your Sprint may include project onboarding and/or offboarding.
We expect employees who are accepted to the Volunteer Sprint to select projects that work around or avoid holidays and do not conflict with their vacations. If employees need to take sick days during the Volunteer Sprint, we expect the employee volunteer to alert both their manager and the project partner to determine how to complete the Sprint at a later date. If your Sprint overlaps with any planned time off you are still expected to ensure you are fulfilling the 10 day commitment to your Sprint project.
Hours worked during a Volunteer Sprint should be recorded as regular work time. These hours should also be tracked in the Lumen Cares Portal as volunteer hours.
If so, please discuss with your manager how to track your time from your Volunteer Sprint. If your manager needs help, please log an HR Connect ticket for the Engagement and Community Team/Social Impact with any questions or concerns.
A total of 60 employee volunteers is our target in 2025.
All regular full time, non-hourly employees in good standing – no matter the location, tenure, role, level or experience – are eligible to apply. If your application is selected, the #1 criteria is a commitment to complete your Volunteer Sprint project virtually within the timing of your selected wave.
No. In fact, if you have never volunteered before, we would welcome your application! We want to offer our partners a mix of Lumen employee experience and that includes volunteering experience.
Yes.
Yes. We expect employee volunteers to work directly with their managers and teams to plan ahead on the timing of when you will commit to complete the Volunteer Sprint. Similar in some ways to taking two weeks of Personal Time Off (PTO), the employee and the manager should work together in advance to reprioritize, balance and/or postpone workloads in advance of a Volunteer Sprint.
What we also ask employee volunteers and managers to keep top of mind is that Lumen has made a commitment to our partners to support and complete their projects. So, when an employee volunteer commits to a project, we will do everything we can to complete it.
During their Volunteer Sprint, we expect
employees to:
During their Volunteer Sprint, Lumen employees
should NOT:
Please log an HR Connect ticket for the Engagement and Community Team/Social Impact with any questions or concerns.
We sincerely hope that does not happen, but we
understand there may be extenuating
circumstances.
When there are work obligations competing with
the Volunteer Sprint, we expect employees and
their managers to reprioritize projects together
(similar to planning for PTO) to accommodate the
Sprint and meet our commitments to our project
partners. If there are significant customer or
operational issues that cannot be shifted,
please log an
HR Connect ticket for the Engagement and
Community Team/Social Impact
and the team will work together with employees,
managers and Moving Worlds partners to determine
an alternative volunteer or project.
If there are exceptional personal reasons that necessitate a cancellation of your Volunteer Sprint, please 1) let your selected project partner know directly and 2) Log an HR Connect ticket for the Engagement and Community Team/Social Impact so the team can help the partner find an alternative volunteer.
No. The Volunteer Sprint is paid time off from Lumen.
No.
Yes. There is a mandatory, but brief, survey to complete at the end of each employees’ Volunteer Sprint with your organization to ensure a) employees and project partner needs were met during the project and b) learn what we can improve in future programming. You may also be asked if you would be willing to share your experience with the Volunteer Sprint in broad internal or external communications by Lumen or MovingWorlds.
All Lumen employees will volunteer virtually for their projects. However, we will also make sure time zones and language are not barriers to your project’s completion with our project partners.
No, currently all Volunteer Sprint projects are designed by our partners to be completed virtually. If you are located close to your matched project partner or one of their staff, you are welcome to coordinate meeting or working on your project in-person, however, that is not expected.
Lumen employees can offer a diverse mix of
skills to project partners. The list below
represents the kinds of skills support our
partners have requested in similar programs, but
we expect Lumen employees will bring many other
types of expertise not even accounted for
here!
Accounting, Advertising, Brand, Business
Strategy, Communications, Data Analysis,
Database Management, Engineering, Event
Planning, Finance, Fundraising, HR, IT, Legal,
Leadership or Management, Manufacturing,
Marketing, Monitoring & Evaluation,
Multimedia, Operations, Product Design, Product
Management, Sales, Social Media, Software
Development, Training, User Research, Vendor
Management, Videography, Web Design, Web
Development, Translation Services.
If you bring other skills that you think may be especially relevant, please be sure to indicate those areas of expertise in your application.
Please think holistically about all the
different skills and expertise you could bring
to a project– not just what you are currently
responsible for at Lumen.
We believe Volunteer Sprints offer some form of personal and professional development to all employee volunteers, but we also encourage employees to think of ways in which a Volunteer Sprint could expand your skillset too. You may want to focus on identifying projects that would act as a stretch assignment for you.
MovingWorlds partners will register their project(s) and Lumen employee volunteers will register their skills on the MovingWorlds platform. Employee volunteers should proactively search out projects that match their skill set and contact partners directly to see if they are a match. MovingWorlds staff will also help step in and match projects and volunteers, if there are signs partners or employees are not connecting or locating matching projects.
You have a choice! Employee volunteers will register on the MovingWorlds platform to discover projects and connect with project partners directly. The employee and project partner will mutually agree to complete the Sprint together before your wave begins. MovingWorlds will assist by providing project match suggestions where your skills are matched to the needs of the organizations but those are simply suggestions and you are not expected to match with those projects should you not want to.
We encourage you to start by exploring the projects already on the platform that were specifically sourced for the Lumen Cares Volunteer Sprint program, these organizations were selected because they could truly benefit from your support. If none of those projects align with your skills or interests, you’ll also see other pre-vetted opportunities on the platform that are available to you as alternatives.
We will make every effort to find a project that fits with your skills and interests. MovingWorlds will introduce Lumen employees to suitable partners participating in other volunteer programs on their platform.
Lumen and MovingWorlds will require onboarding training to be completed by every employee before their Volunteer Sprint begins. The topics covered will include how to use the MovingWorlds platform to discover projects and connect with project partners, as well as best practices to help ensure employees and project partners alike have a great experience during their Volunteer Sprint.
Please reach out to the MovingWorlds Match team: match@movingworlds.org immediately so the team can help you resolve the project issue or find an alternative project partner.
Changes in Volunteer Sprint timing or projects will be allowed if there are extenuating personal or professional circumstances (see below) that absolutely require it.
Extenuating professional circumstances would
include unforeseen customer or enterprise-wide
operational issues; a violation of our Code of
Conduct and Ethics by the project partner or
you; or a change in your performance meaning you
are no longer in good standing at Lumen.
Extenuating personal circumstances would include
unforeseen events, such as ill health or
bereavement leave.
Extenuating professional circumstances would not include team-level priorities, such as changes in project deadlines, event attendance or roles/responsibilities. Extenuating personal circumstances would not include individual preferences, such as vacation schedules or a change in personal interest in a project.
If there are exceptional professional reasons
that necessitate a change or a cancellation of
your Volunteer Sprint, you should log an
HR Connect ticket for the Engagement and
Community Team/Social Impact and cc: your manager as soon as possible. The
Lumen team will then work together with you,
your manager and project partner to determine an
alternative volunteer or project.
NOTE FOR SUPERVISORS
- If there are exceptional personal reasons that
necessitate a cancellation of your direct
report’s Volunteer Sprint, you need to log an
HR Connect ticket for the Engagement and
Community Team/Social Impact
as soon as possible so the team can help find an
alternative volunteer.
We ask that you and your manager keep top of mind that Lumen has made a commitment to our project partners, who have far fewer resources than we do, to support and complete their Volunteer Sprint projects. When you commit to a project, we want to do everything we can to complete it and not disrupt the careful planning, time and considerable efforts of our partners.
MovingWorlds is a vendor that the Lumen team selected to help manage the Volunteer Sprint program. MovingWorlds has 13 years of experience managing similar programs with employees from companies like Microsoft, SAP and Unilever and nonprofits and impact businesses around the world.
MovingWorlds has a SaaS platform to connect nonprofits and social enterprises around the world with highly skilled professionals (including corporate employees from Lumen) to work on capacity-building projects, provide targeted learning modules and resources, and connections with peers.
If your project partner is a non-profit organization, you can make a charitable donation to support their efforts. We encourage you to make any donation through the Lumen Cares Portal to take advantage of matching through the Lumen Cares Program. In addition, by logging your volunteer hours, you can earn volunteer rewards of up to $10/hour to donate to the non-profit of your choice. Annual match caps are $3K per person and $2M companywide.