Charity Work Helps Reston Business Change Its Corporate Culture

RESTON, VA — As a wealth management adviser at Northwestern Mutual's office in Reston, Ted Shanahan receives a lot of calls from clients and organizations looking for financial support. So when he got a call from a client 10 years ago about a nonprofit called Homestretch, he didn't think much about it.

"I get these calls all the time, and I try to be very supportive to my clients," Shanahan said. "This client, he said, 'I would love to have a check, but what I really want you to do is I want you to come to an event with me and I just want you to pay for a seat at the table.'"

The event was a breakfast meet-and-greet for Homestretch, a nonprofit that helps to combat homelessness.

"It was so inspiring because what they did was they take the homeless, primarily women that have children, off the streets or that are in shelters, and then put them into a housing," Shanahan said. "They were basically a HUD-funded organization, so 90-plus percent of their money came from the government."

While the government money helped to provide housing, it didn't address the problem of systemic homelessness, which is where Homestretch's mission comes in.

Many of the charity's clients come from human trafficking or abusive situations. Homestretch offers them a two-year program that provides child care, financial training, and psychological counseling. Of the clients who have completed the program over the last 20 years, 95 percent are still in housing and 62 percent own their own home.

"It's just an incredible success for what I call an 'outcome-oriented charity,' because it's all about the outcomes, not just the activity, which was wonderful," Shanahan said. "So, I heard these graduates, these women that were talking about scenarios that were just horrific and now they're nurses or legal assistants or working in an operational role somewhere in a company. I was just blown away."

Not only did the breakfast inspire Shanahan to write a check for Homestretch, it made him want to become more involved with the charity. In addition, he invited a speaker from another business to come to Northwestern Mutual's weekly team meeting to talk about Homestretch.

"I actually shared this with a few team members, and they go, 'Can we do something as an organization to help the charity?'" Shanahan said. "All of a sudden, this blew up to be one of our corporate milestones and cornerstones of what we're about. It changed our culture."

Every quarter, Northwestern Mutual shuts down its Reston office for a day, and team members roll up their sleeves and help to paint a house, build a playground, or read books to children. Even during the pandemic, team members have continued to help out at Homestretch's office or teach financial education classes virtually.

"If I had to choose one thing that has been the easiest thing to help me attract people to our company, [it] is to talk about our charitable interest in the community," Shanahan said. "The millennials and everyone else who is coming in today, they go, 'I love that.' And it's not a sound bite, and it's not a recruiting tool. It just happens to be the way we believe it."

Over the past 10 years, Northwestern Mutual has been helping Homestretch through volunteer, financial and professional support. It's also transformed how the charity operates. With the help of volunteers and private donors, Homestretch now only relies on the government for less than 3 percent of its funding.

For his ongoing charitable work, Shanahan recently received Northwestern Mutual's 2021 Community Service Award and a $15,000 grant. In a typical year, Shanahan's team raises $10,000 for Homestretch. With the additional money, they've been able to give the charity $25,000 this year, which is what it costs to support one family for one year.

"My goal was to try to find other businesses that are willing to take on a family," Shanahan said, "so we can go from 75 families that we help for a year to have that number be 150, if we could."

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