Community

At Travelers, we understand that we can only thrive as a business enterprise if our economy and our communities thrive too. We believe that strong communities are sustained by educational and economic opportunities, and we are dedicated to assisting our communities in generating those opportunities. Our community initiatives, including our volunteer and matching gifts programs, are also designed to enhance employee engagement and retention.

Travelers provides community support both directly and through the Travelers Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm. The Travelers Foundation Board of Directors provides oversight of the foundation’s strategies, priorities and activities. Our Community Relations department meets regularly with the foundation’s Board, comprised primarily of senior leaders from our Management and Operating Committees. Community Relations also reports annually to the Nominating and Governance Committee of the Travelers Board of Directors. Travelers and the Travelers Foundation publish an annual community report to highlight our accomplishments and progress.

With a focus on equity and inclusion, we target our giving and volunteerism priorities to help improve academic and career success, develop thriving neighborhoods and create culturally enriched communities.

• Academic and Career Success. Travelers supports initiatives that combat inequity by creating pathways and enhancing opportunities for career readiness, access and success. While supporting our communities, these initiatives help address corporate needs for a skilled workforce and benefit the economy at the same time. Travelers, directly and through the Travelers Foundation, has provided more than $110 million since 2009 to help foster academic success, increase career preparedness and reduce barriers to higher education. Programs such as Travelers EDGE® (Empowering Dreams for Graduation and Employment), which celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2022, are helping to strengthen our communities and build a robust and diverse talent pipeline for Travelers for the future. Here are a few examples of how we supported academic and career success in 2022:
  
  • Seventy-four percent (14 of 19) of Travelers EDGE graduates were hired full time by Travelers from the 2021-2022 academic year. Of those who accepted full-time positions at Travelers, 83% were admitted into leadership and technical development programs.
  • As part of the GRIT (Get Ready! Immersive Traineeship) program, 20 students from Hartford and New Britain, Connecticut, high schools worked with teams of Travelers employees on projects during a five-week summer program; this program included professional development and opportunities to learn more about Travelers and the insurance industry.
  • Travelers has supported the Page Education Foundation for more than 20 years. The foundation’s mission is to support and encourage Minnesota’s underserved students to pursue postsecondary education. Students receive tuition assistance and are also paying it forward by engaging in meaningful mentorships with elementary school students. In 2022, Travelers employees volunteered to review scholarship applications in addition to assisting the Page Connections program, which includes career development webinars for Page Scholars. One Travelers employee designed and delivered the most popular webinar – on financial well-being – and was honored as Page Volunteer of the Year for his many contributions to the organization.
• Thriving Neighborhoods. Travelers fosters thriving neighborhoods through neighborhood economic development and community-building services to help individuals, families and small businesses understand and mitigate risks, stay safe and prepare for disasters. Since 2009, Travelers has donated more than $60 million to help make home ownership possible, to help rebuild after natural disasters and to better position small businesses for success. Travelers’ efforts to promote thriving neighborhoods include the Small Business Support program – which leverages our employees’ expertise to help women, minority and veteran small business owners – and Travelers Fortifies Communities, which is focused on building affordable, wind-resistant homes to FORTIFIED Home™ standards throughout the country. Here are a few examples of how we supported thriving neighborhoods in 2022:
  
  • The nonprofit small business support organizations that we partner with reached more than 40,000 entrepreneurs from various industries and locations, with many being women-, minority- or veteran-owned small businesses.
  • 115 FORTIFIED homes were built with our support across Louisiana, Texas, Florida, South Carolina, and Puerto Rico.
  • Travelers’ support enabled Team Rubicon to rebuild 18 homes in low-attention disaster sites. Low-attention disasters are devastating weather events that affect communities but are not large enough in scale to draw the government, media and philanthropic response triggered by major events.
• Culturally Enriched Communities. Travelers supports organizations that enrich lives through arts and culture, both as a lever for academic improvement and to foster cultural vitality in communities where our employees live and work. In 2019, we launched Travelers Art Speaks, an internal initiative that leverages our investment in arts and cultural organizations, to spark meaningful and thought-provoking dialogue on topics related to diversity and inclusion. Since 2009, we have provided more than $50 million to help keep our communities vibrant. Here are a few examples of how we supported culturally enriched communities in 2022:
  
  • Travelers was the leading sponsor of the Norman Rockwell Museum’s “Imprinted: Illustrating Race” exhibit, which examines the role of published images in shaping attitudes toward race and culture in the United States. The exhibit opened in June 2022 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and will travel to other locations starting in 2024.
  • We partnered with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, to host an event where more than 150 students from local schools experienced George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker^® and learned about a career in ballet.
  • Since 1997, Travelers has been a dedicated supporter of Project Success programs serving students in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Project Success’ mission is to motivate and inspire young people through the arts to dream about the future, help them take steps to get there and give them the tools they need to achieve their goals.

Throughout the pandemic and during 2022, we continued to address broader community needs arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. From the onset of the pandemic, we repurposed the kitchen facilities on our main campus in Hartford to assist nonprofits in the preparation and delivery of tens of thousands of meals to those in need. From April 2020 through March 2022, we provided a combined total of more than 165,000 meals to four community meal centers in the Hartford region. Our pandemic response efforts also included more than $2 million to pay the wages and health benefits for eligible third-party contract employees who provide services at Travelers offices, including dining and building maintenance, protecting jobs that would have otherwise been lost during the economic shutdown.

We remain committed to making equity a centerpiece of our approach to charitable giving and community involvement. For example, Travelers partners with Resource, a joint initiative led by Village Capital and the Black Innovation Alliance, to create a stronger entrepreneurial infrastructure for business founders who are Black, Indigenous or people of color. In 2022, we further invested through the Black Innovation Alliance to support Black technologists, creatives and innovators from across the country. Travelers sponsored the 2022 National Urban League Conference, which convenes influencers, thought leaders and those engaged in social justice efforts. As a corporate member of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Travelers also sponsored the 34th National Equal Justice Awards Dinner, which recognizes and honors leaders in law, the arts, business and philanthropy who have demonstrated a commitment to the promotion of racial justice and equality.

Travelers Charitable Giving

We take pride in empowering our employees to have a positive impact on their communities by serving others. As community leaders, Travelers employees are more than strong corporate citizens – they are valuable assets to the communities in which they live and work. Year after year, our employees’ efforts to give back to the communities we call home are truly remarkable. We do not limit the number of paid volunteer hours an employee can take during the year; each employee works directly with their manager to balance volunteering with their job responsibilities.

We hear from our employees about how connecting with their communities – by contributing their time, talents and financial resources – is personally rewarding, drives engagement and morale, and strengthens their commitment to our company’s mission. We also see how community involvement – whether by leading a team volunteer project, coordinating an event for a local nonprofit, providing pro bono services or serving on a charity’s board of directors – helps our employees develop as professionals, building competencies that we value in the Travelers workforce.

In 2022, employee giving and volunteer activity increased significantly as COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in most states and Travelers employees returned to the office. In-person volunteer activities resumed in April 2022. Travelers employees participated in the following volunteer activities, among others, during 2022:

• 200 employees participated in Earth Day cleanup activities in parks and gardens in Connecticut and Minnesota.
• 150 employees packed support kits for homeless individuals in partnership with the United Way of Central and Northeastern Connecticut at the Personal Insurance Leadership Meeting.
• 240 Business Insurance employees supported the homeless by packing support kits in Atlanta, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee.
• 180 summer interns packed kits with literacy and other supplies for elementary school summer students in Hartford public schools.
• 170 Minnesota employees packed more than 900 backpacks with school supplies for local students.
• 380 employees volunteered at The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a free camp in Connecticut for seriously ill children and their families, to get the cabins and grounds ready for campers and their families.
• 200-plus employees supported BestPrep by volunteering as eMentors, mock interviewers and counselors for its Minnesota Business Venture summer camp.
• 10 employees in Alpharetta, Georgia, served as coaches, mentors and judges for West Forsyth High School’s 3DE/Junior Achievement case competition. As part of this competition, students work in teams over a five-week period to craft a solution to an actual real-world business challenge. Travelers was recognized nationally with the U.S. President’s Bronze Volunteer Service Award for the 2021-22 school year for its strong support of Junior Achievement.
• 25 employees from Alpharetta and Norcross, Georgia, hosted a three-day professional development retreat with Usher’s New Look for more than 50 college and high school students. The training included a leadership panel, a drone demonstration and a tour of the Travelers Data Center.
• Approximately 50 employees were matched with elementary school students in Hartford, Connecticut, for weekly lunchtime reading through our Read to a Child program.

Through the Travelers Community Connections intranet site, we continue to encourage Travelers employees to log their company-sponsored and independent volunteer activities, as well as view volunteer opportunities available in their communities. In addition, Travelers maintains both a matching gifts and volunteer rewards program to encourage and support employees in their efforts.

Travelers Community Connections Matching Gifts Program

We amplify our employees’ generosity with the Travelers Community Connections program. From 2013 to 2022, we matched our employees’ gifts of time and money with $21 million in matching funds. The program offers an annual Cash Match of up to $500 per employee for donations made through our online portal. Employees also are eligible to earn volunteer rewards at a rate of $20 per volunteer hour logged, which they can then designate as grants to eligible charities. Each employee may earn up to $1,000 in rewards annually. Our annual Community Connections Campaign also encourages employee giving through fundraising events in support of United Way affiliates across the country and reminds employees about the ability to give to their favorite charities through payroll deduction and other methods. During the 2022 campaign, which was themed “Ensuring Resilient Communities,” employees raised more than $800,000 for our local communities through over 100 creative virtual and live events.

Travelers Community Connections Team Volunteer Grants

The Travelers Community Connections field office volunteer grant program encourages volunteer initiatives at our offices across the United States by supporting employee team requests for grants of up to $15,000 to support local schools and nonprofit partners.

In 2022, 16 organizations partnering with Travelers offices across the country raised nearly $250,000 through this program. In addition, through Travelers’ ongoing partnership with Habitat for Humanity International, 31 team build grants were provided to 29 Habitat for Humanity local affiliates, totaling more than $270,000; in Connecticut, Minnesota and Canada, Travelers employees participated in 21 builds, adding $235,000 of support.

As demonstrated below, these programs add up to millions of dollars in assistance for the communities we call home.

Supporting Employee Community Involvement