Doing Good and Doing Well

ELFA members are fostering community connections and employee engagement through giving back.

THE BENEFITS of volunteering and philanthropy are well-documented. A growing body of research finds that involving employees in corporate philanthropy can help organizations improve culture, build stronger teams, bolster employee engagement and create new community relationships. (One recent survey by PwC found that roughly 70% of employees believe it’s important to work for an employer whose mission and values align with their own.) 


However, a 2023 report from The Conference Board found that some organizations are reexamining their corporate giving programs in the face of economic uncertainty. ELFA members don’t seem to be following suit. Even in challenging times, member companies and their employees are finding creative, fulfilling and effective ways to serve their communities and give back in myriad ways. Read on for examples of member companies that are creating their own stories of generosity, creativity and good corporate citizenship.


Amur Equipment Finance organizes team activities like blood drives (left) and participates in a “Santa Cop” program that supports a local family in need.

Driven to give back

Giving back to the communities where their team members live and work has long been a priority for many ELFA members. At Arvest Equipment Finance, an independent equipment finance firm and division of Arvest Bank based in Fort Smith, Arkansas, Trainer Jenaleigh Lathrop says that employees participate in a variety of independent and group charitable activities. “Our employees do a great job of finding where there’s a need and helping,” she says. “Our managers are very supportive and when someone wants time to go volunteer, they don’t turn anyone down.” For example, Jenaleigh volunteers at local nonprofits and her church as well as her son’s school. She previously served on the board of a local diaper bank, which provides diapers and other supplies to local families in need. 

Amur Equipment Finance, with headquarters in Grand Island, Nebraska, also looks for organizations to which employees have a personal connection. “It might be a sponsorship for an employee’s child’s Little League baseball team or supporting a school show choir that needs financial assistance,” says Jackie Havel, Amur Vice President of Human Resources. “I love seeing the requests come in. And when the employees’ children themselves bring in the requests, that’s even better.”


Oakmont Capital Services (OCS), a direct equipment finance lender based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with a location in Albany, Minnesota, is another member that prioritizes philanthropy and has opted to take a more structured approach to its efforts. Under the leadership of Marketing Director Keara M. Piekanski, the company formalized its philanthropy program in 2022. They polled employees about the organizations they’d like to see the company support and got their feedback about various company-sponsored activities to encourage employees to give back. 

The team at Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Fleet Advantage, an independent firm that provides flexible leasing and truck life cycle management solutions, gives back through its foundation, Kids Around the Corner. The foundation was created in 2014 to help families and children through various donations, typically to small, local nonprofits. Each year, Fleet Advantage donates a percentage of its profits to this purpose. “We focus on the smaller organizations that matter to our employees and their families—the organizations that typically don’t have access to many funding options,” says Katerina Jones, Chief Marketing Officer of Fleet Advantage. “That way, we can really make a difference.” 


Arvest Equipment Finance CLFPs teamed up with Pack Shack to assemble over 5,000 meals for local food banks (left) and Jenaleigh Lathrop worked on a literacy project at her son’s school.

Engaging the team

The types of ways these organizations give back are as diverse as ELFA’s membership itself. Sponsorships, like Amur’s donation to support Wreaths Across America, which honors those that served, are common. This allows members to volunteer by placing a wreath at headstones at the local veterans’ cemetery and supports existing efforts that benefit the community, Havel says.

Piekanski says this is the primary way her team supports nonprofits at this point. “We’re building our program and, when we sponsor an event, our employees are usually really supportive,” she says. The company sponsored a recent 5K walk in Albany, in memory of a local child who had been abducted and received particularly strong employee support. “Our team members were so excited that they began asking if we could start our own 5K,” she says. She added that’s likely some time off, but the enthusiasm about how OCS could grow its efforts was exciting. In addition, OCS instituted a new policy in 2022 that gives each employee 16 hours of paid time off for volunteering, which employees can use to participate in group events or on their own.

And that excitement about giving back is the goal of such programs, Lathrop says. It often starts with a personal connection. Arvest’s employee volunteerism policies and encouragement allowed her to spend time refreshing the library at her son’s school. Sometimes, children who need additional instruction or support may not have the resources they need. She worked to ensure the library had enough phonetics and other books that a group of as many as six students could be reading the same book at the same level instead of having to learn from different books, she says. “This really helps get group study going for those kiddos,” she says. 

Amur organizes team activities, as well. The company has organized blood drives and supported Breast Cancer Awareness Month with a “wear pink” day, during which Amur makes a donation for each employee wearing pink that day. One employee favorite is the company’s involvement with the “Santa Cop” program. The local police department identifies a family in need and gathers a “wish list” at holiday time. Then, employees shop and fulfill the wish list items in time for Christmas. 


Kids Around the Corner also encourages participation in a mix of independent and employer-sponsored volunteer activities. Elizabeth Gomez, Marketing Manager from Fleet Advantage, recalls the recent donation of a tractor to Horseplay Therapy, a local nonprofit. Horseplay Therapy uses horses to provide various therapies to children, veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and others, and needed a tractor for farm-related work and transportation. Originally, the nonprofit was searching for used equipment that was in need of repair. The foundation worked with a local dealer and raised money to provide a tractor that will help in providing services to various clients. “Now, they’re going to be able to use this for, probably, the next 15 years. It’s one of my favorite examples,” Gomez says. 


Fleet Advantage’s Kids Around the Corner Foundation donated a tractor to a local nonprofit called Horseplay Therapy (at left) and volunteered at Jubilee Center of South Broward, a nonprofit agency whose goal is to provide meals to the hungry and social services to the neediest in the community.

Measuring success

Collectively, the impact of employee and corporate giving back quickly adds up. Since Kids Around the Corner was created, the foundation has donated nearly $400,000 to more than 30 organizations—nearly half of that amount donated in 2022 as the foundation’s efforts and reach have grown. The foundation is run by 11 volunteers from within the company. Team members come together to feed the homeless, provide for families during the holidays, ensure children have the backpacks and school supplies they need, and all manner of other activities. “Our company really is like a family,” Jones says. “Our founders believe in looking out for others and not doing things out of selfishness. So, this really represents our culture.”

Arvest Bank’s roughly 6,000 associates participated in more than 20,000 hours of volunteering last year alone based on employees’ self-reported volunteerism. Lathrop suspects that the number is higher. “People don’t think about reporting when they help with their church or coach Little League or things like that,” she says. Team members do everything from helping out at nonprofit events to sitting on nonprofit boards of directors, she says. And the team events definitely bolster morale and give employees a feeling of pride and connectedness to the organization and the communities in which they live, she says. The contributions to organizational culture are important, too. The goodwill that these programs have generated helped earn her company recognition as a great place to work, she says. Arvest has been named to Newsweek’s list of “Most Loved Workplaces” and Forbes’ list of “World’s Best Banks” and “Best Large Employers.” 


Amur also looks toward a more internal metric to measure “success”: Its team members. “We measure it by how our employees respond,” Havel says. “The company values team members and Grand Island has been home for us for 27 years. We’ve seen a lot of positive results from giving back to the community.” The good name that Amur has built through both doing business with integrity and giving back through community support and volunteerism also helps build new business relationships and helps with employee recruitment and retention, she says. 

Another measure of success? Watching these programs grow, Piekanski says. “We see more people participating in the activities, raising their hands, wanting to get their families involved,” she says. Even in a growing business with just over 60 employees, she adds that it’s remarkable how much impact they can have. “It will be the last day for the food drive, and you go over to the collection area, and suddenly there’s another huge pile of canned goods that wasn’t there the day before,” she says. “People at our organization are very kind, and they really want to help each other and their respective communities. We truly work together to make it possible at OCS.”

And while volunteering and philanthropy can pay off in many ways, each organization is emphatic about the most important reason for their efforts: supporting the communities and causes that are important to their team members.


Oakmont Capital Services’ Minnesota branch participated in the Running HOME for Jacob 5K in October 2022. Over 40 walkers took to the local Lake Wobegon Trail, raising $5,200 including an OCS match, to address and prevent the exploitation of children.