community outreach committee
and choosing to partner with a
small number of nonprofits by
providing coaching to members of
their staff or individuals who utilize
their services.
You may also decide to limit the
types of coaching that you offer:
When ICF Italy organized its
earthquake relief coaching initiative,
the program’s leaders chose to focus
their energies on Executive and
Business Coaching for professionals
who were, in Fabrizia’s words,
“learning how to start again.”
2. Set high standards
for the coaches in
your program …
When ICF Italy announced its
program, Fabrizia says, “many,
many, many coaches” came
forward, eager to help. “We had
to make a decision as to which
coaches would participate, and
in what order they’d be matched
with clients.” Ultimately, she says,
ICF Italy Chapter Leaders made
the decision to limit program
participation to coaches who held
an ICF Credential.
Meanwhile, ICF Metro DC asks all
prospective volunteers to complete
an application in order to be
assigned the nonprofit coaching
engagement best-suited to their
schedules, talents and interests.
3. ... but leverage the skills
of other coaches who
want to contribute.
There are plenty of opportunities
for members who are still enrolled
in coach training or accruing the
experience hours needed for an
ICF Credential to get involved with
pro bono programming. After all,
successful pro bono coaching
initiatives don’t just need coaches.
They also need administrators to
maintain records and facilitate the
relationship between the coaches
and beneficiaries.
Freddi says that ICF Metro DC’s
program succeeded largely thanks
to the efforts of its volunteer
program liaisons. Each nonprofit
that the chapter partner ed with was
assigned a liaison who coordinated
every aspect of the process, from
overseeing the distribution of
coaching agreements to providing
recipient education, troubleshooting
day-to-day issues and managing
the evaluation process. The
volunteer liaison role is an excellent
fit for coaches who have strong
administrative and management
skills, but may not be ready to
deliver masterful coaching to pro
bono clients.
4. Help coaching
recipients understand
what to expect.
On its surface, it seems like you
may not need to market pro bono
coaching—it is a free service, after
all! However, even if your decision
to partner with a nonprofit means
that you’ve distributed coaching
agreements and have a long list of
individual coaching recipients, it’s
still essential that you communicate
effectively with these clients about
what coaching is, what coaching
isn’t and what to expect from the
coaching engagement.
If it’s feasible, consider organizing
a launch event for the pro bono
initiative featuring education on the
ICF definition of coaching (and the
difference between coaching and
other modalities, such as therapy,
consulting and mentoring), as
well as mock coaching sessions.
Alternatively, this information can
be delivered virtually: ICF Metro
DC even produced a set of video
coaching demos to share with
program participants. (Organizing
a launch event or producing
educational materials and demos
is another great way to involve
program volunteers who won’t be
providing coaching!)
5. Evaluate, evaluate,
evaluate!
Everyone involved in ICF Metro DC’s
pro bono initiatives has a voice in a
formal program evaluation process:
At the end of the engagement, forms
are distributed to coaches, individual
coaching recipients and the partner
organization. These forms are an
invaluable tool for measuring the
ROI (in terms of time, effort and
financial expenditures) and ROE
of the program; the feedback has
also enabled program leaders to
troubleshoot and make necessary
changes for future incarnations of
the initiative.
Even an informal evaluation process
can be valuable, particularly as you
lay the groundwork for a moreexpansive initiative: Fabrizia says
her ICF Italy colleagues were able
to use feedback and learnings
from their quickly assembled
emergency-response effort to frame
the subsequent, non-emergent
pro bono program that they began
building in 2013.
Whether you are offering pro bono
coaching to meet an emergent
need in your community, or laying
the foundation for a long-lasting
community outreach initiative, pro
bono coaching is a proven way for
you and your coaching colleagues to
make a significant local impact.
Coaching World 29