Written by: Sara Smith Lom
Congratulations to KeyBank on their 13th Points of Light Civic 50 Honor
This June, Points of Light named KeyBank to The Civic 50 for the thirteenth time, one of only a handful of companies in the country to earn that mark across the award’s fourteen-year history. Civic 50 honorees are scored on four things: how much they invest, how deeply community engagement is built into business functions (not only within a foundation), whether it’s backed by real policy and systems, and whether they measure impact.
KeyBank demonstrates that individual acts of community engagement build up to have significant impact on community over time – any business can learn from the KeyBank model.
Partnering for Corporate Community Impact
BVU is honored to play a small part in KeyBank’s community impact journey, and we have a longer view of that commitment than most.
In 1993, KeyBank was one of BVU’s eight founding organizations, alongside TRW, BP, Jones Day, Eaton, The Cleveland Foundation, The George Gund Foundation, and United Way of Greater Cleveland.
Bruce Akers, then Senior VP of Community Affairs at KeyBank, was one of the leaders behind BVU, with the goal of creating a vehicle for business professionals to get involved with nonprofits, in a way that would really make a difference – an engine for corporate community involvement. Speaking during BVU’s 30th anniversary celebration, he described the spark:
“We were getting overwhelmed with board requests, and so we started to think: let’s put something together that businesses can always be a part of – a source for these nonprofits that needed help to come to.”
That idea, born with the help of KeyBank leaders, became BVU.
Bruce Akers was awarded BVU’s Richard W. Pogue Civic Leadership Award in 2024 in honor of the work he and Key did for BVU and the community. Bill Summers, another KeyBank and BVU leader, will receive the Richard W. Pogue Civic Leadership Award this year in September.
KeyBank has had a seat at BVU’s own board table for nearly all of BVU’s 30+ year history. Today it’s Angela Mago, KeyBank’s Chief Human Resources Officer. Key Corporate Bank’s current Chairman and CEO, Christopher Gorman, also served as a board member and chair, and has been a long advocate for board service building leadership skills early, in a different environment than a day job. As he put it: “We think placing people on nonprofit boards is a great way to do that.”
KeyBank’s Community Engagement Model
BVU has facilitated 188 Key employees being trained, matched, and elected to nonprofit boards, as well as 22 Team Volunteer Projects. In fact, BVU’s 4,000th match went to a KeyBank professional, Raneia Ramadan, matched to the board of Facing History & Ourselves.
For BVU’s members – current and prospective – KeyBank’s story is a useful model. Board matching, team volunteering, and community investment aren’t separate checkboxes; treated together, over decades, they build the kind of civic reputation that gets national recognition. It’s also a reminder of what’s possible when the business community engages with nonprofits like BVU for the long haul: 30-plus years, thousands of matches, and a seat at the table the whole way through.
Congratulations, KeyBank, on your Points of Light Civic 50 recognition, and thank you for three decades of partnership (and counting).