CSi’s Vice President of Retirement Plan Consulting, Kelli Davis, was featured in the July 2020 edition of PLANADVISER Magazine’s “Advisers Giving Back” series. The publication profiles industry leaders and advisory firms nationwide that have engaged in notable charitable activities. The article, written by John Manganaro, included Kelli’s take on many facets of CSi’s philanthropic framework, which focuses on a variety of causes in our local Indiana community.
In the article, Kelli spoke about CSi’s “dress down” Friday’s, which benefit a charitable organization that is voted upon by the staff every six months. In order to wear jeans on Friday, employees make a monetary contribution to the organization of choice. As Kelli explains in the article, “This whole approach creates such great buy-in among the staff. It has come to mean a lot to them. It’s so important and meaningful to have the staff pick the causes. They have a stake. They want to support a cause that means something special to them.” With weekly contributions and the firm matching staff donations, the Friday dress down program ends up generating a sizable monetary gift at the end of the six months.
Our current Friday dress down beneficiary is Invest in Girls, an organization that works with schools to provide financial literacy programming to young girls. Its mission is an extremely relevant cause to CSi, as promoting financial literacy and education has been a longstanding pillar of our firm. CSi’s relationship with Invest in Girls began after we reached out in the hopes of getting involved, and the mainly East Coast focused organization responded by asking if our firm would be interested in working with the Invest in Girls team to pilot the first program in Indiana. Kelli was instrumental in this process, and the CSi and Invest in Girls partnership now works with about 25 different school systems across the state.
During the first sessions, Kelli polled students to discover what they wanted to know, and shaped the curriculum to match their interests. Kelli and the rest of the CSi staff involved in the Invest in Girls program speak fondly about the entrepreneurial spirit that shines through the young female students they work with. “Many of them say they want to own a business someday, and they want to understand how to do that… It’s so important because the teachers don’t have the time or funding to teach any of this.” As a female leader in the finance industry, our firm is proud to assist Kelli as she steps up and serves as a role model and mentor to so many of the ambitious young women involved in the Invest in Girls program.
One more component of CSi’s giving model is our annual service day. Every year, the staff votes on an organization to dedicate an entire day of service to, together. Our most recent day of service was completed at Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, one of the leading organizations involved in fighting hunger in Indiana. A day of on-site volunteering has a powerful effect on our staff by helping us re-center and reestablish our commitment to giving back to our Indiana community.
To read Kelli’s full feature in PLANADVISER Magazine, click here.
To learn more about CSi Advisory Services’ charitable activities, click here.