VolunteerMatch

Client Case Studies

Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab mobilized over 1,300 employees for "FERSTT Aid Day," a national day of community service to over 50 nonprofits across eight cities. Learn how VolunteerMatch helped them manage their events.

"Our Employees love FERSTT Aid Day! VolunteerMatch makes it so easy for us to manage the events. Afterward, everyone felt refreshed, revived, and renewed."

- Elinore Robey, Director of Community Investor Services & Charles Schwab Foundation

Community involvement and philanthropy are the foundations of the Charles Schwab company's corporate philosophy. Schwab's core values: Fair, Empathetic, Responsive, Striving, Teamwork and Trust, are visible in the way Schwab does business, how it involves itself in the community. These values have always played an important role in the vitality of employee engagement.

Charles Schwab Foundation and Schwab's Community Investor Services teams recognized the need to reinforce and rejuvenate employee morale by demonstrating the company's values and commitment to community involvement. Working together, they decided to coordinate a volunteer day to express the company's values and bring employees together to make a true impact where they live and work.

The company's first annual volunteer day was named "FERSTT Aid Day" to reflect its values. This event invited and encouraged Schwab employees to participate in community service projects in key Schwab locations across the nation.

Schwab faced three main challenges in creating its national volunteer day:

1. Efficiently orchestrating a nationwide effort with minimal resources.
2. Controlling participation to maintain focus on serving its clients.
3. Making a measurable impact on Schwab's communities.

To facilitate such a grand scale project, the team realized it would need internal and external assistance.

Internal Support

Elinore Robey, Director of Community Investor Services, said they understood early on that the involvement of executive management would be critical to FERSTT Aid Day's success, so they enlisted executives for support. Together, they created group volunteer projects that employees could lead. This served the two-fold benefit of rallying and inspiring employees to get involved and earning the employee project leaders recognition for their leadership skills and community engagement.

Hi-Tech

A VolunteerMatch client for several years, Schwab took advantage of VolunteerMatch's online service and established network of nationwide nonprofits. VolunteerMatch's corporate services help companies easily identify appropriate volunteer opportunities and then facilitate large- and small-scale team volunteer events. Through VolunteerMatch, Schwab employees were able to easily sign up for projects as well as apply to become project leaders through an easy-to-use website that connects to the Community Investor Services website on the company's intranet. Additionally, VolunteerMatch's Special Event Manager functionality allowed the CIS team to centrally manage all national volunteer events, while event coordinators and senior management evaluated employee engagement through sign-up activity for the event.

Hi-Touch

To efficiently create meaningful volunteer projects on a national scale, the CIS team had to leverage Schwab employee volunteers in each community. Employees were empowered to organize and recommend worthy nonprofits and projects. In several of the locations, Schwab offices had established relationships with local nonprofit organizations that excel at creating group volunteer projects that maximize both the employee experience and the community impact. Using the VolunteerMatch web application with the local coordination gave Schwab the ability to work with nonprofits to create opportunities on the national scale FERSTT Aid Day required.

Results

On April 12, 2004 Schwab launched its first annual FERSTT Aid Day in seven cities, with more than 1,100 employee participants nationwide serving 40 nonprofit organizations.

In 2005, FERSTT Aid Day grew to 50 organizations in eight cities, with 1,300 employees involved nationwide. These results were even more impressive, where a post-event survey found that 89% of employees strongly agreed that FERSTT Aid Day reinforced Schwab's values and reaffirmed and renewed the employee's spirit of giving. Robey said the response to both events was extremely gratifying and overwhelmingly positive.