From left: Amishi, Neil, Punam and P.C. Amin (Photo by Jay Paul)
While students at the University of Pennsylvania, Neil Amin and a friend started a Rotaract Club, a Rotary-sponsored service club for people ages 18 to 30. It was Amin’s first experience serving on a nonprofit board. Today, Amin, the president and CEO of Shamin Hotels, serves on four in the Richmond area, including the board of the Better Housing Coalition and the VCU Foundation.
He says volunteerism “runs deep” in his family but was never explicitly discussed. Instead, his family led by example. “My grandfather was passionate about helping others his entire life in India. He always gave away everything that he had, and my father and his sisters grew up in that environment.”
His father, P.C. Amin, who founded Shamin Hotels, serves on the board of the Chesterfield Cultural Arts Foundation. Neil’s wife, Amishi, is a board member for Greater Richmond SCAN (Stop Child Abuse Now). His cousins, including Shamin Vice President of Development Jay Shah, also donate time to nonprofit boards.
Shamin Hotels stands out as a family-run business with giving back in its lineage. But board service is also a metric by which many larger companies measure their community engagement. “We actually have a goal that 100 percent of our executives serve on nonprofit boards,” says Jennifer Hunter, senior vice president of communications and corporate citizenship for Altria Client Services. “We currently have 98 percent.”
“We actually have a goal that 100 percent of our executives serve on nonprofit boards.” —Jennifer Hunter, senior vice president of communications and corporate citizenship at Altria
Many of Richmond’s largest employers, including Dominion Energy, Hunton & Williams, Capital One and Genworth Financial, are major sources of board members for area nonprofits. This trend is partially about the odds: The larger a company, the more likely its employees are to show up on boards. But many companies also have initiatives in place to promote board service.
Altria, for example, has a program to match its executives with seats on boards of partner nonprofits. The matches are based on an executive’s interests and the skill sets the nonprofits need. “We start with, ‘Who are we supporting? Are they interested in having an Altria executive on the board? What skills or experience are they looking for? Do we have someone who would be a good fit?’ ” Hunter explains.
Genworth — with employees filling 28 board seats in the Richmond area, including the chairs of the Latin Ballet of Virginia and Homeward — organizes “cause councils,” employee-led volunteer groups that work with area nonprofits on particular issues. “It’s really a nice bridge from working on a cause council to perhaps being a board member on one of those nonprofits,” explains Mary Beth Murphy, vice president of corporate communications and corporate responsibility.
The cause councils were the entry point for Michael Snader, an audit manager at Genworth, to his service on the board of the Downtown YMCA. He had just purchased his first home when he started at the company nearly five years ago and jumped at leading its housing and shelter council. “Affordable housing offers a sense of stability for families,” says Snader. “It’s very meaningful to serve in that way.”
Some companies also use their resources to make board service more manageable for employees. Altria and Genworth offer paid time off for volunteering, as does Dominion. All three companies offer or are in the process of offering grants designed to help their employees afford the financial contributions often required for board service.
Leadership development and corporate image are two factors motivating these companies to promote board service and volunteering. The most-cited factor, however, is the simplest: employee satisfaction. “People want to give back to the communities where they live,” says Hunter. “If you have a company that says, ‘We support that, we promote that, we encourage that,’ it makes it easier to do.”
Snader agrees. “There’s a commitment [at Genworth] to engage with the community,” he says. “I feel that support; and it’s never an issue to say, ‘Hey, I have some scheduled time at the end of the day that I’m going to take to serve on the board.’ I’ve only been encouraged to do that.”
Nonprofit Spotlight: JP Jumpers Foundation
Photo by Images by Kecia
Started by Pam Mines as an Autism Walk Team in 2007 in honor of her son, JP, who was diagnosed with autism, this foundation was instrumental in Virginia’s enactment of what’s known as JP’s Law. The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles under the statute can add a code to a driver’s license or ID that notes the holder has an intellectual disability. "My son is a wanderer,” says Mines. “If something happened ... and we were able to teach him to have a wallet and an ID, when law enforcement pulls that out, they will see [that he has a disability]." —Stuart DuBreuil
