Volunteering: the winning formula - 2001 has been declared the International Year of Volunteers, and the good news for the voluntary sector is that employers are increasingly making use of employee volunteering as a business tool. In this feature, we follow the development of community involvement programmes at two large employers in the UK - the BBC and Zurich Financial Services. As our case studies show, contributions from employees can range from making a cash donation or participating in a fundraising event to time out of the office helping with a community project. The BBC believes that the main business benefits gained from encouraging employee volunteering are that it increases the organisation's presence in the local community and raises its profile, it also acts as informal PR for the company and, by enabling employees to make new contacts, helps to improve the quality of the programmes produced in the long run. At Zurich Financial Services, meanwhile, volunteering activities are seen as good for team building, staff motivation, retention, recruitment and personal development.