BMO served as convening sponsor of the International Corporate Citizenship Conference, held in Los Angeles, CA in April 2026. The bank's main stage session featured Helen Seibel, VP and Head of Employee & Community Giving, BMO; Sean Garrett, President & CEO, United Way of Metro Chicago; Rosie Allen-Herring, Interim President and CEO, United Way Worldwide; and Ted Dunn, Head of U.S. Diversified Industries Group (DIG) & Interim Head of U.S. Industry Verticals, BMO Commercial Bank.
Originally published in The Corporate Citizen magazine, Volume 48, Issue 3. Read the full issue here.
"Grow the Good." As conference themes go, this three-word imperative — seemingly simple—more than delivered. For BMO, the convening sponsor of BCCCC's 2026 International Corporate Citizenship Conference, the phrase carries the weight of real commitment: more than 200 years of institutional history, decades-long community investments, and a corporate culture that has turned employee giving into something closer to a shared identity.
"'Boldly Grow the Good' is more than a tagline," explained Helen Seibel, VP and Head of Employee & Community Giving, BMO, to an audience of 400-plus corporate citizens. "It's the lens we use to think about our role in the world. It connects the work we do as a bank to something broader: helping people make real financial progress and supporting the communities where we live and work."
BMO's panel set the tone for an inspiring main stage conversation and, in fact, for everything that followed over the next two days in Los Angeles. Attendees heard about CSR programming that proved as grounded and strategic as it was ambitious—practitioners speaking from experience about translating purpose and long-term community investment into lasting impact.
“ Culture isn't something you tell people about. It's something they feel through what they do and how they're included. ”
Culture as Anchor
If there was a through-line in BMO's session, it was this: culture is not a backdrop. It's an active, intentional effort—one that requires consistent reinforcement, particularly in moments of organizational change.
The data BMO brought to support that argument was striking. The bank's annual employee giving campaign, for example, has an annual participation rate of more than 90%. That number didn't appear overnight. It is the result, BMO leaders explained, of a leader-led model built over many years—one in which executives don't simply endorse the campaign but visibly participate in it and speak personally about why it matters.
"Participation follows connection," Seibel told attendees. "When people have permission to get involved—because they see it modeled by their colleagues, because they feel what they're doing matters and reflects their own values—they lean in in a much more authentic and lasting way."
The mechanics behind that participation rate are also worth noting. BMO sets specific goals, tracks progress daily and generates reporting granular enough to create friendly competition across departments. The approach reflects the organization's identity: BMO is a bank, and numbers matter. But the infrastructure serves a human purpose, making the impact of giving tangible for every employee who participates.
The model was tested at scale during BMO's acquisition of Bank of the West, which brought approximately 9,000 new colleagues into the organization at once. In addition to explaining the culture through onboarding documents, BMO focused on helping new employees experience it, including through the giving campaign. First-year participation in those new markets was well over 80%, significantly exceeding expectations.
"Culture isn't something you tell people about," observed Ted Dunn, Head of U.S. Diversified Industries Group (DIG) & Interim Head of U.S. Industry Verticals, BMO Commercial Bank. "It's something they feel through what they do and how they're included."
Staying Long Enough to Matter
The conversation segued into BMO's long-term community investment work—and what a decade-plus commitment to a single neighborhood can produce. In 2018, BMO made a $10 million commitment to Chicago neighborhoods including Austin in support of United Way’s Neighborhood Network. In the years since, that investment has helped anchor major community revitalization efforts, including the Aspire Center.
The Aspire Center is a former public school that sat vacant for eleven years, occupying an entire city block in Austin. For more than a decade, residents walked past it daily—a physical reminder, as Sean Garrett, President & CEO, United Way of Metro Chicago, put it on stage, that the community had been left behind. Today, the building has been transformed into a hub of workforce opportunity: job training for advanced manufacturing, a local health organization, a BMO financial center where residents can conduct their banking, and—perhaps most importantly—a gathering space that was built by neighborhood leaders and their input.
Further, BMO's sustained presence has functioned as a signal to other investors—one that has catalyzed an estimated $200 million in additional public and private investment in the community. That multiplier effect, BMO leaders acknowledged, was not a designed outcome. It emerged organically from the bank’s willingness to show up consistently… and to stay.
"By making a sustained commitment and continuing to show up, we unintentionally became a signal to other organizations that there was something worth investing in," Seibel said. "What we heard from partners is that our presence created confidence—that if BMO was there for the long term, others could step in as well."
The lesson, as articulated in the session, is that corporate impact is not only about what an organization contributes directly. It's also about the credibility and momentum a long-term partner can generate—the way a sustained presence reassures other investors that the conditions for success exist.
Listening Before Investing
One of the session's more practically useful themes was the question of how—not just how much—to invest in communities. BMO's approach begins with a step that organizations in a hurry tend to skip: listening.
The point is more than philosophical. Different communities are at different stages of readiness for different kinds of investment, and partners within those communities have varying capacity to respond. Moving too quickly, or assuming that what worked in one neighborhood will translate seamlessly to another, is a reliable path to wasted resources and strained relationships.
Garrett used the phrase "community rhythms" to describe this idea—the recognition that a community is ready for certain things at certain times, and that understanding those rhythms requires time and genuine attention.
The bank’s partnership with United Way of Greater LA illustrated the point. When BMO looked to fund United Way's neighborhood work in Los Angeles, both organizations recognized that meaningful investment required something that hadn't yet been done: a thorough community needs assessment. So, BMO funded that first. The results informed a longer-term commitment made afterward.
"Listening. That’s a superpower," BMO’s Dunn affirmed.
A Note for Early-Stage Programs
For corporate citizenship practitioners who have the philanthropic infrastructure in place but haven't yet figured out how to deepen or sustain community partnerships, the session offered one essential piece of advice: slow down.
"Take the time to listen and build real partnerships," Seibel said. "A lot of this work doesn't move quickly, and that can be challenging. But the strongest outcomes tend to come when organizations stay engaged long enough to build trust—and are open to learning along the way."
It's an unsatisfying answer in a business culture that prizes velocity. But BMO's record in Austin—where patient, sustained investment helped rebuild trust, attract capital, and generate momentum that no single donation could have produced—makes the case more compellingly than any argument could.
The most meaningful outcomes, as one speaker put it, often happen quietly before they become visible. Being patient enough to let that happen is what separates impact that lasts from impact that simply looks good on a year-end report.