Nearly 49K+ Volunteer Hours and More: How Discover® and Employees Gave Back in 2024
Discover and its employees made significant contributions to building brighter financial futures in 2024.
More than 8,000 employees logged nearly 49,000 volunteer hours last year for different causes. The company held 230 volunteer events and continued to champion financial literacy programs and invest in local communities. Read more below about some of the impact from 2024.
Investing in Communities Through Our Shine Bright® Community Centers
Our second Shine Bright Community Center opened its doors in Whitehall, Ohio in July 2024. Just like the Shine Bright Center in Chicago, the brand-new facility is available at no cost to nonprofits, community-based organizations and government entities.
The center’s first community event welcomed more than 300 rising college freshmen and their families, in collaboration with the I Know I Can program, to help prepare them for the first year of college. The center has worked closely with Whitehall City schools in a variety of ways, from housing its postsecondary education WORLD program to helping students with workforce development, hosting over 115 Whitehall City School employees for professional development, and providing 900 fresh produce bags to students and their families.
Nearly 20,000 people attended the Shine Bright Community Center in Chicago’s Chatham community last year. Discover partnered with local organizations to hold free programming, from financial literacy classes, job fairs, and small business development courses, to enrichment activities during spring break and weekly tutoring sessions with Tutoring Chicago.
Outreach to the Chatham community in 2024 included distributing 4,900 hams and turkeys to local families through multiple grocery giveaways. Discover also supported networking events for business owners and sponsored the Bud Billiken Parade, which included providing four college scholarships to students.
Providing Children with the Education Essentials to Succeed
Discover’s support of Shop-a-thon in West Valley, Utah over the last six years has positively impacted more than 2,300 students who come from very difficult and different backgrounds.
During Shop-a-thon, hundreds of students each year receive $250 to spend at Kohl’s on back-to-school gear. The event has grown to include a celebration outside the store. And last year, 19 community partners donated their services to help improve the lives of children. Read more about why employees volunteer for this cause.
Discover’s partnership with Cradles to Crayons helped us support families whose children headed back to school. Employee volunteers from across the Chicago area, Ohio, Delaware, and Houston contributed significantly, by stuffing new backpacks with school supplies for tens of thousands of students.
Discover volunteers taught about 1,750 students financial literacy lessons in 2024 through our collaboration with Junior Achievement. Dozens of employees traveled to schools in Arizona and Utah to teach lessons about business ownership, work and career readiness and financial education.
In addition to teaching students, Discover employees also met with students at the company’s headquarters through Junior Achievement to learn soft job skills, such as interviewing techniques, resume writing, conflict resolution, problem solving and interpersonal communications.
Building Playspaces with KABOOM! for Kids to Develop and Grow
This past fall Discover and KABOOM! celebrated its 50th playground build, marking nearly 30 years of collaboration. The partnership between Discover and KABOOM! began in 1996. Since then, playground builds have taken place across the country.
Discover has provided nearly 13,000 volunteers who have donated more than 75,000 hours to the cause. Learn more about the partnership here.
Packing Nutritious Meals with Feed6 for Food-Insecure Families
Discover employees last year packed their 750,000th meal with Feed6. The nonprofit organizes meal packaging events with nutritious food that are distributed through Chicago area food banks to individuals and families facing food insecurity.
Discover and Feed6 have worked together since 2017. Since then, employees have participated in 20 volunteer events that have benefited families in northern Illinois.
Giving Back Virtually with Project Helping
Thousands of Discover employees from 43 states participated in our virtual volunteering programs in 2024. Virtual volunteering at Discover began during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to be a popular option for employees who want to give back.
Two virtual opportunities last year included creating kits with Project Helping, a nonprofit that organizes volunteer events designed to make an impact on both volunteers and their communities. As part of the volunteering, employees packed about 1,200 heat relief kits for the unhoused and created toys for shelter animals. Heat relief kits packed by employees in the Chicago area were donated directly to Taste for the Homeless.
Solving Business Challenges with Taproot Foundation
Discover employees participated in a pro-bono consulting session last spring and donated the knowledge and skills they have developed over their careers to help Chicago nonprofits.
The experience, organized through the Taproot Foundation, creates another way for employees to give back and work alongside local organizations. A second skills-based volunteer opportunity for employees is currently in the works. Learn more about the endeavor with Taproot and what inspired employees to sign up.
Empowering Financial Independence and Literacy
With support from Discover, the educational nonprofit W!se has grown its financial literacy program for domestic abuse survivors from six to 15 cities over the last five years. In that time, 600 individuals participated in the course.
The program, called MoneyW!SE, teaches survivors about debt management, repairing their credit and budgeting, among other topics. Research shows 94% to 99% of domestic violence survivors have experienced financial abuse, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Learn more about the nonprofit’s work to help survivors manage money while building their confidence and skills so they can find a pathway to economic freedom.
As part of our mission to enable brighter financial futures, Discover offers the Pathway to Financial Success in Schools program — a free online resource created with global edtech leader Discovery Education. Pathway to Financial Success in Schools is designed to help students learn about a variety of personal finance topics so they can make smarter decisions and achieve their financial goals.
Since the curriculum launched in 2017, it has reached more than 6.5 million students in nearly 15,000 schools across the United States. Read more how Discover is closing the personal finance knowledge gap.
Discover employees have access to a wide range of financial resources. More than 1,700 employees last year participated in virtual webinars on topics such as tax basics, budgeting, FAFSA and college financial aid letters.
Discover supports Ladder Up which provides free financial literacy education to help individuals gain the knowledge and tools needed to make sound financial decisions. Learn more about the nonprofit’s work and how it’s employees and volunteers are helping the Chatham community.