What do most people know about Great Lakes Higher Education? For many, especially millennials, they only know that if you don’t make your student loan payments, Great Lakes are the people who call you to bother you about it.
But most people don’t know that Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation is one of the largest employers in Dane County. And that Great Lakes is a nonprofit organization where most of the money the company makes gets channeled into its philanthropy operation which has given out over $200 million in grants since 2006, all in the name of helping low-income students, students of color, and first-generation students get into and through college.
And most people also don’t know that Great Lakes is set to celebrate 50 years on Aug. 24.
“One of the reasons why we might not be that well known is that our philanthropy is not just here in Madison, Dane County, or Wisconsin, but is nationwide. The $225 million is touching a lot more geographic space than if it was just concentrated here, says Dick George, longtime president, and CEO of Great Lakes Higher Education Corp., tells Madison 365. “Historically, we’ve shied away from publicity or bragging about ourselves.”
One of the largest student loan providers and guarantors in the country, Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation will be celebrating 50 years with an anniversary party at its headquarters on Thursday, Aug. 24, where they will give away two $50,000 employee-driven grants to two very worthy Madison-area non-profits.
Great Lakes service federal loans for millions of students, working with 6,000 schools and 1,100 lenders throughout the United States. All told, that’s nearly $200 billion in student loans for about 9 million borrowers. Founded in 1967, Great Lakes also prides themselves on giving back to their community and has given away an eye-popping $225 million since 2006 and an astounding $70 million just this past year.
They have come a long way in 50 years. The origins of Great Lakes Higher Education Corp. were pretty humble.
“In 1965, the Higher Education Act was passed as a part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty which created the genesis of the student loan program,” says George. “In 1967, was when our predecessor – the Wisconsin Higher Education Corporation – was charted as a stand-alone non-profit corporation.”
Prior to this, it was really hard for low-income people to go to college but with the passage of the act, students could borrow money for higher learning even if they had little or no income and no collateral. Great Lakes does not offer loans but serves as a guarantor and loan servicer. They provide a point of contact to students over the life of their loans and have a user-friendly website and mobile app to help Great Lakes borrowers access their loan information and make payments.
Back in those early days, Great Lakes was originally located downtown on W. Wilson Street, but consistent growth over the years caused them to move out to their current large headquarters on International Lane in 1985, located just down the street from Dane County Regional Airport. The second part of the campus was built in 1996 and Great Lakes doubled its space.
“We have about roughly 950 people here in Madison at the headquarters where all of our systems and technology are based and then we have eight other operating locations across the country,” says George, who has been with Great Lakes for almost 30 years now. “We’re now pushing about $250 billion in guaranteed and serviced assets.”
The Great Lakes Higher Education Corp.’s philanthropic mission is to bolster minority or disadvantaged students’ access to college education. While it is not a lender, the 501(c)3 non-profit doles out money to organizations that can have an immediate, ground-level impact toward that end. George says that they try not to publicize their philanthropy too much.
“It’s more important for our employees to understand how important they are to our mission than it is for us to receive recognition for our philanthropy,” George says.
Amy Kerwin, Great Lakes vice president of community investments, has been with Great Lakes for a little over 24 years and has had the opportunity to progress through a number of different departments at Great Lakes. Now, she is focused exclusively on philanthropy.
“It’s been a great opportunity for me, personally, to think that I’ve been here for almost half of Great Lakes’ 50 years makes me feel great; but it also makes me feel a little old,” Kerwin laughs. “I have seen a lot of growth here including the growth of this building here. When I started, this building was half its size.
“I remember when we had a big celebration every time we hit the next 100 employees. We got to a point in time where that became very frequent, so we stopped having big celebrations every time we added an extra 100 employees,” she adds. “The growth has been phenomenal.”
“When I joined the company I think we might have had 125-150 people. How we got to 2,000, I’m not quite sure,” George adds, smiling.
As a way to connect their employees with their philanthropy, Great Lakes has partnered with the Foundation for Madison Public Schools and their Adopt a School Program. “We adopted Gompers Elementary School and Blackhawk Middle School [on Madison’s north side]. We literally grabbed a compass and drew a line around Great Lakes looking for a school that was within a couple of miles but had really high need,” Kerwin says. “At the time, Gompers Elementary had 69 percent of their students eligible for free and reduced price meals.”
Through the partnership, Great Lakes has held campaigns four times a year to support the school including an annual school supplies drive, a snack drive, a book drive to support the Summer Reading Program and they have a pen pal program where employees are matched up with students and get to write to a caring, supportive adult they don’t know and exchange notebooks before meeting them at the end of the year.
“We’ve really worked hard to build a relationship with the schools, understand what they need and to get engaged,” Kerwin says. “The capstone of that engagement is our match for the United Way campaign. Every year, we have a United Way campaign and what Great Lakes does through their philanthropy is match dollar for dollar every dollar contributed by our employees with a match to our schools. It’s about $60,000 a year.”
One year, that money helped renovate Gompers’ and Blackhawks’ shared playground. Another year it helped renovate the Gompers Library. “This year, we are providing the furniture they need that better aligns with their move towards technology,” Kerwin says.
For their 50th anniversary, Great Lakes was looking for a way for its employees to give of themselves other than financially, so they created a Volunteer Time Off (VTO) program where every employee gets 8 hours of volunteer paid time off.
“We don’t restrict that use to only supporting our adopted school. We essentially said employees can donate their time and talent for 8 hours a year at any United Way, United Way partner agency, or Community Shares,” Kerwin says. “We want to make it as easy as possible for people to give back.
George says that many of Great Lakes employees have been on the job for a long time. George says that it is the culture.
“All of our operating companies – for profit and non-profit – dividend up our resources to support our philanthropy,” George says. “I think it’s that connection to doing what’s right as an employee in an operating context and more importantly doing what is right in the charitable context knowing that everything they do is contributing to the resources that they bring to bear in what are very significant issues in terms of post-secondary educational access. The commitment to helping the most vulnerable cohort – minorities, low-income, first generational students – to access and succeed in post-secondary education. It’s obviously important to the future of the individuals but equally important to the future of the country.”
George says that through Great Lakes’ direct contact with nine million borrowers, they see a lot more of what is needed in terms of access and success than many of their colleagues that are private foundations who don’t have that direct day-to-day contact with borrowers. “It gives rise to a realization of how we can impact through our philanthropy… things that will correct what we see in that service populations,” he says.
George is especially excited about Great Lakes’ Emergency Grant Program which was created so low-income students wouldn’t have to drop out of college if their car breaks down or they have to get a root canal or have some other type of temporary emergency. Earlier this year, Great Lakes made available $7.7 million in emergency grants available to low-income students.
“The genesis of the Emergency Grant Program was to direct support to those students to keep them enrolled and move them through to a successful experience,” George says. “One of the great success in terms of scaling is that the Emergency Grant Program has been picked up by the [Wisconsin] state Legislature and is now being funded with GPR dollars. That’s an example of demonstrating the effectiveness of programs and then get them to scale with support of other sources including public funding. That’s really the hallmark of a successful program.”
Great Lakes is actually one of the biggest education philanthropies in the country who routinely collaborates with the likes of the Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation.
For the 50th anniversary, Great Lakes has been working to broaden that connection between its employees and the community when it comes to its philanthropy. For many years, Great Lakes has had a small team of program managers who handle the competitive grant-making.
“For our 50th anniversary, we thought it would be a great opportunity to bring the employee base into the grant-making process so that they could see behind the curtain that it’s harder to give away money than you might think,” Kerwin says.
So, the employees have led the way on the Brighter Futures grant that will be presented at the upcoming 50th Anniversary Celebration. “The employees started by taking the temperature of their colleagues and really asking the people here at Great Lakes: What causes are you really most interested in supporting? Is it hunger? Is it homelessness?” Kerwin says.
They gathered the results and had a committee of employees who determined who the two organizations in Dane County would be that Great Lakes would make the $50,000 grants available to. Great Lakes not only did this in Madison, but in all of their eight other operating centers across the country so other employees could go through the process, too.
“For our employees to narrow it down to the two that we will present at the 50th-anniversary party, that was a challenge,” Kerwin says. “But I think they were really happy with the two that they chose.”
In recognition of Great Lakes’ 50th anniversary, they will be giving out two $50,000 grants to two very worthy Madison non-profits. Madison365 knows who they are, but have been sworn to secrecy. But the Madison community can come and find out at the 50th-anniversary party at Great Lakes headquarters on Thursday, Aug. 24.
“The two organizations that will be receiving grants will be here,” Kerwin says. “We’re presenting a big check, so we’ll have the leadership team of Great Lakes present and the employee committee that selected the grantees will not only be there but emceeing the show. We’ll be hearing more from the two organizations and our goal is to build new relationships with them for our VTO program.
“We want to go beyond this check presentation and to be able to support the great work the organizations do throughout the year through our VTO program,” she adds. “We’re very excited about the two organizations that we chose and about the 50th-anniversary party, too.”
