Our colleague volunteer program changes lives

Jenny McColloch, VP, sustainability and community impact, discusses the program’s positive effect on communities, colleagues and the company.

• Our Volunteer Challenge Grant and Matching Gifts programs underscore our commitment to the communities we serve, by encouraging colleagues to donate their time and by financially supporting the nonprofits they love.

 

• “Our colleagues volunteer at nonprofits of all shapes, sizes and focus areas around the country,” Jenny says. “And for a lot of these organizations, the hours and in-kind support they get from volunteers are a huge part of how they deliver their programs and services.”

 

• Jenny encourages her fellow leaders to support the colleagues on their teams who volunteer, and she points out how studies show volunteering increases employee engagement and retention.

What is Big Questions Answered?

Big Questions Answered helps us understand important CVS Health initiatives by taking a closer look at new products, powerful innovations and the big changes the company is making to achieve its strategic imperatives and build a world of health around every consumer. The company's senior leaders answer big questions from host Matt McGuire.

Matt McGuire
In addition to supporting communities throughout the U.S. with accessible and affordable care, CVS Health also supports them with investments in local nonprofits and support in the wake of natural disasters.

The company also supports its employees who volunteer with nonprofit organizations that work to improve their communities.

The Volunteer Challenge Grant and Matching Gifts programs incentivize employees and support the nonprofits where they love to volunteer. And these programs are a way for the company to extend its positive reach within these communities.

On this episode, we’ll learn more about the colleague volunteer program at CVS Health, and its positive impact on communities, colleagues and the company.

Welcome to Big Questions Answered, a podcast that helps us understand the important initiatives at CVS Health. I’m Matt McGuire from the Enterprise Communications team. I’ll be your host as we take a closer look at new products, powerful innovations and the big changes we’re making to achieve our strategic imperatives and build a world of health around every consumer. Thanks for joining me today as we get our big questions answered.

I’m here today with Jenny McColloch. She is vice president of sustainability and community impact within our company’s Corporate Social Responsibility and Philanthropy department.

Among many other things, Jenny oversees our company’s colleague volunteer program, which supports both the employees who volunteer and the nonprofit organizations where they volunteer. Jenny, thanks for joining me today.

Jenny McColloch
Thank you so much for having me, Matt. Happy to be here.

Matt McGuire
So, Jenny, I have had the privilege of meeting and writing about colleagues who volunteer with nonprofits, ranging from the Las Vegas Breast Cancer Warriors to the Mt. Pleasant City Fire Department in Utah. I’m especially excited to talk with you today to learn more about our colleague volunteer program.

So, to get things started, I thought it’d be helpful to take a step back and learn a little bit more about colleague engagement. Can you tell me how colleague engagement fits into the company’s broader community impact strategy?

Jenny McColloch
Yes. When you think about CVS Health, it's a large national brand, but our customers, our members and patients experience us locally. So, focus on community impact is really core to who we are. And we have a range of other programs beyond what we're going to talk about today around colleague engagement. So, a few of those would be investing in local nonprofit organizations where we're operating, supporting communities in the wake of natural disasters and making strategic investments through the CVS Health Foundation with organizations across the U.S. that are working to increase access to health care and improve health outcomes across the board.

So, when we look at all the different ways that the business is serving and strengthening relationships with communities, there is so much passion among our colleagues to connect locally, which is why we're really excited to talk about that today. And it's one of the core branches of our team's work to drive colleague engagement, to drive participation in volunteering and really help double our colleagues financial support with nonprofit organizations. So, looking forward to digging more into that with you.

Matt McGuire
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I'm very aware of the passion, too, just from some of the folks I've talked with, some of the colleagues. You know, I can hear that coming across, especially when they're talking about where they volunteer, you know. And, so, digging a little bit into the volunteering. Why has CVS Health made such a point of supporting both its colleagues who volunteer, and the nonprofit organizations where they volunteer, whether that's with a Volunteer Challenge Grant or a Matching Gift?

Jenny McColloch
When we think about the organizations that were investing in, strategically, as I mentioned, we're focused a lot on health care focused organizations across the across the country. But we recognize there are a lot of organizations nationwide that are doing incredible work that may not fit within those priority giving areas for some of our corporate investments and for our foundation investments. So, we have a concerted effort with our Volunteer Challenge Grants and our Matching Gifts program to really help drive support to the organizations that our colleagues are most passionate about.

The Volunteer Challenge Grants enables us to grant money to organizations where our colleagues are volunteering, and then the Matching Gifts program helps us double our colleagues’s personal contributions to the organizations that they're passionate about. And it really helps drive engagement in the communities and exemplifies how we're stepping up for our colleagues and supporting the causes that mean a lot to them.

We're always looking at how we can make these programs better. They didn't used to be year-round programs, but now they're both year-round colleague benefits and it really helps the colleagues feel connected to what we're doing for our charitable contributions as a company.

Matt McGuire
Yeah, I mean, that's an awesome improvement. So, what sort of impact has our volunteer program had on these nonprofit organizations and the communities they serve?

Jenny McColloch
Our colleagues volunteer at nonprofits of all shapes, sizes and focus areas around the country. And for a lot of these organizations, the hours and in-kind support they get from volunteers are a huge part of how they deliver their programs and services to the people in their communities. So, when we think about supporting and incentivizing colleagues who love to volunteer, it really helps them and us extend the reach and the impact of these extremely important organizations.

Matt McGuire
Yeah, absolutely. And, so, you know, CVS Health has dozens of Colleague Resource Groups that actively volunteer in their local communities, including with CVS Health at local events where they help educate community members about their health, and colleagues distribute information on the ways to stay healthy. How have we made it easier for Colleague Resource Groups to volunteer as a group and partner with us at off-site events? And why have we done this?

Jenny McColloch
Yes, we so appreciate how our Colleague Resource Groups support communities and the role that their leadership plays in driving events and encouraging members to be volunteering and engaging locally.

So, our team helps support volunteering ideas for the Colleague Resource Groups and in addition to them, other organizations and departments around our entire company. So, whether colleagues are volunteering virtually, or if they're in person through organizations where we have long standing relationships, for example, with Feeding America, we're trying to make it easier for them to volunteer as a group. So, for colleagues, if they log on to the Community Crew portal, we can access resources to help get involved individually or as a Colleague Resource Group or as a team. Through that portal, colleagues can log volunteer hours individually and also as a group. That can help them qualify for that Volunteer Challenge Grant program that I mentioned. And really, group volunteering is a fantastic way for colleagues, both to strengthen their relationships with each other, which is always important at work, but it also helps give back together as a group in serving our communities.

Matt McGuire
Yeah, that that Community Crew portal is really a great spot. I mean, not only for logging your hours and finding out about these, you know, other resources, but I mean, just even other things like finding out about events in your area to volunteer events. And I know that other, you know, colleagues find that very helpful as well. So, I'm curious, in addition to, you know, everything that we've just kind of walked through, how else does CVS Health and your team support our colleagues and their families.

Jenny McColloch
First, I would point to our Employee Relief Fund. This is a fund designed to help colleagues who've been impacted by natural disasters, by unexpected hardships or personal emergencies, such as medical bills or family tragedies. You know, recently we've supported many of our colleagues through this fund that were impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires.

We also have a Children of Colleagues scholarship program that makes a really powerful difference for colleagues and their families year after year. And, so that program, children of colleagues can apply for scholarships to either a two- or four-year college or university. And last year, for example, we awarded hundreds of students with higher education scholarships, all of whom were children of full-time CVS Health colleagues. So, that program is about to be opening up for this year and will be open through April, and it's a great example of how our community investments can include investments to support our colleagues who do such amazing work to support the communities where we're operating. I love that program and I love hearing about the stories of the kids that go through it and really thinking through the impact and illustrating why what we do is so important.

So, we've heard, for example from a pre-law student in Oklahoma who's the first in his family to go to college and is working towards a pharmacy technician program. We've heard how these scholarships are providing impact for a single dad in North Carolina, raising four girls on his own following his wife's passing from cancer, and knowing what a passion education was to his late wife.
These scholarships get that much more personal and important, as well as helping these families avoiding the burden of costly student loans. So, it's really wonderful to both support colleagues this way, but also to see these youth continue to soar.

Matt McGuire
Oh yeah, absolutely. Those are, yeah, moving things to here. Then looking ahead to the rest of 2025 and let's say, you know, the next two years, how do you hope this volunteer program will evolve?

Jenny McColloch
One of the things that I think about as a leader is how many times we see studies over the years showing how volunteering boost productivity among employees, increases employee engagement, it helps improve hiring and, importantly, it helps increase retention.

So, with that in mind, we really want to keep seeing these programs grow, we want to keep them top of mind and really celebrated across the organization, from top to bottom. So, want to encourage and celebrate the colleagues who are pursuing volunteering programs and events on their own, and also want to encourage my fellow leaders to just understand and appreciate how much your support for volunteering means to the colleagues on your teams and just really excited to see everything that the individuals and teams do to support communities this year and beyond.

Matt McGuire
Yeah, that's excellent. I can see how that will help both the company and the communities where our colleagues are volunteering. Thank you, Jenny, for stopping by today and sharing insights on colleague engagement, our company’s colleague volunteer program, our Employee Relief Fund and our Children of Colleague Scholarship program. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation.

Jenny McColloch
Thank you so much, Matt. Appreciated having the chance to share more about what we're doing and again celebrating the impact that we and all of our colleagues are having in communities.

Matt McGuire
And a big thanks to you for tuning into this episode. Until next time, I'm Matt McGuire. I look forward to joining you again to get more big questions answered.