Professionals are eager to find fulfilling experiences that help enable them to use and grow their skills, expand their personal and professional networks and contribute to society, but they don’t always know how to get started. Meanwhile, nonprofits often struggle to connect with talented and diverse professionals who are ready and willing to serve on their boards. Further, many nonprofit boards lack ethnic and racial diversity, with 78% of nonprofit board positions being filled by white Americans*.

PwC’s nonprofit board service program now includes Cause Strategy Partners’ signature program - BoardLead -  to help place PwC professionals on nonprofit boards across the US. This program has created opportunities for mid-career PwC professionals while also focusing on racially/ethnically diverse and female candidates through outreach to our Inclusion Networks. Through BoardLead, participants are matched to a nonprofit according to their skills and interests, and if elected to a nonprofit board, they’re skilled-up on effective leadership and DEI topics through a learning series, and provided access to a specialist to troubleshoot challenges or answer questions that arise in the first few months of their board service. Nonprofit board service is a great example of putting your purpose in action -- it can expand professional and client networks, accelerate professional and leadership skills, and provide a fulfilling path to make an impact.

From 2019 to 2021, PwC participated in four rounds of the BoardLead program. To date, 447 PwC professionals across 22 major cities have joined nonprofit boards in their communities and have been trained in effective and inclusive leadership. As a result, PwC is including BoardLead as part of our national nonprofit board service program, providing opportunities for PwC professionals regardless of where they live or work.

We found that the nonprofit board placement program is helping to address the opportunity gap in nonprofit board leadership. Through the BoardLead program to date, 45% of PwC professionals elected to nonprofit boards are racially/ethnically diverse, 23% are Black or Latinx and 55% are women, which has helped to increase diversity within nonprofit board leadership. Further, in a recent PwC Purpose & Inclusion participant survey of our professionals serving on nonprofit boards, 97% of respondents said that serving on nonprofit boards helped them grow personally and professionally in the workplace.

*Source: Leading with Intent: BoardSource Index of Nonprofit Board Practices (Washington, D.C.: BoardSource, 2021)