Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families recently received a $5 million grant from the Wal-Mart Foundation to expand its AmericaServes program.

In 2013, IVMF established AmericaServes — a program that enables and encourages service members, veterans and their families to take advantage of a list of supportive services available to them — and the program quickly caught the eye of Wal-Mart and the Wal-Mart Foundation.

“We are quite proud and excited about the confidence that the Wal-Mart Foundation has in the IVMF to continue to drive this community based work,” said Maureen Casey, chief operating officer of IVMF.

This year’s grant will be spent on further growing AmericaServes communities in New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. This is the second straight year that the Wal-Mart Foundation has given a grant to the institute. In 2015, the foundation gave a smaller, $1 million grant for a “pilot test” to develop AmericaServes in North Carolina.

Wal-Mart became involved with IVMF several years prior in supporting the institute’s entrepreneurial boot camp and projects involving women’s veterans. Casey said the partnership benefits the university because of its affiliation with the corporate giant. When AmericaServes expands to new regions, it grows the university’s brand, she said.

“Everywhere we go, the IVMF is tied to Syracuse University,” she added.

IVMF and AmericaServes have an impact that stretches far beyond central New York, said Jim McDonough, managing director at IVMF. IVMF and the Wal-Mart Foundation are working together tackle a national issue: 45,000 veteran service organizations exist and veterans and their families are not capitalizing. AmericaServes exists to allow easier access to these resources, McDonough said.

The services and care delivery opportunities offered through AmericaServes vary and are broken down into 15 service domains — some of which are education, housing and employment.

Wal-Mart has in the past hired veterans, and on Memorial Day 2013, the company announced the Veterans Welcome Home Commitment. The commitment originally set a goal to hire 100,000 veterans by 2018 but that goal has since been upgraded to 250,000 by 2020. Of veterans hired so far, 19,053 have been promoted to roles with higher pay and greater responsibility.

“This is good for veterans and their families,” McDonough said about the hiring commitment, “but it is also good for Wal-Mart as a leading employer to recognize the value of veterans in the workforce and their employee mix.”

The partnership with Wal-Mart derived from IVMF’s use of data to show proven results, McDonough said. The relationship, he added, does not solely benefit IVMF, and the institute instead uses its research to bring ideas back to Wal-Mart.

“When you’ve got organizations that are working together in this way, it’s very different,” said Kathy Cox, senior manager of the Wal-Mart Foundation. “Folks are working outside of their comfort zone, charting a course of success together and working through challenges together.”

The $5 million grant will be used over three years, Cox said. After that, it will be decided if the financial partnership between the foundation and IVMF will continue and at what magnitude. Together, the two organizations will evaluate the success of this grant and the changing veteran landscape.

“We’ve got three years to watch the work and learn from the work,” Cox said. “There are the expectations that we set forth in the grant. Those are measurements that we will follow closely. There are no guarantees (for future grants).”

The foundation’s grant giving is based on several encompassing facets, including the alignment of organization’s purpose with the foundation’s strategy as well as the foundation’s ability to fund the project based on its current budget. In doing so, one of the Wal-Mart Foundation’s main goals of grant-giving is to drive systems change, and change the way people are doing work, Cox said.

“They are doers,” Cox said about IVMF’s employees. “While there are a lot of folks in the military space talking about what could and should happen, we’ve seen IVMF roll up their sleeves, talk with communities, engage and help communities that want to take next steps.”

Published on November 29, 2016 at 11:39 pm

Contact Kenneth: kmintz@syr.edu