Alliance Data Upholds ‘Pay it Forward’ Value

“This Giving Tuesday Alliance Data is providing every associate a $50 charitable gift card to donate to a nonprofit of their choosing. Creating this opportunity to Pay it Forward is a meaningful way to engage our associates in the community and kick off the holiday season through a collective impact.” 

Dana Beckman, Head of Sustainability   

Communities at Alliance Data

Originally published in Alliance Data's 2020 ESG Performance Report

Our Company is only as strong as the communities where we work and that we serve. As a common thread that connects and inspires us, those community-minded values are ingrained in the very culture of our business and how we operate. 

Over the years, as our organization has grown, we’ve steadily increased our global community investment and volunteerism, recognizing the need for successful companies like ours to employ our resources in a way that both strengthens our communities and helps create a future where our business and local economies flourish.

Management Approach

While all businesses tailor their approach to meeting the needs of their respective associates and local communities, we have enterprise-wide goals, guidelines, programs and governance that guide our decision-making and align our efforts.

Corporate responsibility representatives from each line of business are critical for partnering on grant making, best practices, data collection and reporting. For international grant making, we rely on the consultative expertise and non-profit equivalency determination of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

We continue to evolve our community investments commensurate with the evolution of our business. Our focus areas are based on what’s most important to our associates, where our communities need the most support and how we can promote a sustainable economic environment. In addition, we prioritize investments that connect associates, align with our expertise, are geographically inclusive, provide measurable impact, and enhance our brand and reputation.

The following efforts highlighted our community support work in 2020.

Community investment

We donated more than $7 million to charities focused on children, education and independence and oversaw the redemption/donation of $2.1 million worth of AIR MILES rewards to charitable causes. In addition, we donated computers, monitors and iPhones to support students needing access to technology for remote learning. We also received an “Outstanding” Community Reinvestment Act rating for the fourth consecutive year.

Associate programs

We conducted our annual promotion of matching gifts and Dollars for Doers programs and we ran a double match campaign in 2020 for racial equity causes. In addition, associates contributed over $1 million through campaigns and programs.

Volunteerism

We placed increased focus on skills-based volunteerism, lending associate talent to benefit non-profit organizations’ missions. At the Mid-Ohio Food Collective, we dedicated a work team to assist in the development of their data and analytics platform. We also developed marketing materials for Directions for Youth and Families. For Motionball, a national youth empowerment non-profit in Canada, we created marketing materials and prepared a data analysis of their donor database.

Community reinvestment

Under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), passed in 1977 as a measure to expand access to credit, federally insured depository institutions like Comenity Bank and Comenity Capital Bank have an obligation to support the credit needs of the communities in which they are located.

Comenity and Comenity Capital are subject to regulatory supervision by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), in addition to state supervision in Delaware and Utah, where the banks are respectively headquartered. In our most recent FDIC examination, we received the highest rating of “Outstanding” for our activities under the CRA.

The banks’ holistic approach to community reinvestment engages and connects local stakeholders and resources, as well as community development investments and services, to meet the greatest needs of the communities they serve. These programs are led by an officer appointed by the banks’ Board of Directors, with oversight from respective bank committees. 

Read the full report here.