American Corporate Partners

A NATIONWIDE MENTORING PROGRAM DEDICATED TO HELPING VETERANS TRANSITION FROM THE ARMED SERVICES TO PRIVATE ENTERPRISE THROUGH CAREER COUNSELING AND NETWORKING WITH PROFESSIONALS FROM SOME OF AMERICA'S FINEST CORPORATIONS AND UNIVERSITIES

The greatest challenge to veterans is not unemployment but underemployment. Military branches offer

Goal One: ACP has room for growth. With more than 1 million veterans are expected to transition out of the military in the next 5 years, expanding ACP's outreach efforts to the veteran and military community.

Goal Two: ACP consistently collects both qualitative and quantitative data from our mentors and veterans. We analyze this information to create new programs and projects to appeal to the community we serve.

Goal Three: ACP relies on our corporate partnerships, individual donors, and grants to keep our mentorships free to our veterans. As we receive more veteran applications, we will need to expand our funding.

ACP runs our organization very cost-effectively. Every aspect of our program is run internally by our associates. Our entire team begins their ACP employment focusing on learning all aspects of case management and how to support our mentorships properly. When case management is successfully mastered, our staff is encouraged to explore different roles within the organization. Our organizational projects are an excellent opportunity for our team to learn new skills and become leaders with side projects. While managing mentorships, our associates could be working on social media, web and design, outreach, corporate relations, fundraising, training and development, etc. Additionally, our management encourages the staff to work on their professional development and leadership skills through optional training or courses that the staff member wants to attend.

ACP has pivoted to adapt to many external changes in the past year. During the pandemic, the need for our program's support grew exponentially. ACP has received 40% more applications in the past two years. Due to the significant increase in applicants, it was necessary to hire additional staff to keep up with our programmatic needs. Additionally, the past 12 months proved challenging because of periodic unsafe COVID in-office conditions. Our staff shifted between working in person and virtually seamlessly. ACP's training team and new hires were able to work together using video conferencing tools, essentially relieving the existing staff's large workloads. ACP is very fortunate; our mentorship pairing process has always focused on placing mentors and proteges together based on relevant career fits versus locations. Over 90% of ACP's mentorships are long-distance. While the COVID crisis and its economic fallout have sharply increased our protege applications, our mentors have been able to help our transitioning veterans navigate the unprecedented civilian workforce changes. In the past, ACP held in-person career events throughout the United States; due to the social distancing concerns, we shifted to holding events virtually. It has been highly successful and has helped us reach a larger audience. Because of the success, we now hold virtual webinars and hiring events every Wednesday. While the past year has brought many external challenges, we have successfully pivoted the demands because of our leadership's forward-thinking.