2017: Year In Review

I’m thrilled to tell you we broke our annual record, having funded 11,974 placements in 2017, which brings our cumulative total to more than 43,000 veterans placed into high-quality jobs since the Endowment was founded in 2009. And just as encouraging, we’ve brought our cost of placing a vet in a job down to just $504. Our goal remains to place 50,000 veterans by 2019, and we remain on track!

Here are some of our other big achievements:  

• We officially expanded to the U.K. in an effort to help British veterans in need (and will soon be announcing our two amazing partner organizations).
• We were awarded a Cynopsis Social Good Award, a Halo Award for Best Digital Campaign, and GuideStar’s Platinum Status. The Endowment was also mentioned in Philanthropy Roundtable’s Uniform Champions book, a guide to the best veteran’s philanthropic organizations.
• By helping our partners be more efficient, we are now able to place a veteran into a job for an average cost of $504 - that’s ⅙ of what the U.S. Government spends on placing a veteran into a job ($3,083).
• We worked with actors and athletes to promote the Endowment’s mission and events. The actors from Call of Duty ®: WWII, including Josh Duhamel, showed their support and shared the impact of veterans in their lives, while Alejandro Villanueva and Le’Veon Bell from the Pittsburgh Steelers wore and auctioned Call of Duty Endowment cleats as a part of the NFL’s #MyCauseMyCleats campaign. The Oakland As also made a generous contribution to the Endowment.
• The Endowment was included in Humble Bundle’s Jumbo Bundle 10. 153,422 bundles were purchased over two weeks, and helped put over 400 veterans back to work.
• With the support of Sledgehammer Studios and a host of Activision employees, we released the wildly popular Bravery Packin Call of Duty: WWII. For $4.99 you get an in-game helmet, emblem, and calling card, all emblazoned with the Endowment’s logo.
• We got the band back together for the Race to Prestige! Jericho, TmarTn, GoldGlove, VernNotice and Hutch played Call of Duty:WWII for four days straight, and were responsible for putting 500 veterans into high-quality jobs.
• In partnership with ZipRecruiter, we published a first-of-its-kind study on veteran employment, finding that veteran job-seekers are 15.6% more likely to be underemployed than non-veterans and exposing to the world an emerging challenge area.
• The Microsoft Xbox community reached 25M achievements in November to unlock donations to the Call of Duty Endowment which put nearly 1,000 veterans back to work!
• With the help of our amazing partners at GameStop and their customers, the Military Heroes campaign raised more than $600,000 to support veterans and families of the fallen.
• We celebrated our 5-year partnership with GameStop at the Texas Motor Speedway, where Erik Jones raced for vets and won big at the NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS) in November.
• Call of Duty Endowment dogtags were back again—in partnership with Costco, our consumer marketing, Art Services, sales and supply chain teams delivered another winning item to get more than 200 vets to work!
• Through our partnership with the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) and the construction industry, we raised over $100K at CONEXPO, which included a live performance by Foreigner! Then in October we teamed up with AEM and our friends at JJ Kane Auctioneers at ICUEE to host a live auction that raised over $36K!

We are incredibly grateful for all your support in 2017. It has allowed us to achieve some amazing heights and change the lives of veterans across the United States and United Kingdom. We are excited to continue our work in the 2018 and hope you’ll continue to support our efforts.