Building Capacity Through Social Impact Volunteerism

Our Social Impact Volunteerism efforts build on years of commitment to traditional volunteer initiatives driven by our lines of business, market presidents and business resource groups.

Capital One’s efforts consist of two offerings: Pro Bono and Leader Community Engagement.

Capital One Pro Bono

Capital One Pro Bono connects our talented associates with nonprofits, startups, small businesses and community development financial institutions (CDFIs) to help build organizational capacity and drive social change in our communities.

Pro bono builds capacity by reducing the time between an organization identifying a need and having it solved.

This support has been crucial in recent years as more than half of all U.S. nonprofits reported a decrease in funding and work with volunteers in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For associates, this experience affords them the opportunity to dedicate their time and expertise so that organizations can serve more clients, become more efficient and deliver on their missions more effectively.

In 2022, more than 900 Capital One associates engaged in pro bono volunteerism — supporting 135 unique community partners.

“Capital One is committed to leveraging our scale and resources, and the ingenuity and empathy of our associates, to help foster a world where everyone has an equal opportunity to prosper,” says Ashley Trick, Pro Bono Program Manager of Community Impact and Investment at Capital One.

Capital One pro bono supports organizations through three primary engagement types:

Workshops: delivered by practice area subject matter experts

Capital One supports nonprofit credit counseling agencies to deliver financial education workshops to individuals in their community.

In an effort to help those agencies effectively market their workshops, Capital One’s Brand team hosted office hours with the agencies to answer questions and share insights and best practices. Attendees gained knowledge around core marketing concepts such as Positioning & Setting Objectives (Why?), Understanding Your Target Audience (Who?), Prioritizing Your Messages (What?), Planning Channel Approach and Social Deep Dive (When, Where, & How?).

Growth Consulting: Interdisciplinary consulting to diagnose challenges and recommend solutions

In 2022, Capital One supported 65 different founders through Growth Consulting engagements.

One such example includes Capital One’s engagement with Electro Analytics, a platform that empowers public affairs and advocacy teams of all sizes to more efficiently influence policy at the federal, state and local levels, through our Growth Consulting Office Hours.

Our associates set out to help Electro Analytics prioritize their initiatives and opportunities to maximize impact and efficiency. In 2022, Capital One conducted two pro bono projects to support their work via Product and Finance support. Our associates consulted with the organization’s leadership to identify Electo’s objectives and success metrics, and develop a prioritization framework that incorporates the above objectives and success metrics to enable Electo leadership to objectively prioritize their product roadmap.

Projects: Capacity building projects led by a group of subject matter experts with focused, concrete deliverables

Capital One associates completed 80 pro bono projects with community partners across the U.S. in 2022.

That included engaging in a data project to support Feed More, an organization that collects, prepares and distributes food in order to bring hunger relief to neighbors in need throughout Central Virginia.

Our associates supported Feed More in building and piloting a sustainable model that helps assess risk of food insecurity at the zip code level. Through a new data model, Feed More has enhanced granularity, freshness and frequency of meal gap data in the region.

Pro Bono Results

In 2022, nine in every 10 Capital One Pro Bono community partners reported being able to:

• More effectively focus on their mission and vision
• Improve their social capital
• Increase their network of subject matter experts who can offer them specific knowledge, skills and support

“The entire Capital One team was phenomenal to work with,” says Drew Melson, Director of Marketing Communications at St. Joseph’s Villa. “We have reached a new milestone in our intake process thanks to the expertise and commitment of our volunteers and are now better equipped to provide more efficient service to families in urgent need.”

Leader Community Engagement

In addition to grantmaking and Pro Bono, Capital One has placed hundreds of executives and emerging leaders on the boards of our community partners to help advance their critical objectives.

Through board service, our nonprofit partners gain our associate’s support in strategic planning and gain connection to an expanded network of information, ideas and people in solving their most pressing challenges.

Capital One Pro Bono is a foundational component of the Capital One Impact Initiative, an initial $200 million multi-year commitment to support growth in underserved communities and advance socioeconomic mobility by closing gaps in equity and opportunity.