David Bowerman wasn’t looking to volunteer for a nonprofit when the Citizens Financial Group executive attended a company luncheon last May in Boston.
But then he sat next to Teny Gross, executive director of the Providence-based nonprofit the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence.
By the end of the meal, Bowerman – vice chairman of Citizens’ business-services unit – had agreed to help with technology and property issues the institute was dealing with, since that is Bowerman’s expertise at the bank.
And now Bowerman is ready to take on a bigger role, joining the institute’s board of directors – all because he happened to sit next to Gross at the luncheon months early.
“He was an interesting and infectious character,” Bowerman said recently, recalling his first impressions of Gross.
The meeting wasn’t by chance. It’s an illustration how the Champions in Action program, sponsored by both Citizens and WJAR-TV NBC 10, has paid dividends for the local nonprofits that have been recognized by the program, even years after they were honored.
The institute – which offers gang mediation, victim counseling and youth-development programs — was named a “champion” in 2007, one of the 34 nonprofits that have been named on a quarterly basis since the program started in 2002.
While the organizations receive a $25,000 unrestricted grant and some publicity when they’re selected, the groups’ leaders say the honor has proved to be much more valuable than that one-time payoff.
For instance, Citizens invited Gross and the representatives of other “champion” nonprofits to the May luncheon so they could network with some of the bank’s top executives, according to Amie Kershaw, a senior public affairs manager at Citizens.
And “champion” groups – even ones such as the McAuley House, which was selected eight years ago – are called to quarterly meetings with Citizens and WJAR representatives, and others.
“The topics of these meeting vary from media training to board development and financial management for nonprofits,” Kershaw said. “We work with the champions to build an agenda that will be beneficial to them and will contribute to their continued growth.”
It kind of caught Ashley Gingerella by surprise, too.
Gingerella, a Citizens public affairs specialist, started helping out at Youth in Action, a Providence-based, youth-leadership group, shortly after it was named a Champion in Action in 2008.
She was hooked immediately, impressed by the teens who participated in the nonprofit group, which among other things encourages students to seek a higher education with SAT prep courses and college-application assistance.
“It is such an amazing program,” Gingerella said. “It goes well beyond the support they’d get at school.”
Initially, Gingerella helped assemble Youth in Action’s media book, a listing of key, local media personnel who can help get publicity for the group. She also helped organize special events and fundraisers.
“They were really looking for someone with a public relations background,” she said.
Three years later, Gingerella is now a member of the organization’s development committee. She also has invited the associate director, Jennifer Rossi, to Citizens’ events for networking.
“One of the tag lines that has come out of this program is ‘once a champion, always a champion,’ ” Kershaw said, noting that the examples of long-term volunteerism range from junior employees to high-ranking bankers.
For Michael Reis, director of Tides Family Services, the stream of volunteers has become more critical as corporate giving has evaporated with the economic downturn.
“Absolutely, financial giving has been hurt,” he said. “But there are more important things.”
And no one on the nonprofit’s staff of 130 was qualified to oversee the installation of a new one. “We’re focused on our outreach,” Reis said.
So a group of corporate executives, led by Patricia Chamberlain, Citizens’ senior vice president of business service, has stepped in to provide information technology expertise.
Now the computer system allows Tides’ staff in seven offices statewide to more easily track the 500 children the agency is monitoring. It has been a yearlong process.
Volunteers have turned their attention to Tides’ website; although it’s a key communication tool for activities such as fundraising, it is lacking, Reis admitted.
“It’s terrible; it’s something we scrambled to put together,” he said. “Without the volunteers involved, we wouldn’t be where we are now.”
Bowerman said he wasn’t obligated by Citizens to contribute his free time, but with his children fully grown – he would have previously been busy with his kids’ sports activities – he figured he had time to spare.
His work with the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence started out as piecemeal, mostly because he had been transferred temporarily from Citizens’ parent company, the Royal Bank of Scotland.
But when Bowerman learned he would be staying at Citizens Financial Group in Providence permanently, he figured it was time to make a change. “I felt like it was time to commit on a longer-term basis,” he said.
That’s why he accepted the board seat.
And he’s taking the commitment seriously. The banker has agreed to spend a late night with the institute’s street workers to witness firsthand the group’s effort to head off gang violence and other trouble.
“I’m doing it to understand what the institute does,” he said. •
